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How I Made $70k Self-Publishing a Book about Ruby on Rails

539 points by nateberkopec 10y ago

iplaw 10y ago
Deleted
- nateberkopec 10y ago
  Hi, author here. I don't do that. I think I even mention in the post that I don't bother with vote-ringing on HN because I think HN's algos are pretty sophisticated on this front. Plus, HN hellbans a lot for a lot of reasons, so any type of manipulation is extremely risky. Also, I generally write enough stuff that I don't need any one particular post to succeed, but keeping my domain off any "blacklists" is very important to me. Vote manipulation would be a very, very bad decision for me.
  - munificent 10y ago
    > I don't bother with vote-ringing on HN because I think HN's algos are pretty sophisticated on this front. I think the right answer should be that you don't do vote manipulation because it's deceitful and unethical. Your argument here is basically "because I can't get away with it". :(
    - exolymph 10y ago
      What HN considers "vote-ringing" is posting on Twitter and saying, "Hey friends, can you vote for this?" Not exactly a crime against humanity.
- schneems 10y ago
  Did you read the post? Nate actually mentions not to do this in the post and why.
- cmalpeli 10y ago
  Huh? Nate is one of most genuine, helpful folks in the industry.
deleted 10y ago
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austenallred 10y ago
I think people severely, severely underestimate the amount you can make self-publishing. I blame it on traditional publishing companies and old habits. My mom was a book editor, and the very best authors they published would sell 10,000 books. Their cut was something like $2/book, they'd pull in $20k. So when I decided to write a book on growth hacking (https://www.secretsaucenow.com https://www.secretsaucenow.com), I decided to self-publish. This was more difficult, I had to find an editor and pay them, had to market it myself, etc. Luckily I'm pretty good at the marketing part (hence the book) and I found old contacts of my mom's to edit, but we launched on Kickstarter, so I figured if it flopped I would know in advance. We sold $66,000 on Kickstarter, then went on to sell another $44,000 on Indiegogo while we finished it up. Since then we've sold around $20,000 on gumroad. In total it's something like 2,000 copies (though we charge a lot more per copy than most book publishers do, and that keeps us out of Amazon, etc.) If I had a publishing deal I would make about $5,000 from that. But because I self-published I took home $130,000 minus costs and fees, so we'll conservatively say $100,000. Now I sit back and check gumroad a couple times a day; I average $800 in sales per day, and almost make more from the book than I do from my (well-paying) full-time job. If I can keep this rate up I will replace my salary (or, rather, double it)
- nateberkopec 10y ago
  Congrats. Do you pull anything in from Gumroad Discover? I think I've made ~$4k from them in the last year, which is not a huge part of my sales, but of course more than makes up for the $10/month for Gumroad Premium (or whatever they call it).
  - austenallred 10y ago
    Just checked my stats. 7 sales for an average of around $60/sale (we've been on gumroad for a little over a week). So definitely more than paying for gumroad (not even factoring the time it saves me in integrating a Stripe account with downloads), though I think if someone buys the book and shares that they did Gumroad counts that as a "Gumroad" sale. Whether it is or not is disputable in my mind.
- partycoder 10y ago
apo 10y ago
> I recently removed Google Analytics from my site when I realized it didn't really matter to me. Interesting idea. If your analytics reports don't cause you to change course, there is no reason to collect them in the first place. Still, it's hard to believe that analytics add zero value to an aspiring self-publisher. What about simple things, such as knowing which posts get the most traction, and so may be more likely to appeal to someone buying a book or course. That information can be quite counterintuitive.
- nateberkopec 10y ago
  I think if I actually paid for advertising, it would make sense. But since I don't spend money advertising, and I'm going to write about what I'm going to write about regardless of 10k visitors or 70k, I don't see the value. Also, programmers are privacy-sensitive. I think people like looking at their Ghostery icon on my site and seeing nothing is being blocked.
- IanCal 10y ago
  Basic information is easy to grab from your server logs. Unless you're doing much more detailed stuff (journeys through the site, in-page interaction, etc) then you may not really need google analytics. You can probably do a lot more with just logs than I expect, but the most basic thing that a lot of people want (basically just a hit counter) is easy enough to get. I've been having success playing with http://goaccess.io/ http://goaccess.io/ recently. Not doing much with it (partly as nobody is really visiting my site and there's not yet much real content up :)) but it seems good and doesn't require you to change what you're doing.
  - manarth 10y ago
    Basic information is easy to grab from your server logs. Unless caching. That's a good reason to move to frontend-based analytics like GA.
Delmania 10y ago
Articles like this depress me. I know that if I want to achieve financial independence, I am going to need to start a business, which involves activities like this. (I should also get involved in real estate). However, when I sit down to think about this, I realize how untechnical I am, get depressed, and then move on..
- nateberkopec 10y ago
