What do we have here?
This book might look like advice to writers, but Scalzi isn't fooling anyone. It's better read as autobiography, as Scalzi on Scalzi. It's a book that's useful and interesting to anyone -- just as a book about a shipbuilder is interesting to more than just other shipbuilders.
One of the themes of the book is that a professional writer should make money in different ways, and the book itself provides a perfect example: it's collected from postings on Whatever, the author's blog, so there was no "extra" work in writing most of the book. The flip side of this is that Scalzi really does work for a living. I'm someone who has to have a cup of tea and a lie down after I've written a few paragraphs, so to me Scalzi is terrifyingly productive, averaging thousands of words a day, hundreds of thousands of words a year. Scalzi makes it very clear that a professional writer really is more than someone who takes their laptop to a coffee shop. The book gives a clear picture of the working life of a writer in the first five years of the twenty-first century.
More than just a book about writing, this is a book about being in the world. It's no surprise that being honest and cooperative with the people you work with, relentless in the face of rejection, and calm in the face of criticism, is less stressful and more effective than the alternative. What raises this book above the level of advice books about kindergarten is that it's a clear exposition of what works for one successful writer. A sample of one might not be statistically significant, but it's easy to understand. And Scalzi makes it abundantly clear that the specifics that work for him may not work for you.
If you just read books rather than write them, this book is an good introduction to the process of writing, editing and publishing. Scalzi writes about his own experience, so you shouldn't expect an analysis of the entire industry, but the anecdotes in the book will definitely make you a more informed and smarter reader.
The book is so grounded in the present that it can be infuriating. I'd love ebooks to be more popular than they are now, and sooner or later they will be, but Scalzi points out, perfectly accurately, that ebooks are irrelevant to most writers because at the moment they don't generate any income. Scalzi is also opinionated, which is just a polite way of saying that he says things that I disagree with, but it wouldn't be a very interesting book otherwise. He draws a clear distinction between writers who have published books and those who haven't, which in particular seems unfair to the technical writers I've met who are expert in turning technical gibberish into user manuals and other documentation.
Not much of "Scalzi on Writing" is specifically about how to write well, and anyway writers have different styles and even different goals. Some reviewers have commented on Scalzi's tone, which can occasionally be strident. Scalzi does high dudgeon as well as anyone, but in a book about writing, hasn't it occurred to anyone that Scalzi doesn't have to *be* angry in order to *write* angry? Andrew Wheeler, the editor of the Science Fiction Book Club, has suggested that Scalzi should start a writers' movement called "The New Comprehensible". Wheeler is making a joke at Scalzi's expense because Scalzi writes comprehensible prose and makes it look easy. If it's your goal to communicate clearly and effectively, the writing in this book is a pretty good model.
The book has gone out of print in the best way, by selling out its first printing. If you don't own the book, you might send a thought heavenwards (or in whatever direction you think appropriate for publishers) in the hope that the book will be reprinted.