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I'm the book author, so if you have any questions, let me know.
You mentioned publishers leave you with 10% of the sales. I can't wrap my head around that, how is that possible and acceptable by authors?
Also, that 10% is after discounts and payment processing fees. So it works out at about $2/book.
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There are a lot of things publishers do behind the scenes that no one thinks about. Sure there are things like marketing and printing. There are a lot of other little things too. Content editing. Publishers often hire another person who is at least or more knowledgeable on the subject to review what the author says. They make sure that all the code works, does it make sense in certain contexts etc. When code doesn't…
> There are a lot of things publishers do behind the scenes that no one thinks about. That is definitely part of the publisher's pitch , but from what I gather, that is less than they'd like you to believe. > Content editing. Good editing is invaluable, but it's important to distinguish different kinds of editing. "Developmental editing" is high-level "what kind of book does the market want us to write" guidance. If…
Ultimately, I've decided to go with the traditional route because I don't have the audience.
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When you use a publisher, you only have to write the book, and the publisher will take care of editing, printing, distribution, marketing, advertising, etc. When you self-publish a book, you need to do way more than just writing the book. You have to do all the things the publisher would have done for you. By self-publishing, you can get 80 or 90% royalties, instead of 10%, which I think it's worth. It might not be w…
I wonder how feasible it would be to write a (great) book, skip most of the coursework/training/audience-building bits, market it using more conventional means (reach out to journalists, etc.), and make ~$10k? Personally, as someone who loves technical writing but less the people bits around it, I'd much prefer doing something like this to "building my brand" and essentially becoming an instructor. (This is roughly w…
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I've started to collaborate with other folks to sort of semi-self-publish. Meaning, I have structure, a process, and an audience and I've been working with other folks who want to teach, but don't have an audience yet. So I maintain my technical expertise by just asking a lot of questions. It's pretty great because I have a personal tutor to learn some of the most interesting technologies. Andy Weiss (Fuschia at Goog…
While it's great you're sharing your success and formula one must consider market saturation. Once that point is reached there may not be enough underserved demand to support similar gains for others. Edit: you're not your
We're sort of the inverse of Web Development (programming) fatigue. We'll run out of products when developers stop creating new web frameworks (and programming languages and platforms and and)
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I don't think it's unreasonable that for many people, a publisher with experience and an existing distribution network & agreements, perceived authority as a "real" publisher, and a marketing budget and plan will result in 10x the sales. I've had a friend self publish in another industry and getting books shipped around the world and in stores is a hassle as a lone operator - and that's if people even know you exist.…
>perceived authority as a "real" publisher, With certain professional books publishing with a known publisher definitely gives the book a certain "gravitas" (deserved or not) that it may not have if you independently publish. And if you're mostly writing a book to burnish your professional reputation (as is often the case) rather than to make money, that may be a pretty good tradeoff even if you could have made more…
I did a lot of the editing myself, my writing is fine, but my feedback was mostly typos/grammar/phrasing - not a coherent look at the overall structure and content which a more experienced editor may do.
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Content is easy to get for publishers, and they have to often invest significant time and money to get the book to market. They often take a risk on printing X copies, and they don't sell, the publisher eats the cost. You can say to just print on demand, but that is costlier per book. They often have to provide editors to clean up the book, do marketing through their channels, and promote the book. Most authors don't…
We both seem to have direct experience of working with a publisher, but I think you are overstating the effort of most publishers these days. Too many books, even from reputable publishers, are of fairly low quality, which as a reader bothers me even more than stuff like this: https://www.flickr.com/photos/markos/49564386913/in/datepost... Also, I don't see why them taking on a risk of printing upfront should be offl…
If an author wants access to the distribution network of a certain publisher, they must pay.
Ever wonder why the biggest authors don’t simply run their own publishing houses? They understand the value provided. And they rarely if ever reach 50% in royalties (I’ve never heard it, in many decades of following professional writing).
What I do find is authors generally have no idea of the value provided. In which case they’re welcome to self publish. But self-publishing rarely results in great sales either.
Both avenues have pros and cons. That said, I’d likely still choose a publisher, since my time is also important, and I’d prefer not having to be average in a dozen skills when I can invest effort at being much better at a few.
for those interested in other examples I studied a bunch of them and compiled them into this list for my own book launch https://github.com/sw-yx/launch-cheatsheet I'll be adding this one naturally
Very cool resource. Have you thought about adding the scale of the author's following and/or social media presence? For example, this story's author has 21,000 followers on Twitter, and a successful blog. Another example is 200k in sales https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23502770 where the self-publishing author admitted that practically all sales were due to 35,000 Twitter followers. Have you come across an examp…
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> Strong promotion: ... collecting emails - launching to an email list of 10k-100k+ One thing I've often wondered about this: who are all these people posting their email addresses everywhere? Even if I'm reading a blog post I'm so interested in that I'd like to read more later, I would never dream of putting my address in one of those "sign up for more" popups. I know many will comment that it's offensive that they…
Email fatigue comes from self-serving emails. When you get value from an email, it isn't a burden. Context: We have 100k folks on our list, and our typical open rate is 25%. Almost all are web developers. I think the key thing required to maintain this is to give value. I'll spend hours personally writing high-quality email tutorials. My friends and family are subscribers and so I treat each email as such. I feel an…
These numbers are possible and repeatable. I've made over $100k on software books at least 7 separate times [1]. If you're going to try to do this, the key idea is to build an audience e.g. an email list. You need to budget 50% of your time to writing the book and 50% of your time to blogging/promoting the content. There's basically three key aspects to making $100k on a programming book: 1. Market - is the topic bro…
Or is it more just for paid offers whenever you have one? Or both?
I feel like content strategies are a double edged sword. Sure you could have YouTube, Twitter, email, and a blog but then what time do you have left to work on product?
Anyway thanks for the info
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You mentioned publishers leave you with 10% of the sales. I can't wrap my head around that, how is that possible and acceptable by authors?
I've gone the traditional publishing route with three books so far. Making money wasn't the goal. A traditional publisher organized a technical review, editorial review, cover design, type setting and project management for me; the result was better than I could have done on my own. Sure, I could have hired an editor and a cover designer and all that, but would have been exhausting and a financial risk. So, I went wi…