  I was that person for fucking years. After my Shark Tank appearance I went into a period of minor depression and didn't really try my hand at entrepreneurship until this project, which was almost 7 years later. All I can give for advice is to build a snowball - start as small as possible, and work on it consistently. Eventually the success will come.
  - 55555 10y ago
    Thanks for that honesty. Whenever people see successful people they tend to think they were always as successful.
    - nateberkopec 10y ago
      Yup. You can see it in the replies to Austen's results. "Your results aren't typical","did you have a following before", etc. I've been in their shoes, so I know now it was all just excuses, not tactical questions.
  - otterpro 10y ago
    I just watched the Shark Tank clip on Youtube and I'm glad you came back to being an entrepreneur, despite the setbacks. Wow, the sharks were brutal, btw.
- justin66 10y ago
  > I should also get involved in real estate You should save that for later. Once you've made your money, you'll need a way to lose it...
jasode 10y ago
>, I launched a _course_ called The Complete Guide to Rails Performance. Since then, I have sold just over 500 copies, for gross revenue of $70,714.20 ($1350/week). (The emphasis on "course" was mine.) It looks like much of the revenue was the full course which means videos and Q&A webinars. I'm not going to say it's clickbait but it's slightly misleading to put "Book" in the article's title since most tech authors including Douglas Crockford, John Resig, etc will not be able to pull $70k in 12 months whether they self-publish or let a traditional publisher like O'Reilly market the book. That said, congratulations on producing content that people want to pay for. Your numbers seem to be better than the author royalties from Pluralsight/Lynda for a single course.
- nateberkopec 10y ago
  Someone above already chimed in with results far better than mine, and they sold just a book (and it's like half the length of mine). So it is definitely possible. Part of the advantage of self-publishing is that you can be sophisticated in your product and not sell "just a book".
  - jasode 10y ago
    >Someone above already chimed in with results far better than mine, and they sold just a book I saw that "Secret Sauce" also had a video package with a Slack channel so it's not clear to me if austenallred was talking about about receiving $124k for "just a book" with no value-added content. >be sophisticated in your product and not sell "just a book". Yes, that makes since. On that note... since you have a year's worth of data, have you determined if the "Slack channel" for the $99 package to be a big factor to encourage purchase?
    - nateberkopec 10y ago
      I don't really have a way to know the Slack channel's value because I don't offer a package without it. But I can say it's been very popular and is still very active a year after launch. The Slack channel was a last-minute afterthought when I was testing the product originally, but I kept it in and advertised it because so many of my testers thought it was a great idea.
ilamont 10y ago
Indie publisher here. Nate did a lot of research to identify the hole that needed to be filled, and then executed on developing his voice, setting up product tiers, spreading the word, etc. I also liked his “posts as prototypes” approach—it’s a great way to develop the ideas, hone creativity, and get feedback prior to releasing a book. Congratulations! However, I would like to offer a word of caution for anyone considering self-publishing. For every selfpub sales success there are hundreds of books that fail to make an impact. U.S. ISBN registrations for self-published books have basically doubled every few years (1) and probably crossed the 1 million mark last year. However, the number of Americans buying books has slowly declined over the past several years, and is probably around 45% of the population (down from over 55% a decade ago). (2) The growth in demand is simply not there to support the explosion of supply, at least in the United States. Niche technical books that are well-written and effectively marketed have greater potential than a poorly edited shape-shifting romance title from an unknown author. On the other hand, technical titles also have to compete with free or low-cost information on the Internet, YouTube, etc., not to mention existing books that dominate the field (something that Nate referenced in his post). Of course, there are other rewards associated with writing books, including personal satisfaction, expanding one’s personal brand, and improving writing and editing skills. But sales are never guaranteed. 1. http://leanmedia.org/number-book-readers-declines-even-self-publishing-skyrockets/ http://leanmedia.org/number-book-readers-declines-even-self-... (Data from Bowker, http://media.bowker.com/documents/bowker-selfpublishing-report2015.pdf http://media.bowker.com/documents/bowker-selfpublishing-repo...) 2. http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/reports/2016/2015-us-book-industry-year-end-review.html http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/reports/2016/2015-us-b...
- bachmeier 10y ago
  > Niche technical books that are well-written and effectively marketed have greater potential than a poorly edited shape-shifting romance title from an unknown author. On the other hand, technical titles also have to compete with free or low-cost information on the Internet, YouTube, etc., not to mention existing books that dominate the field (something that Nate referenced in his post). Something you've left out is "correct pricing". I'm happy to pay $10 or even $15 without much thought for a technical book on a topic of interest. Once the price goes above $15, I put a lot more thought into the decision, and usually don't buy. People are too quick to throw out "$50 for a book that helps you get your work done is nothing". That's true, but $50 is not pocket change, and my expectation is that most books I buy will provide either no value or a little value. In other words, be careful if you start doing calculations of book sales at $40. Sales of books that you think are priced at $50 are driven largely by discounted sales. (I have seen some numbers on this, but don't have the reference, sorry.)
