An old friend wrote a book on Cisco technology. He said it was a great experience, and helped his non-writing career along, but unlike a startup you shouldn't plan on a financial return on the investment.
Adventures in Self Publishing
41–50 of 58 posts
Re: Adventures in Self Publishing
#42For my technical book, I was getting frustrated with the page breaks
interrupting the code sections in weird places.
There's a bit of a hack you can do to create a continuous single-page PDF if you're generating your book from html/css:
@page {
size: 216mm 17600mm;
}
It's dirty, but it works!
Derek Sivers said this about it when I sent him a copy:
"I love that continuous-page PDF format. Never seen that before, but it's so much handier than artificial pages."
For my upcoming book, I'm releasing both a page-breaks and a continuous version of the PDF.
http://devopsu.com/books/taste-test-puppet-chef-salt-stack-a...
The continuous PDF doesn't work well in some PDF readers, so unfortunately I have to also provide a version with page breaks.
## Full Setup
For the curious, here's the rest of my setup:
I'm using Jekyll so I can just do everything in markdown/html/css. It uses pygments for the syntax highlighting and I'm using my own customized syntax coloring styles. Then I use PrinceXML for generating the pdf.
It makes for a nice workflow...
First I start the jekyll server with the --watch flag so it will auto-recompile the html:
jekyll serve --watch
prince http://0.0.0.0:4000/breaks-no.html -o breaks-no.pdf
fswatch dir_to_watch_for_changes "prince http://0.0.0.0:4000/breaks-no.html -o breaks-no.pdf"
I tried several other pdf generation utilities, but none came close to the quality and consistency of PrinceXML.
The pro license for the server version of PrinceXML is pricey - $495 ( http://www.princexml.com/purchase/ ). So, I'm only using the pro version for development and for the final versions, I'll be using their SaaS product which is only $15/mo: http://docraptor.com/plans
Anyway, that's the process so far!
## Book Launch Tomorrow
Manage servers? One of the biggest wins for making your systems more awesome is to use a configuration management tool like Puppet, Chef, Salt, or Ansible.
If you want to make sure your systems are fast, scalable, and secure, the first step is having full control and power over them.
Tomorrow, Sept 4th, I'm launching my book "Taste Test: Puppet, Chef, Salt, Ansible" which is designed to save you the days or weeks of research when picking one of these tools.
In the book, I implement an identical project with each tool so you can see what each one is like to work with. You may be surprised at which ones were super easy and which ones were really difficult to work with.
To get a discount for the book release, just sign up on the mailing list: http://devopsu.com/books/taste-test-puppet-chef-salt-stack-a...
Re: Adventures in Self Publishing
#43That's fantastic! Good job executing and congratulations on the success! It's well deserved.
Thanks for being so open with the numbers. That same openness is what got me to start over a year ago. Glad I could serve as an inspiration as well.
For those making revenue/hours comparisons: Yes, a book will often make less money then consulting in the short term.
If you always focus on the next week or month then you won't be able to move beyond those consulting numbers.
Real success requires long-term thinking. Pete has started something that—at a minimum—will allow him to significantly increase a consulting rate. But more likely he can turn the beginnings of his list and book into screencasts, speaking engagements, more books, etc.
High quality instruction is always in demand. Given enough time and work you can make $250k+ a year doing it.
Re: Adventures in Self Publishing
#44For my technical book, I was getting frustrated with the page breaks interrupting the code sections in weird places. There's a bit of a hack you can do to create a continuous single-page PDF if you're generating your book from html/css: @page { size: 216mm 17600mm; } That tells the PDF printer to make the page 8.5 inches wide and really really long. It's dirty, but it works! Derek Sivers said this about it when I sen…
I hadn't ever thought about a continuous PDF, that's a good idea, and should be a snap with Docverter.
Looks like a good book, good luck on your launch!
Re: Adventures in Self Publishing
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I think "affiliates" may have a bad vibe, but you could message it in a way that wouldn't. I know Gumroad is coming out with some functionality along those lines and they call it "tastemakers" or something similar.
I bet you could significantly increase your revenue by working directly with authors—though if you try to republish their books it would be more work for them.
Just work with one author a month, whose book you have carefully vetted, and promote it to your lists for a commission.
Re: Adventures in Self Publishing
#46That's pretty impressive. I wrote one of the better selling Ruby books on Amazon and it would take over a year to make 5k for sure.
That's why self-publishing is awesome. Control of pricing and owning the customer list can make a huge difference.
Re: Adventures in Self Publishing
#47That's pretty impressive. I wrote one of the better selling Ruby books on Amazon and it would take over a year to make 5k for sure.
That's why self-publishing is awesome. Control of pricing and owning the customer list can make a huge difference.
Yeah I agree. Exposure though is the issue, you'd presumably have to do a lot of self promotion otherwise. Or maybe posting to HN and reddit is enough. Not sure.
Re: Adventures in Self Publishing
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's why self-publishing is awesome. Control of pricing and owning the customer list can make a huge difference.
Yeah I agree. Exposure though is the issue, you'd presumably have to do a lot of self promotion otherwise. Or maybe posting to HN and reddit is enough. Not sure.
Did Amazon really give you that much exposure? I haven't sold on there, but my friends who have drove the entire audience. They didn't get a lot of sales from Amazon directly.
Re: Adventures in Self Publishing
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah I agree. Exposure though is the issue, you'd presumably have to do a lot of self promotion otherwise. Or maybe posting to HN and reddit is enough. Not sure.
Did Amazon really give you that much exposure? I haven't sold on there, but my friends who have drove the entire audience. They didn't get a lot of sales from Amazon directly.
I think it has yeah. I haven't driven any traffic there, nor have I promoted the book much at all and it moved up the charts to where it's generally in the top 5 books in it's category, sometimes higher.
Over time it seems to be selling more and more. The first month was pretty slow in sales though.
Re: Adventures in Self Publishing
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Would you mind telling us how long it took you to write? The impression I get is that people routinely underestimate how long good writing takes by orders of magnitude. Thanks again for publishing this.
Having written a Ruby book I would definitely agree, even though my book was very modest in size it took an order of magnitude more work than I had expected. Coming up with code examples, editing, creating a book cover, not to mention how grueling it can be to write especially after a long day of coding.