I’ve met two men with Alsatian surnames – Nate “Koechley” (aboriginally Köchle) and Nic Boshart, esteemed colleague at a nonprofit dealing with Canadian publishing, who writes:
People don’t think it’s hard to write, and those who do think it’s hard won’t read a book. Tech people don’t let you forget that what they do is hard, but they have an interesting and super-duper-effective way of going about it: By telling you exactly what they do and how they do it.
Tech people write blogs on how to do what they’re doing. They participate with other people in their fields to build better things. They purposely interact with outsiders to help them learn for free. They point them at products, not necessarily their own, that they think the non-techie needs and/or would like. The real clincher is that everybody does this, so it comes back around.
What do publishers do? Close Book Expo America to the public.