ryandrake 10y ago
> My favorite example of this (from the Ruby community, of course) is Why's Poignant Guide to Ruby. If you're a Rubyist, you already know what this is, but if you're not, it's a legendary tome in the Ruby community. Not sure that's a great example, in my view. I remember when I was learning Ruby, and everyone online was "Read that _why guide it's great!!" It was a mess. I couldn't learn anything from it at all. There was probably good content in there, but the interspersed poorly drawn comics and nonsense asides/tangents made it impossible to follow. Maybe it was great for some people but it did not fit my learning style at all. I expect a vanilla introduction, a clear progression through control structures, data types, keywords, variables, constants, operators, etc. and a concise review at the end of each chapter, structured reference at the end, etc. In other words, a plain vanilla "Pragmatic Programmer" or "O'Reilly" style guide. > Having a unique voice is one of the most important things you can do to make your content stand out in a sea of "blah". It's what will make readers remember you and keep coming back. Agreed that it's memorable though...
- mwpmaybe 10y ago
  > I remember when I was learning Ruby, and everyone online was "Read that _why guide it's great!!" It was a mess. I couldn't learn anything from it at all. I had the same experience (started Rubying in late 2015). I had much more success with RubyMonk, Metaprogramming Ruby 2, and some other "Ruby for Perl hackers" blog posts and such.
ejo0 10y ago
Congrats Nate! Really glad to see you doing well post JudoJobs, forwarding this along to a few people who are into self-publishing technical books. Accounting for taxes on self-publishing just seems to be something you need to be careful about if you are selling via a few different channels like gumroad so you aren't audited.
bphogan 10y ago
This article is full of great advice on how to write a book, whether you publish for yourself or for someone else. I have written 10 books. 9 for the Pragmatic Bookshelf. I've made a nice side income on my books by doing many of the same things he lists. This isn't so much about self-publishing as it is about writing great technical content. Full disclosure - in addition to writing, I am a development editor for the Pragmatic Bookshelf. But I publish my own books with them because they offer the best of both worlds. They split the profits with you 50/50, but you get an editor to work with throughout the process, and they take care of a lot of other things, like distribution, sales, billing, copy-edit, typesetting, etc so you don't have to. But the important thing is to get your message out there to people in a quality way, like this article suggests. Do the research, find your voice, write about something people care about. If you go the self-published route, get technical reviewers, hire a development editor, and get a copy editor. Your end results will go far. [edited to clarify value add for publisher]
- pc86 10y ago
  Any suggestions on how to produce better technical content?
- polysaturate 10y ago
  I think for those writing a technical book, myself included, just don't know if it's worth going self-publish with a minimal cut from payment providers and such. Or getting on board with PragProg who would help with marketing, editing, etc and still get a decent royalty. I understand there are no clear-cut rules to go by, but even a generic "If you don't have 10k email list, 50% of PragProgs sales will most likely be higher" might helper writers understand when to get help.
umen 10y ago
Great thread ! can you please suggest from experience what is the best way to copy right and translate book to english , if i want to self publish ? as none native english writer ? Thanks!
hota_mazi 10y ago
> I have sold just over 500 copies, for gross revenue of $70,714.20 Er... what? Each copy of the book is $140?!?
- milesvp 10y ago
  That's what it sounds like. You have to realize, that anyone that actually has a performance problem is likely to save many multiples of that monthly. Just getting an engineer to look at a performance problem for an hour is costing a company at least $100 (probably more in opportunity costs). If you can save time with some training it's totally worth it to buy a book like this and give it to one of your devs to see if they can reduce your AWS footprint. Mostly likely most of that $70k came from corporate credit cards.
- Finnucane 10y ago
  The book is part of a bundle of course materials--so it isn't exactly all of that money for the book alone. The book may represent a significant part of the value, but it's a bit misleading.
dsschnau 10y ago
>I have sold just over 500 copies, for gross revenue of $70,714.20 ($1350/week). Uhh that is a really expensive book then
siruva07 10y ago
You were once my (first!) intern trying to hock background checks before any p2p services needed identity verifications as a service. I couldn't be more proud. This may get downvoted to hell (or to invisible), but ef it ;-)
z3t4 10y ago
Good advice on persistence. It will be easier if you love it. But there will also be times when you'll hate it. Sticking to the plan though is most crucial.
jgalt212 10y ago
It blows my mind why all these smart people write books for such little payoff, but maybe it has to do with man's desire to feel important. This is why I love books. You can get to hear what somewhat smarter than you has to say for $15. There isn't a better deal out there.
