4 Months Of eBook Sales • Hacker News Board

Re: 4 Months Of eBook Sales

#31

Post by rytis » Fri, Apr 20, 2012, 3:02 PM UTC

Congrats, very well done!!

Unfortunately I went down the standard route - publisher, Amazon, the lot... I had really great experience in dealing with the publisher, and I learned a whole lot of new stuff about publishing, etc, etc. But this is where good experience stops:

Absolutely no exposure into sales figures. I've no idea what's going on - only getting quarterly reports, but they, well... bit dry and lacking information.

Hard to influence the sales. Everyone's saying that the book publishing adventure doesn't stop when the book is out, but given the share from the sales, I really don't have any incentive to spend a lot of time promoting it.

Looking from this perspective, self-publishing looks quite interesting. Might even try it one day. :))

Re: 4 Months Of eBook Sales

#32

Post by steveplace » Fri, Apr 20, 2012, 3:04 PM UTC

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…

Sometimes you don't want higher volume, because that requires more customer management-- and you get a lot more tire kickers and refunds at lower price points.

Re: 4 Months Of eBook Sales

#33

Post by vaksel » Fri, Apr 20, 2012, 3:04 PM UTC

roel_v wrote: post #29

Would you say that (2.5 months * 30 days per month * 2 hours per day) + 100 (hours of overhead, editing, etc) + (4 months 4 weeks per month * 3 nights per week * 2 hours per night) = 346 hours is a reasonable approximation of the amount of hours you spend on this? (If anything, it's probably grossly underestimating). And of the 17k, is it reasonable to say that you pay 30% in processing fees etc? So that would come o…

well his revenue isn't over...most of that is fixed cost...his variable cost is very little.

So a year from now, that same book will still bring in similar revenues(he just has to keep up with the promos).

Meanwhile he can write 4 more books in that same period, and quadruple his income. The next year he can write 5 more, and a year after that he can write another 4.

And altogether they'll make the same income...especially if he builds a reputation for writing good guides, and will begin marketing to his existing customers("hey, if you liked my book on Unix...you'll love my book on Linux")

And so many books are written, because people are hoping to strike it rich. To be the next Harry Potter writer. Same with startups...the stats show that 90% of them fail...but people are still doing it hoping to make billions.

Re: 4 Months Of eBook Sales

#34

Post by steveplace » Fri, Apr 20, 2012, 3:05 PM UTC

jstorimer wrote: post #19

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 ad…

Why not consider capturing emails with those landing pages initially? That way you have a list of qualified leads who are ready to buy the product.

Re: 4 Months Of eBook Sales

#35

Post by sparknlaunch12 » Fri, Apr 20, 2012, 3:05 PM UTC

jstorimer wrote: post #28

sparknlaunch12 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks again for sharing. Would you say the "niche factor" made it easier to attract traffic, buyers and followers? Roughly how many paid full price versus discount? How powerful was discounting in bringing in more sales?

re: the "niche" factor, what do you mean? The fact that the target audience was a subset of programmers? I don't know exact sales volume for the discounted days but as you can see those days brought in the most revenue, so it was certainly powerful.

Re niche. Yes, do you think the whole sales/marketing process was easier because your target market are quite narrow (ruby, UNIX, programming)?

Would you have priced differently knowing what you now know about discounting effect?

Re: 4 Months Of eBook Sales

#36

Post by vaksel » Fri, Apr 20, 2012, 3:06 PM UTC

rytis wrote: post #31

Congrats, very well done!! Unfortunately I went down the standard route - publisher, Amazon, the lot... I had really great experience in dealing with the publisher, and I learned a whole lot of new stuff about publishing, etc, etc. But this is where good experience stops: Absolutely no exposure into sales figures. I've no idea what's going on - only getting quarterly reports, but they, well... bit dry and lacking inf…

could you write up a blog post for the author's experience with the publisher(i.e. reports/promos they did, your earnings per book etc).

Re: 4 Months Of eBook Sales

#37

Post by patio11 » Fri, Apr 20, 2012, 3:07 PM UTC

roel_v wrote: post #29

Would you say that (2.5 months * 30 days per month * 2 hours per day) + 100 (hours of overhead, editing, etc) + (4 months 4 weeks per month * 3 nights per week * 2 hours per night) = 346 hours is a reasonable approximation of the amount of hours you spend on this? (If anything, it's probably grossly underestimating). And of the 17k, is it reasonable to say that you pay 30% in processing fees etc? So that would come o…

n.b. When you unbundle it from an app store, processing $30 transactions costs about $1.50 to $3 at the high end (getting screwed by a legacy processor) not $9.

