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Short version: never published but built two PhD PDFs directly and helped friends do so. Use LaTeX. Long answer: I've researched this for my own publishing dre

Short version: never published but built two PhD PDFs directly and helped friends do so. Use LaTeX. Long answer: I've researched this for my own publishing dreams a while back. When you have a PDF you're happy with (again, LaTeX is your friend), you can use any one of several digital sales routes. If you're planning (hoping) to publish in print, use a service that also generates the ISBN for you. From memory, Amazon does this automatically and LuLu provides it as an extra for-pay function. Also consider self-hosting the download. Briefly: set up a secure area on a website that people are granted access to after they pay. The download is protected that way, plus you can use this to provide errata and build a private community around the book (e.g. using a forum). One thing that will annoy you and may become a serious cost: people pay, download the PDF, and then reverse the charge under your money back policy (and yes you're likely to need one). From reports I read, this is a bigger problem for expensive ebooks (like $100) not your price point. Still... Build a blog dedicated to the book. Post interesting relevant articles so you get links and establish yourself as an authority. It's also one heck of a lead gen channel. Good luck!

ErrantX 17y ago
Thanks. I've been looking into LaTeX - so far everything is in .txt format (in a mercurial repository :)) so conversion should be fairly easy though I've avoided it so far. Im very tempted to self host. The technical side of things is easy enough for me to put together and, on reflection, I much prefer to control that side of things. The only downside I can think of is that you don't have an "instant market" compared to publishing on Lulu, Amazon etc. > people pay, download the PDF, and then reverse the charge under your money back policy I've decided not to let it worry me much because the book is hardly going to be a massive revenue stream (it's as much about getting my name out there as a serious author! :D) (thanks for the tips)
- pierrefar 17y ago
  +1 for text files. The number of people I know that have had horrible experiences with using just text in Word is frightening. For LaTeX, I preached about it in a recent thread that has tons of suggestions: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1173438 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1173438 . With Amazon publishing, you also get automatic listing in their catalogue IIRC. Perhaps you can use them and self-host? Have you thought about DRM? I'm not saying do it (on the contrary), but prodding you to see if you've made a concious decision.
  - ErrantX 17y ago
    > Have you thought about DRM? Yeh off hand; and I decided against it. Partly for "moral" reasons but also because there doesn't seem much point/use to me. Thanks for the link; trawling through all that info now :D
- frossie 17y ago
  The reason listing on Amazon etc. is that you can built a review rating that most people will trust. When I see something self-hosted and trumpeting its own positive reviews, unless they are by somebody I know of, I will wonder what the negative aspects are. If you want to build a community etc. through self-hosting, why don't you do both? (Unless the Amazon TOS forbid it, which I can't imagine).

ErrantX 17y ago

Thanks. I've been looking into LaTeX - so far everything is in .txt format (in a mercurial repository :)) so conversion should be fairly easy though I've avoided it so far. Im very tempted to self host. The technical side of things is easy enough for me to put together and, on reflection, I much prefer to control that side of things. The only downside I can think of is that you don't have an "instant market" compared to publishing on Lulu, Amazon etc. > people pay, download the PDF, and then reverse the charge under your money back policy I've decided not to let it worry me much because the book is hardly going to be a massive revenue stream (it's as much about getting my name out there as a serious author! :D) (thanks for the tips)

pierrefar 17y ago
+1 for text files. The number of people I know that have had horrible experiences with using just text in Word is frightening. For LaTeX, I preached about it in a recent thread that has tons of suggestions: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1173438 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1173438 . With Amazon publishing, you also get automatic listing in their catalogue IIRC. Perhaps you can use them and self-host? Have you thought about DRM? I'm not saying do it (on the contrary), but prodding you to see if you've made a concious decision.
- ErrantX 17y ago
  > Have you thought about DRM? Yeh off hand; and I decided against it. Partly for "moral" reasons but also because there doesn't seem much point/use to me. Thanks for the link; trawling through all that info now :D
frossie 17y ago
The reason listing on Amazon etc. is that you can built a review rating that most people will trust. When I see something self-hosted and trumpeting its own positive reviews, unless they are by somebody I know of, I will wonder what the negative aspects are. If you want to build a community etc. through self-hosting, why don't you do both? (Unless the Amazon TOS forbid it, which I can't imagine).