- ghaff 10y ago
  Sure. Part of it is probably egoboo (and/or unrealistic expectations). But, as I wrote in another comment, a lot of people in tech depend on their public reputation for work/salary/etc. Published books help that reputation.
- angelbob 10y ago
  I got a raise of around $30,000 as a result (ish, hard to measure) of writing my technical book. I'm also sufficiently well-known that I'm unlikely to ever have trouble getting a Ruby job. That's hard to quantify exactly, but I think it's fair to say it's worth $5,000-$10,000 annually, as a rough equivalent. (My book sells for around $30-$40 rather than $15, but the math is similar.)
taude 10y ago
This is an interesting read. I published a tech book for a major publisher, received a $7K advance which never earned-out. Of course, the timing of my technical topic couldn't have been worse, as the industry shifted. But if I were to do it all over again, I'd definitely go the self-publishing route. Especially, since I understand a professional editor/writer workfow. Edit: one other thing that's interesting is that he did this in 2016, about a decade after Ruby on Rails was introduced, and after the market was saturated with Ruby on Rails material . Great work, and congrats on boosting your consulting business. When I published my book, I definitely got clients and work because of it, that was the real payoff.
marak830 10y ago
thank you for this. As I have mentioned in previous comments a fellow chef and I are looking into publishing our own chef's guides with an application and indepth wrote ups. Posts like this and all the comments are immensely helpful(and really help to keep the motivation up!) Thank you :-)
3legcat 10y ago
I think the fact this is book is a success shows just how many people are having problems with Ruby on Rail performance. If they would be willing to rethink their stack, they might have lesser need for such books.
- kovacs 10y ago
  Well luckily these customers have the money for the book because they were able to launch an actual business at least 2 months sooner and can move 5x more quickly than all the competitors still mulling over which lesser productive alternative framework they'd like to use.
EternalData 10y ago
As a long-term play, I think as much as people think about investing capital, they should think about investing their time the same way. You put some blocks of time into a particular project that scales well, and it'll eventually provide you with enough passive income to escape being a service layer for hire. In that sense, a job would be a portfolio of investments you can make time-wise in building yourself and passive income assets.
- adamwathan 10y ago
  +1000, thinking about digital products like books as assets akin to investing in stocks has been an important realization for me over the past few months. Most of us who participate in communities like this have this insane super power of being able to create something out of nothing (but time and effort) that has value to people. We can build little things that work their asses off for us forever, just requiring a nudge once in a while to keep them moving. I've released two digital products in the last year, a book and a video course. The book will be a year old in May and still makes me $2500-5000/month, and the course (which came out in November) is still making ~$30,000/month, although I expect that to slow down soon. Even still, with a little bit of maintenance marketing effort, I can expect those products to keep making a few thousand dollars each month for the next couple years while being able to dedicate the vast majority of my time to creating new products (assets) for my portfolio. It feels a lot like the mentality that's pushed in "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" of owning things that generate cash flow, but instead of having to find money to purchase real estate, folks like us can invent these assets out of thin air. Really blows my mind.
  - rwmurrayVT 10y ago
    Quick question, where did you release the video course? Udemy or a similar marketplace?
    - adamwathan 10y ago
      No I actually built my own platform for self-hosting the course. I don't think you can make much money through sites like Udemy, I would instead recommend a platform like Coach (https://www.withcoach.com/ https://www.withcoach.com/).
ziikutv 10y ago
Good read. I am wondering, why did you decide not to do a free HTML version of the book; aside from the obvious, it is tedious to do. Did you consider Physical printing of books?
- nateberkopec 10y ago
  I actually have an HTML version of the course, it comes with the purchase. This is because Gitbook can automatically output an HTML version. It's not the best, but it works. I didn't do a free version because it's a premium product - if you want the "free version" of my stuff, you read my blog. I did not consider physical printing.
desireco42 10y ago
Hmm... I intend to make an info product that I believe could be used by most developers, however, my idea is to sell it for $10, thinking that no developer should say he can't afford it. Mostly because of that as I want as many to actually read and apply. From what I read here, this product, which would have two parts and is largely done, I should sell it for $49 specifically with higher tiers. Not sure what to think honestly. I am close to finishing it and I want to make money, but mostly want to share with other developers and open communication. I like idea about slack channel and community.
dboreham 10y ago