He's doing VASTLY better than e.g. if he had taken that book as a first time author to a technical publisher. For one, the book is actually published: he'd still have months on the timeline at even the most progressive dead tree publishers. For another, at similar sales levels, his ~$5,000 advance would not be "earned out" yet and he could expect his first royalty check the day after never.

With regards to authoring as a commercially viable profession: traditionally, it isn't for the majority of published authors. There do exist folks who make incomes engineers would find reasonable from selling snooks (including technical ebooks). Well, OK, some of them make incomes engineers would find unreasonable, but not for being too low. (Independent authoring, like independenr software development, is 10% about writing and 90% about successful execution of a sells-writing business.)

Re: 4 Months Of eBook Sales

#38

Post by jstorimer » Fri, Apr 20, 2012, 3:14 PM UTC

roel_v wrote: post #29

Would you say that (2.5 months * 30 days per month * 2 hours per day) + 100 (hours of overhead, editing, etc) + (4 months 4 weeks per month * 3 nights per week * 2 hours per night) = 346 hours is a reasonable approximation of the amount of hours you spend on this? (If anything, it's probably grossly underestimating). And of the 17k, is it reasonable to say that you pay 30% in processing fees etc? So that would come o…

346 hours is both an underestimation and an overestimation. I can say that I definitely did not sit down at the keyboard for 346 hours to put this together. But how do you account for time spent thinking about the content, planning, visualizing, etc? What about the fact that most of that time was 'overtime'? ie. over and above my full-time job.

The other perspective here is that this took a lifetime of work. I've been learning about the source material for the past several years. Obviously it wasn't just to write this book, it has many practical applications besides. I've 'practiced' teaching people and writing for years before this, all of that certainly contributed. This quote sums it up nicely: http://www.marketingquoteoftheday.com/pablo-picasso-on-prici....

I don't think it's fair to try to trim down a project like this to an hourly rate because it simply doesn't work like that. I could stop putting time and effort into the project right now and I would still see some money come in, arbitrarily increasing that hourly rate.

Just to drive home this point having a book with my name on it opens up new opportunities. If I were to write another book and spend the exact same amount of time putting it together my 'hourly rate' would probably increase because I now have more people listening to what I have to say and trusting that I will provide something of value. So investing time now into this project is a long-term investment that I may not make back on the sales of this book, if you know what I mean.

I've no idea if it's feasible to write like this for a living. There are lots of people (even in the tech education space) who make a living selling their own products, but typically not just books. Look at people like Marc-Andre Cournoyer or Peter Cooper who have written books but make their living through some combination of teaching mediums (video, webinar, books, training, etc). For many of them their first product was an ebook.

Just to clean things up, this book was written out of love. I felt like I couldn't not write this book once the inspiration came. That being said, there was also a financial motive. I wanted to be compensated for my work, but also wanted other people to place value on the material. Too often free material is considered worthless because there was no exchange made for it. "If you don't give anything you don't get anything", so to speak.

Re: 4 Months Of eBook Sales

#39

Post by hiccup » Fri, Apr 20, 2012, 3:15 PM UTC

roel_v wrote: post #29

Would you say that (2.5 months * 30 days per month * 2 hours per day) + 100 (hours of overhead, editing, etc) + (4 months 4 weeks per month * 3 nights per week * 2 hours per night) = 346 hours is a reasonable approximation of the amount of hours you spend on this? (If anything, it's probably grossly underestimating). And of the 17k, is it reasonable to say that you pay 30% in processing fees etc? So that would come o…

Don't stop at the revenue from the book. There is also the value of credibility from a published technical book.

Having this book as a consultant could justify a high rate for Ruby Unix work. He could gather speaking fees for Ruby and Unix conferences. It could also lead to follow on books from standard publishers.

I would say this revenue could be the start to more.

Re: 4 Months Of eBook Sales

#40

Post by jstorimer » Fri, Apr 20, 2012, 3:15 PM UTC

patio11 wrote: post #37

roel_v wrote: post #29

Would you say that (2.5 months * 30 days per month * 2 hours per day) + 100 (hours of overhead, editing, etc) + (4 months 4 weeks per month * 3 nights per week * 2 hours per night) = 346 hours is a reasonable approximation of the amount of hours you spend on this? (If anything, it's probably grossly underestimating). And of the 17k, is it reasonable to say that you pay 30% in processing fees etc? So that would come o…

n.b. When you unbundle it from an app store, processing $30 transactions costs about $1.50 to $3 at the high end (getting screwed by a legacy processor) not $9. He's doing VASTLY better than e.g. if he had taken that book as a first time author to a technical publisher. For one, the book is actually published: he'd still have months on the timeline at even the most progressive dead tree publishers. For another, at si…

Totally agree about the 10-90 split. I like to think it's more like 25-75 but you drove the point home ;)