That's the decision to be made.

Apress contacted me about the update for my book. I wrote 1/2 of the Designing Database Solutions book for SQL Server 2000, the one originally published by Sybex for the exam. It was a long, tough process and one that really strained my life for 6 months when I wrote it back in 2000/2001.

Understandably I was hesitant to begin another project, but Apress is pushing hard. Apparently there is a dearth of authors and they've upped their offer to me. Talking about it with my wife today, I was surprised she was thinking I should do it. The cool factor alone of having another book on the shelf is worth it. Not to mention the cash.

Writing books isn't a great way to make a living, in my opinion. Overall from the first book I don't think that it was worth it from an hourly standpoint. But it has been fun to see my book as well as get a few royalty checks every year. They are only a few hundred dollars each time, but they've come at great times and usually brightened my day.

So I'm leaning towards writing. As I think back I realize that I have learned a lot about writing over the last few years and the practice of a daily column as well as multiple articles make me think that this time it will be a much smoother process. Plus the book I'm looking at is less a deep dive into the new SQL Server 2005 features and more a business strategy book based on SQL Server 2005. That alone seems to be more of my area than detailed CLR or Service Broker features.

So we'll see. A decision due tomorrow.