A good read. One of the more interesting, informative and well written pieces to appear here in a while. The one concern I have with this playbook is that fashions in niche technical subjects change (I think) very quickly. For this to beat simply selling coding services on a T+M basis the revenue stream would need to continue for several years, with a suite of similar books/courses added over time. Are people still going to be interested in paying money to learn about Ruby performance in 2 years from now? Can two, three, four equally profitable subject be identified and mined every year? Probably not, unfortunately, due to this industry's eternal desire to churn the tech (often to no obvious positive purpose).
- angelbob 10y ago
  At his price point, he'll probably get a continual trickle of customers. I sell a book called "Rebuilding Rails" -- not as successful as his, but I've also made a few tens of thousands of dollars, so not nothing. And I reliably make a few more thousands of dollars yearly, years after I wrote it. After Ruby is a "hot" language (years ago), it becomes a legacy language where companies will pay money for assistance with their products. In the $10-$15 niche, you need individual engineers to think a language is neat. In the $40-$10,000 niches, you need companies to think they can save some engineering time. Both can be very valuable.
chris_hawk 10y ago
Just to add a data point, I earned about $2,000 with a self-published "how to start a podcast" book in 2015: http://record-and-release.com http://record-and-release.com I wrote it and released it in 10 days and followed a highly-abbreviated version of the promotional plan from Nathan Barry's _Authority_ to market it. I know $2,000 is small money compared to some of the figures being tossed around in here, but I'm thankful to have earned that much. My 2nd book was a total flop, commercially: https://gumroad.com/l/clientconflictbook https://gumroad.com/l/clientconflictbook The people who bought the book found the content super-useful, but the subject matter just did NOT catch on as something my audience was willing to spend money on. I found d a real pain point, just not one that was compelling enough. I also prompted it poorly. Here's hoping my 3rd book does better! I feel optimistic about the profit potential of self-publishing, generally speaking. As has been mentioned here, you have to market it well AND have a compelling subject matter with a hungry audience. It's not easy.
sanmon3186 10y ago
Noob question. What are the implications of writing books on platforms that are commercial in nature? Say I want to write a book or apigee or IBM bluemix. Are there licensing restrictions on what I can cover and what not.
- josho 10y ago
  Why not start writing a few articles for IBM developerWorks. At the very least it will connect you to some good editors and give you credibility for the longer book. Potentially IBM will even pay you to write the book and publish it under their press. To your specific question the vendor's EULA may have language that puts in restrictions (e.g. most restrict benchmarks). So, give the EULA a close read to get a sense. Second issue that you will have to pay attention to is trademarks, you'll need to seek some guidance so as to not put you on the wrong side of trademark law.
wjgilmore 10y ago
I can share some perspective on this which will lend evidence to Austin's conclusions regarding the financial gains to be had self-publishing. Having written ~10 books, including a bestselling technical book for a publisher (13 years in print), worked as an acquisitions editor for large technical publishing house (signed more than 60 books during my time there), and written a bestselling self-published book (http://www.easylaravelbook.com/ http://www.easylaravelbook.com/), it's suffice to say I have a well-rounded understanding of publishing financials. If you're willing to put the time into writing a quality book (not to mention are a subject matter expert), there are significant profits to be made taking the self-publishing route. It all boils down to the huge profit margin to be had as compared to traditional publishing. Take my Easy Laravel book for instance: I sell it at $28 via Leanpub and Gumroad. Gumroad takes 8.5% + $0.30 per sale, meaning I make $25.32 per unit. Compare this to traditional publishing, in which the same book at $28 would sell into a chain at say a 40% discount ($16.80). The author's royalty is calculated from this, which in most cases starts at 10% (sometimes it scales), meaning the author makes $1.68 per unit sold. This means comparatively the self-published author is making 15 times what the traditional author is making. So ask yourself: as a self-published author could you sell at least 1/15 the number of books a traditional publisher would otherwise sell? If yes, then you're going to come out ahead. If the book is of sufficient quality, and you are actively promoting it by blogging and maintaining an e-mail list, then there is no doubt in my mind anybody with adequate writing skills (you don't have to be Shakespeare) and determination will come out ahead, particularly given the ability to electronically distribute the book through all major channels. If you're thinking about self-publishing, just do it. Even if you don't finish the book (many will not), you'll have a lot of fun doing it! [Edit: Just realized I didn't actually reply in Austin's thread. Despite lurking for years I think this is actually my first ever HN comment. Sorry for being clueless.]
- j2bax 10y ago
  Congrats on finally jumping into the conversation, so to speak! Also, thanks for the perspective, this is really encouraging.
uberneo 10y ago
Another good idea if somebody make a Good self paced book for Machine Learning. There are millions of tutorials available online but its the similar situation as Ruby on Rails. All somebody need is to just aggregate all this info in a single book and with Machine Learning hotness these days you will probably end up selling few of them. Just an idea
- tomcam 10y ago
  Damn, you're right

