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By the way, another way to get financial support for an open source project is to sell a short tutorial book. For example, the creator of Laravel did this on Le
by peterarmstrong 10y ago
By the way, another way to get financial support for an open source project is to sell a short tutorial book. For example, the creator of Laravel did this on Leanpub (disclosure: I'm a co-founder of Leanpub) and did pretty well: https://leanpub.com/laravel https://leanpub.com/laravel is #7 in lifetime earnings on Leanpub. (Also, one of the core contributors on Laravel has done even better: https://leanpub.com/codebright https://leanpub.com/codebright is #2 in lifetime earnings on Leanpub.) Similarly, the creator of Trailblazer is doing pretty well recently with his Leanpub book: https://leanpub.com/trailblazer https://leanpub.com/trailblazer is #9 in revenue over the past week.
Anyway, my point is that even if you're in a niche, if you are the clear expert in that niche (say if you created the framework, or in your case, the software), then a book may be one worthwhile component of a monetization strategy. If you can sell a $30 book to 4000 people, you can earn some decent money. (The royalties on a $30 book on Leanpub are $26.50, so multiplying by 4000 results in over $100K.)
- ianai 10y agoEven more if you can tie it in with enough topics for a textbook.
- peterarmstrong 10y agoHopefully one day textbook prices can return to a sane level, say between $30 and $80. Today's textbook racket (I don't want to call it a market) is obscene.
- teddyh 10y ago“Given that writing good English is a rare skill among programmers, we can ill afford to lose manuals this way.” https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-doc.en.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-doc.en.html