Did you consider using DRM or is it just a freely distributable PDF?
How I Made $6K With My eBook
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Re: How I Made $6K With My eBook
#32I am impressed with the fact that he made $6k. A few years ago, I took a writing class that was taught by a published author. At the time, she had 4 books published, all Sci-Fi, by a New York publisher. She told the class that she got an advance of $5k for her first book. When that sold well enough to cover costs for the publisher, she started receiving royalties. At the time, she had gotten about another $5k. So for…
yeah. uh, so far I've made less than that on the book of xen[1] and the publisher has said that it is selling 'surprisingly well' - he (my publisher) warned me going in that writing technical books doesn't pay as well as most things a qualified person can do.
But then, I get a real kick when I walk into Fry's and see my book.
Re: How I Made $6K With My eBook
#33I am impressed with the fact that he made $6k. A few years ago, I took a writing class that was taught by a published author. At the time, she had 4 books published, all Sci-Fi, by a New York publisher. She told the class that she got an advance of $5k for her first book. When that sold well enough to cover costs for the publisher, she started receiving royalties. At the time, she had gotten about another $5k. So for…
yeah. uh, so far I've made less than that on the book of xen[1] and the publisher has said that it is selling 'surprisingly well' - he (my publisher) warned me going in that writing technical books doesn't pay as well as most things a qualified person can do. But then, I get a real kick when I walk into Fry's and see my book. [1] http://nostarch.com/xen.htm
I dream of being a published author one day and walking into a book store and secretly signing my books :)
I have heard that technical books don't sell well, but then again, this author is not very well known and her books don't sell well either. She said that every agent and publisher takes on new authors hoping they become the next William Gibson (or other huge name). Most authors barely survive off of writing.
Re: How I Made $6K With My eBook
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
Writing took about 2 months IIRC. But the learning took >1 year :p
I would be really interested to hear about the learning process. Was there something in particular that you read that was especially helpful? Did you buy other e-books to learn how to write and market e-books?
It started as an experiment to apply what is described in the 4 Hour Work Week book, Muse Project chapter. I've learned about marketing and ebook publishing mostly by looking at how others did it. http://javascriptrocks.com/performance/ came out a little bit before mine so I was inspired by it a little.
Re: How I Made $6K With My eBook
#35I wonder how many more sales he will get for it appearing on hn?
5 so fare fyi.
Re: How I Made $6K With My eBook
#36How do you feel about ClickBank? One of my weekend projects is a little site that'll make selling digital goods online really simple, targeted at a non-technical audience. Obviously, you are technical, but how'd you feel about the various sites that are out there? Did you try other services before ClickBank?
ClickBank is ok, a little better the e-junkie, but e-junkie has digital delivery built-in, but still... we're very far from the nice UIs we usually take for granted in our community.
My dream setup would be Shopify + http://www.fetchapp.com/ but this is quite expensive for my low volume.
Re: How I Made $6K With My eBook
#37I self-published a PHP programming book ( http://www.littlehart.net/book ) and I've sold about the same number of copies as he has (~200 between PDF and LuLu) but (a) I didn't charge as much as he did and (b) didn't hook up with any affiliate marketing / promotion until October of 2009. Sold about 150 copies (PDF + Lulu) before I found my current publisher.
Why have you left Lulu?
I'm using LuLu for print-on-demand copies of the book, just like I did before. I went with someone else to help with PDF sales.
Re: How I Made $6K With My eBook
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
Of course, it also implies that Matz did NOT read the book... :-/
Right. Says nothing about the quality of the book. Also, I'd like to read the book, but not for the price the author is asking. I'm impressed that one can sell an e-book for near $1/page, though. I realize that, in the end, it's about value delivered, not page count, but still. It tells me that people are not as price sensitive to some things as I thought.
That's why it's important to sell more than just an ebook. I included 2 full languages you can use in OSS, http://jashkenas.github.com/coffee-script/ started from the Ruby language included in the package. + screencast and more.
Also the book is amazingly good :p
Re: How I Made $6K With My eBook
#39Do you worry about people pirating your eBook, or worse yet - infringing your copyright by taking the information in the eBook, and publishing it as their own? It seems that by going with a publishing agency, one would have a lot more legal protection in that regard?
Re: How I Made $6K With My eBook
#40I am impressed with the fact that he made $6k. A few years ago, I took a writing class that was taught by a published author. At the time, she had 4 books published, all Sci-Fi, by a New York publisher. She told the class that she got an advance of $5k for her first book. When that sold well enough to cover costs for the publisher, she started receiving royalties. At the time, she had gotten about another $5k. So for…
I've heard ppl selling a lot more then I did in a lot less time. Self-publishing is probably less glamourous, but surely more profitable.