539 points by nateberkopec 10y ago

iplaw 10y ago

Deleted

nateberkopec 10y ago
Hi, author here. I don't do that. I think I even mention in the post that I don't bother with vote-ringing on HN because I think HN's algos are pretty sophisticated on this front. Plus, HN hellbans a lot for a lot of reasons, so any type of manipulation is extremely risky. Also, I generally write enough stuff that I don't need any one particular post to succeed, but keeping my domain off any "blacklists" is very important to me. Vote manipulation would be a very, very bad decision for me.
- munificent 10y ago
  > I don't bother with vote-ringing on HN because I think HN's algos are pretty sophisticated on this front. I think the right answer should be that you don't do vote manipulation because it's deceitful and unethical. Your argument here is basically "because I can't get away with it". :(
  - exolymph 10y ago
    What HN considers "vote-ringing" is posting on Twitter and saying, "Hey friends, can you vote for this?" Not exactly a crime against humanity.
schneems 10y ago
Did you read the post? Nate actually mentions not to do this in the post and why.
cmalpeli 10y ago
Huh? Nate is one of most genuine, helpful folks in the industry.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

austenallred 10y ago

I think people severely, severely underestimate the amount you can make self-publishing. I blame it on traditional publishing companies and old habits. My mom was a book editor, and the very best authors they published would sell 10,000 books. Their cut was something like $2/book, they'd pull in $20k. So when I decided to write a book on growth hacking (https://www.secretsaucenow.com https://www.secretsaucenow.com), I decided to self-publish. This was more difficult, I had to find an editor and pay them, had to market it myself, etc. Luckily I'm pretty good at the marketing part (hence the book) and I found old contacts of my mom's to edit, but we launched on Kickstarter, so I figured if it flopped I would know in advance. We sold $66,000 on Kickstarter, then went on to sell another $44,000 on Indiegogo while we finished it up. Since then we've sold around $20,000 on gumroad. In total it's something like 2,000 copies (though we charge a lot more per copy than most book publishers do, and that keeps us out of Amazon, etc.) If I had a publishing deal I would make about $5,000 from that. But because I self-published I took home $130,000 minus costs and fees, so we'll conservatively say $100,000. Now I sit back and check gumroad a couple times a day; I average $800 in sales per day, and almost make more from the book than I do from my (well-paying) full-time job. If I can keep this rate up I will replace my salary (or, rather, double it)

