Advice from a fellow tech writer: retain your copyright. Your intellectual property is valuable, and it allows you to use your writing however you like.
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When we manage product development for organizations, we work for hire. The company hires you, pays you a wage, and in return, your intellectual property belongs to them.
When you’re creating a product larger than one person can create, this is an excellent proposition. While “one person” may have had the original idea, we need many people to refine the idea and bring that product to market.
Books and consulting are all different beasts.
You can write a book by yourself. I advocate hiring a variety of editors, and a cover designer, maybe even more people, to create a great book, but you can do it yourself.
You can create consulting services and deliver them by yourself.
You might have more fun with other people (and I do!), but you can create and deliver it by yourself.
Every time you create something, you create intellectual property. That property has value over your lifetime plus 70 years, according to general copyright law.
That’s why I recommend writers retain their copyright. Aside from the obvious selling past your death, you don’t need to ask anyone if you can use your material in a workshop or a talk or any other media we don’t know about yet.
