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I sold 640 copies of my book in one year

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Re: I sold 640 copies of my book in one year

#61

Post by strzibny »

munificent wrote: post #59
philipkiely wrote: post #58

I always love transparency like this from authors, thanks for sharing! This line resonated way too much with me: "Initially, I thought five months might be enough for me to write it, but the scope quickly grew, and the progress was slow." Somehow, even though I've been writing for years now, I consistently underestimate the scope and time commitment of every writing project, even after attempting to adjust for my ten…

My first book took me four years. That was too long, so with my second book, I aimed to get it done in two years. It took me six, instead. Estimation is hard.

Oh, no. I guess that's how it is in the end :)

Re: I sold 640 copies of my book in one year

#62

Post by strzibny »

kylegalbraith wrote: post #50

Well done and thanks for sharing your experience. Having written my own book a few years ago I can truly say job well done and congrats on a huge milestone. It's no small feat. As you hint in the blog post, writing a book is a full time job to get it done and also requires working a second full time job to pump up the marketing around it. Then, once it's out in the world, comes the job of maintaining it and keeping t…

Thanks a lot man!

Re: I sold 640 copies of my book in one year

#63

Post by strzibny »

farmin wrote: post #3

It looks really useful to me. I am someone that deploys projects to $10 VPS using digital ocean guides for some minimum security setups. Never had a problem. I'd probably buy this if and when it is offered as paper. I don't really like to read on a screen.

Thanks, I might do it for a revision in the future.

Re: I sold 640 copies of my book in one year

#64

Post by behnamoh »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #28
nonrandomstring wrote: post #11

Well done. That's a respectable number of sales for your first year! The economics of self publishing is interesting. When I think back on my first book I count at least 5 years research that enabled me to be able to write it, 3 years writing it and then many years selling the thing around industry. By a pessimistic account I was about £500k down :) Like you, the first year I sold about 500. Unlike online fulfilment…

> In fact I'd say that academics these days never have time for writing and that most other successful authors I know are independent. That’s a weird thing to say, academic careers revolve around writing. On the other hand, their output isn’t in book form nor aimed at more general audiences. They do author some books sometimes, but maybe more like textbooks. There is a lot of “write what will sell” thought that goes…

> I enjoy academic papers more, but even in a highly rated conference proceedings, you have to watch out for academic clickbait.

Many ML papers are actually clickbait. If not, they're mostly suffering from robustness checks. See the ML section here:

https://medium.com/@parttimeben/how-not-to-read-scientific-p...

Re: I sold 640 copies of my book in one year

#65

Post by strzibny »

pkrumins wrote: post #51
strzibny wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's crazy good! But would be better if you also submit a story how you came to create and market it.

I simply wrote several blog posts and turned them into a pdf book. My blog has 100,000 subscribers. I didn’t have to do anything else.

Okay, that explains it completely. I haven't have an audience when I started.

Re: I sold 640 copies of my book in one year

#66

Post by Surgeus »

philipkiely wrote: post #58

I always love transparency like this from authors, thanks for sharing! This line resonated way too much with me: "Initially, I thought five months might be enough for me to write it, but the scope quickly grew, and the progress was slow." Somehow, even though I've been writing for years now, I consistently underestimate the scope and time commitment of every writing project, even after attempting to adjust for my ten…

[dead]

Re: I sold 640 copies of my book in one year

#67

Post by strzibny »

mprovost wrote: post #60
strzibny wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The net profit is dependent on me paying taxes, social security, and insurance. Since I also program it's hard to say exactly how much net it is. Gumroad fees are explained on their site[0]. There were no ad costs. If I should pay my time as a business, it would be a loss. [0] https://gumroad.com/pricing

I deliberately haven't been tracking my time spent writing my book because it would be super depressing to see an hourly rate less than minimum wage. But without knowing that number it's still super exciting to get an email saying I sold a copy, and to see a payment arrive every month. It's like free money!

Yep, same here. I mean maybe you don't do it again, but doing it once has a lot of benefits beyond money.

Re: I sold 640 copies of my book in one year

#68

Post by sb8244 »

markwisde wrote: post #15

I sold around 300 in my first year (which ended recently), which is much less than the other book I wrote via my publisher. Yet, even though it is sold at a lesser price, my self-published book made almost more money. This is essentially because the percentage I make on every sales with my publisher is really low (10%). So for my next book, I'll self publish as well. (the book btw https://securityhandbook.io/ )

Pragmatic may be worth exploring. The 50% cut is really high compared to rest of publishers, and I believe that 80% of my sales came from their reputation and marketing.

Re: I sold 640 copies of my book in one year

#69

Post by nonrandomstring »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #28
nonrandomstring wrote: post #11

Well done. That's a respectable number of sales for your first year! The economics of self publishing is interesting. When I think back on my first book I count at least 5 years research that enabled me to be able to write it, 3 years writing it and then many years selling the thing around industry. By a pessimistic account I was about £500k down :) Like you, the first year I sold about 500. Unlike online fulfilment…

> In fact I'd say that academics these days never have time for writing and that most other successful authors I know are independent. That’s a weird thing to say, academic careers revolve around writing. On the other hand, their output isn’t in book form nor aimed at more general audiences. They do author some books sometimes, but maybe more like textbooks. There is a lot of “write what will sell” thought that goes…

> academic clickbait.

I like that term, it's quite astute. Yes, there's definitely topics that have no longevity like "Y2K survival guide" or things tied to specific hardware. But it's hard to tell. Occam and the Transputer seemed like the future once... and who knows... we studied it at university under "concurrency and parallelism" in the 80s, but then I never heard of it again until last week, it just came to mind because I saw an article about doing it with Raspberry-Pis. Likely a dozen books on "Living in the Metaverse" are being funded right now, and will be doorstops and firelighters in no time. Btw, I say academics don't have time to write because they're overwhelmed with pointless admin.

Re: I sold 640 copies of my book in one year

#70

Post by mprovost »

strzibny wrote: post #67
mprovost wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I deliberately haven't been tracking my time spent writing my book because it would be super depressing to see an hourly rate less than minimum wage. But without knowing that number it's still super exciting to get an email saying I sold a copy, and to see a payment arrive every month. It's like free money!

Yep, same here. I mean maybe you don't do it again, but doing it once has a lot of benefits beyond money.

Maybe it's like giving birth and you forget how painful it is after a few years...
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