nateberkopec 10y ago
Congrats. Do you pull anything in from Gumroad Discover? I think I've made ~$4k from them in the last year, which is not a huge part of my sales, but of course more than makes up for the $10/month for Gumroad Premium (or whatever they call it).
- austenallred 10y ago
  Just checked my stats. 7 sales for an average of around $60/sale (we've been on gumroad for a little over a week). So definitely more than paying for gumroad (not even factoring the time it saves me in integrating a Stripe account with downloads), though I think if someone buys the book and shares that they did Gumroad counts that as a "Gumroad" sale. Whether it is or not is disputable in my mind.
partycoder 10y ago

apo 10y ago

> I recently removed Google Analytics from my site when I realized it didn't really matter to me. Interesting idea. If your analytics reports don't cause you to change course, there is no reason to collect them in the first place. Still, it's hard to believe that analytics add zero value to an aspiring self-publisher. What about simple things, such as knowing which posts get the most traction, and so may be more likely to appeal to someone buying a book or course. That information can be quite counterintuitive.

nateberkopec 10y ago
I think if I actually paid for advertising, it would make sense. But since I don't spend money advertising, and I'm going to write about what I'm going to write about regardless of 10k visitors or 70k, I don't see the value. Also, programmers are privacy-sensitive. I think people like looking at their Ghostery icon on my site and seeing nothing is being blocked.
IanCal 10y ago
Basic information is easy to grab from your server logs. Unless you're doing much more detailed stuff (journeys through the site, in-page interaction, etc) then you may not really need google analytics. You can probably do a lot more with just logs than I expect, but the most basic thing that a lot of people want (basically just a hit counter) is easy enough to get. I've been having success playing with http://goaccess.io/ http://goaccess.io/ recently. Not doing much with it (partly as nobody is really visiting my site and there's not yet much real content up :)) but it seems good and doesn't require you to change what you're doing.
- manarth 10y ago
  Basic information is easy to grab from your server logs. Unless caching. That's a good reason to move to frontend-based analytics like GA.

Delmania 10y ago

Articles like this depress me. I know that if I want to achieve financial independence, I am going to need to start a business, which involves activities like this. (I should also get involved in real estate). However, when I sit down to think about this, I realize how untechnical I am, get depressed, and then move on..

nateberkopec 10y ago
I was that person for fucking years. After my Shark Tank appearance I went into a period of minor depression and didn't really try my hand at entrepreneurship until this project, which was almost 7 years later. All I can give for advice is to build a snowball - start as small as possible, and work on it consistently. Eventually the success will come.
- 55555 10y ago
  Thanks for that honesty. Whenever people see successful people they tend to think they were always as successful.
  - nateberkopec 10y ago
    Yup. You can see it in the replies to Austen's results. "Your results aren't typical","did you have a following before", etc. I've been in their shoes, so I know now it was all just excuses, not tactical questions.
- otterpro 10y ago
  I just watched the Shark Tank clip on Youtube and I'm glad you came back to being an entrepreneur, despite the setbacks. Wow, the sharks were brutal, btw.
justin66 10y ago
> I should also get involved in real estate You should save that for later. Once you've made your money, you'll need a way to lose it...

jasode 10y ago

>, I launched a _course_ called The Complete Guide to Rails Performance. Since then, I have sold just over 500 copies, for gross revenue of $70,714.20 ($1350/week). (The emphasis on "course" was mine.) It looks like much of the revenue was the full course which means videos and Q&A webinars. I'm not going to say it's clickbait but it's slightly misleading to put "Book" in the article's title since most tech authors including Douglas Crockford, John Resig, etc will not be able to pull $70k in 12 months whether they self-publish or let a traditional publisher like O'Reilly market the book. That said, congratulations on producing content that people want to pay for. Your numbers seem to be better than the author royalties from Pluralsight/Lynda for a single course.

