Adventures in Self Publishing
petekeen.net
Adventures in Self Publishing
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Re: Adventures in Self Publishing
#2The second biggest driver was a link in Ruby Weekly. [..] Not to mention, the amount of money I would get from direct sales is vastly more than I would get from the same number of sales if I were getting royalties.
I'm always happy to link to good stuff, but I must admit, if I'm not making any money out of it, I never push anything particularly hard.
This makes me wonder if I partnered with or acted as a publisher to indie writers like this, I could quite easily offer a 50-75% "royalty" yet push it more frequently and heavily to my audience and everyone wins. Indeed, I believe this is what Pragmatic Bookshelf does when it takes on previously written indie books(?)
Re: Adventures in Self Publishing
#3The second biggest driver was a link in Ruby Weekly. [..] Not to mention, the amount of money I would get from direct sales is vastly more than I would get from the same number of sales if I were getting royalties. I'm always happy to link to good stuff, but I must admit, if I'm not making any money out of it, I never push anything particularly hard. This makes me wonder if I partnered with or acted as a publisher to…
That sounds kind of like an affiliate program. I bet you could make it work with the kind of niche audiences you've got.
Re: Adventures in Self Publishing
#4A writer pointed out to me that writing a book is very similar to building a tech startup. The hours are long, it's critical to build a strong platform and there are the same swings from despair to elation.
Additional data points are always very much appreciated and it's very good of the author to release his tools and methods for others to learn from. Of course, the $5k in 2 weeks doesn't account for the time it took him to write the book or the opportunity cost of not taking other work, so this still might not have been a financially worthwhile venture, but hopefully it will keep selling and he'll publish more about it.
Re: Adventures in Self Publishing
#5The second biggest driver was a link in Ruby Weekly. [..] Not to mention, the amount of money I would get from direct sales is vastly more than I would get from the same number of sales if I were getting royalties. I'm always happy to link to good stuff, but I must admit, if I'm not making any money out of it, I never push anything particularly hard. This makes me wonder if I partnered with or acted as a publisher to…
That sounds kind of like an affiliate program. I bet you could make it work with the kind of niche audiences you've got.
Sort of. I've done affiliate stuff before but I don't like the vibe it gives off. Selling the products directly in a more publisher-esque way feels more honest, although I'm not entirely sure why.
Re: Adventures in Self Publishing
#6A writer pointed out to me that writing a book is very similar to building a tech startup. The hours are long, it's critical to build a strong platform and there are the same swings from despair to elation. Additional data points are always very much appreciated and it's very good of the author to release his tools and methods for others to learn from. Of course, the $5k in 2 weeks doesn't account for the time it too…
Yeah, definitely the $5k in two weeks doesn't include the development time. I figure I broke even on the writing when it hit $7k, but it's definitely not any kind of substitute for a full time salary.
Re: Adventures in Self Publishing
#7The second biggest driver was a link in Ruby Weekly. [..] Not to mention, the amount of money I would get from direct sales is vastly more than I would get from the same number of sales if I were getting royalties. I'm always happy to link to good stuff, but I must admit, if I'm not making any money out of it, I never push anything particularly hard. This makes me wonder if I partnered with or acted as a publisher to…
You could probably do quite well with it, as long as you take great care to ensure it is quality stuff that reflects well on your brand.
Given the amount of traffic I'm getting for even my rather esoteric compiler articles from your sites (including a steady trickle of visitors still coming from your Ruby Inside article a couple of years ago), you must be delivering quite substantial traffic to more "mainstream" Ruby related sites.
Re: Adventures in Self Publishing
#8hmmm,
2 weeks => 8 work hrs. per day. 5000$:80hrs. = 62,50$
1 $ = 0,7592$ = 47,4479€ = 47,45€ ---------------- total: 3796€ in two weeks.
50€ per hr. is a german student designer/programmer (first uni year) price. nothing special. the most work for 70-120,00€ p. hour.
Re: Adventures in Self Publishing
#9hmmm, 2 weeks => 8 work hrs. per day. 5000$:80hrs. = 62,50$ 1 $ = 0,7592$ = 47,4479€ = 47,45€ ---------------- total: 3796€ in two weeks. 50€ per hr. is a german student designer/programmer (first uni year) price. nothing special. the most work for 70-120,00€ p. hour.
it would be much more productive to discuss the merits of the article and the author's efforts rather than trying to look smart.
Re: Adventures in Self Publishing
#10hmmm, 2 weeks => 8 work hrs. per day. 5000$:80hrs. = 62,50$ 1 $ = 0,7592$ = 47,4479€ = 47,45€ ---------------- total: 3796€ in two weeks. 50€ per hr. is a german student designer/programmer (first uni year) price. nothing special. the most work for 70-120,00€ p. hour.
Yes. However, that $5000 was at a point where I wasn't actually actively working on the product itself. The total is nearly $9k at this point, but assuming I put in 140 hours of work that comes out to roughly the same per hour amount. Like I said above, this is definitely not a full time thing yet.