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4 Months Of eBook Sales

jstorimer.com

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Re: 4 Months Of eBook Sales

#11

Post by smackfu »

vijayr wrote: post #3

This is a nice summary. Just out of curiosity - why do ebooks cost so much? (I am talking in general, not with respect to this particular book). Of course, the value of the content is high etc etc - but wouldn't pricing ebooks less make more people buy them? A $30 ebook is much more expensive, especially if you are not in US/Europe (if you are in Asia, Africa etc), than a $9 ebook, wouldn't the volume make up for the…

There are a few "indie" authors now selling Kindle books for a buck or two and selling hundreds of thousands of copies. For instance, Hugh Howey and Amanda Hocking.

Re: 4 Months Of eBook Sales

#12

Post by flyosity »

Great article, and I'm glad other people are doing well writing and selling articles/ebooks/books on their own. I sell iPhone interface design/development tutorials and they've done really well, coming close to making a livable full-time income last year for myself even though I have a full-time job and sell them on the side. Writing and selling technical ebooks is like the secret money-making sauce that few know about :)

Re: 4 Months Of eBook Sales

#13

Post by mustafa0x »

seanmalarkey wrote: post #9
vijayr wrote: post #3

This is a nice summary. Just out of curiosity - why do ebooks cost so much? (I am talking in general, not with respect to this particular book). Of course, the value of the content is high etc etc - but wouldn't pricing ebooks less make more people buy them? A $30 ebook is much more expensive, especially if you are not in US/Europe (if you are in Asia, Africa etc), than a $9 ebook, wouldn't the volume make up for the…

Why does college cost so much?

I'm not sure if this whether you're being serious or not. If you aren't, than could you please explain the relation between ebooks and college? I see the knowledge-is-pricey relation, but I find it weak. Writing a book and building a school, hiring staff, etc. is not a strong comparison.

If you were being serious, than the reason college is costly is because everything that goes into me being able to attend a college costs money.

Re: 4 Months Of eBook Sales

#14

Post by jstorimer »

mustafa0x wrote: post #10

Congratulations on the success of your ebook. Also, thank you for your words of inspiration, that's quite thoughtful. Could you detail the technical side of writing? I.e. what tools were used in getting this done?

I'll publish another post detailing my toolchain, but here's the overview.

I wrote the book using Markdown and styled the PDF with CSS using PrinceXML. The kitabu framework (http://github.com/jstorimer/kitabu) held it all together and automated the translation to different formats.

In the beginning I had to dive into the different formats to get them all working as I wanted but now I've got that automated.

Re: 4 Months Of eBook Sales

#15

Post by smackfu »

Wow, Amazon really wants Kindle books priced at under $10. If you self-publish, you either choose a 35% royalty rate and have few restrictsions, or you choose a 70% royalty rate and have to keep it under $10 price.

For someone with a $25+ book, it ends up making very little sense to list it on Amazon at all. You are probably making at least $20 on the downloadable copy, while the Kindle one would net you $8.75 at the 35% rate.

Re: 4 Months Of eBook Sales

#16

Post by Anirak »

jstorimer wrote: post #14
mustafa0x wrote: post #10

Congratulations on the success of your ebook. Also, thank you for your words of inspiration, that's quite thoughtful. Could you detail the technical side of writing? I.e. what tools were used in getting this done?

I'll publish another post detailing my toolchain, but here's the overview. I wrote the book using Markdown and styled the PDF with CSS using PrinceXML. The kitabu framework ( http://github.com/jstorimer/kitabu ) held it all together and automated the translation to different formats. In the beginning I had to dive into the different formats to get them all working as I wanted but now I've got that automated.

Could you explain what the "fake sales page" was, and how it helped motivate you? How long did your book end up being, by the way?

Re: 4 Months Of eBook Sales

#17

Post by ryanaAM »

jstorimer wrote: post #8
vijayr wrote: post #3

This is a nice summary. Just out of curiosity - why do ebooks cost so much? (I am talking in general, not with respect to this particular book). Of course, the value of the content is high etc etc - but wouldn't pricing ebooks less make more people buy them? A $30 ebook is much more expensive, especially if you are not in US/Europe (if you are in Asia, Africa etc), than a $9 ebook, wouldn't the volume make up for the…

There are many ways to do pricing and I won't pretend that my method was scientific. Lowering the price of the book may (or may not) have increased revenue. I priced the book this way because I felt it was fair value for the content. These two articles on pricing nicely highlight some reasoning behind low vs. high: http://blog.asmartbear.com/perfect-pricing.html and http://blog.asmartbear.com/higher-pricing.html .

Those are really great articles. The classic Camels and Rubber Duckies is still relevant as well though with less practical advice: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/CamelsandRubberDuckie...

Re: 4 Months Of eBook Sales

#18

Post by sparknlaunch12 »

Congrats and thanks for sharing! Fantastic result.

In terms if your starting point, how many followers/readers/subscribers did you have? How much of a reputation did you have in your field of knowledge?

Your test sales page is a great method of testing your concept. What was on this page? Where was it hosted? How many people fed back?

Did you pay for your twitter advertising? Or was it simply related tweets?

Re: 4 Months Of eBook Sales

#19

Post by jstorimer »

sparknlaunch12 wrote: post #18

Congrats and thanks for sharing! Fantastic result. In terms if your starting point, how many followers/readers/subscribers did you have? How much of a reputation did you have in your field of knowledge? Your test sales page is a great method of testing your concept. What was on this page? Where was it hosted? How many people fed back? Did you pay for your twitter advertising? Or was it simply related tweets?

Thanks for reading.

I had I kept the 'fake' sales page as simple as possible. It was static HTML (written with slim-lang) and pushed to heroku (free hosting). I spent $100 on Adwords to get traffic. That bought ~300 visits which led to ~15 people clicking my 'Buy' button. The page wasn't all that different from what I have now, list the benefits of the product, what buyers can expect, etc.

I didn't pay for Twitter ads. In the beginning people retweeted my announcement. Later on readers of the book would share the link to their followers.

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