nateberkopec 10y ago
Someone above already chimed in with results far better than mine, and they sold just a book (and it's like half the length of mine). So it is definitely possible. Part of the advantage of self-publishing is that you can be sophisticated in your product and not sell "just a book".
- jasode 10y ago
  >Someone above already chimed in with results far better than mine, and they sold just a book I saw that "Secret Sauce" also had a video package with a Slack channel so it's not clear to me if austenallred was talking about about receiving $124k for "just a book" with no value-added content. >be sophisticated in your product and not sell "just a book". Yes, that makes since. On that note... since you have a year's worth of data, have you determined if the "Slack channel" for the $99 package to be a big factor to encourage purchase?
  - nateberkopec 10y ago
    I don't really have a way to know the Slack channel's value because I don't offer a package without it. But I can say it's been very popular and is still very active a year after launch. The Slack channel was a last-minute afterthought when I was testing the product originally, but I kept it in and advertised it because so many of my testers thought it was a great idea.

ilamont 10y ago

Indie publisher here. Nate did a lot of research to identify the hole that needed to be filled, and then executed on developing his voice, setting up product tiers, spreading the word, etc. I also liked his “posts as prototypes” approach—it’s a great way to develop the ideas, hone creativity, and get feedback prior to releasing a book. Congratulations! However, I would like to offer a word of caution for anyone considering self-publishing. For every selfpub sales success there are hundreds of books that fail to make an impact. U.S. ISBN registrations for self-published books have basically doubled every few years (1) and probably crossed the 1 million mark last year. However, the number of Americans buying books has slowly declined over the past several years, and is probably around 45% of the population (down from over 55% a decade ago). (2) The growth in demand is simply not there to support the explosion of supply, at least in the United States. Niche technical books that are well-written and effectively marketed have greater potential than a poorly edited shape-shifting romance title from an unknown author. On the other hand, technical titles also have to compete with free or low-cost information on the Internet, YouTube, etc., not to mention existing books that dominate the field (something that Nate referenced in his post). Of course, there are other rewards associated with writing books, including personal satisfaction, expanding one’s personal brand, and improving writing and editing skills. But sales are never guaranteed. 1. http://leanmedia.org/number-book-readers-declines-even-self-publishing-skyrockets/ http://leanmedia.org/number-book-readers-declines-even-self-... (Data from Bowker, http://media.bowker.com/documents/bowker-selfpublishing-report2015.pdf http://media.bowker.com/documents/bowker-selfpublishing-repo...) 2. http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/reports/2016/2015-us-book-industry-year-end-review.html http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/reports/2016/2015-us-b...

bachmeier 10y ago
> Niche technical books that are well-written and effectively marketed have greater potential than a poorly edited shape-shifting romance title from an unknown author. On the other hand, technical titles also have to compete with free or low-cost information on the Internet, YouTube, etc., not to mention existing books that dominate the field (something that Nate referenced in his post). Something you've left out is "correct pricing". I'm happy to pay $10 or even $15 without much thought for a technical book on a topic of interest. Once the price goes above $15, I put a lot more thought into the decision, and usually don't buy. People are too quick to throw out "$50 for a book that helps you get your work done is nothing". That's true, but $50 is not pocket change, and my expectation is that most books I buy will provide either no value or a little value. In other words, be careful if you start doing calculations of book sales at $40. Sales of books that you think are priced at $50 are driven largely by discounted sales. (I have seen some numbers on this, but don't have the reference, sorry.)

ryandrake 10y ago

> My favorite example of this (from the Ruby community, of course) is Why's Poignant Guide to Ruby. If you're a Rubyist, you already know what this is, but if you're not, it's a legendary tome in the Ruby community. Not sure that's a great example, in my view. I remember when I was learning Ruby, and everyone online was "Read that _why guide it's great!!" It was a mess. I couldn't learn anything from it at all. There was probably good content in there, but the interspersed poorly drawn comics and nonsense asides/tangents made it impossible to follow. Maybe it was great for some people but it did not fit my learning style at all. I expect a vanilla introduction, a clear progression through control structures, data types, keywords, variables, constants, operators, etc. and a concise review at the end of each chapter, structured reference at the end, etc. In other words, a plain vanilla "Pragmatic Programmer" or "O'Reilly" style guide. > Having a unique voice is one of the most important things you can do to make your content stand out in a sea of "blah". It's what will make readers remember you and keep coming back. Agreed that it's memorable though...

mwpmaybe 10y ago
> I remember when I was learning Ruby, and everyone online was "Read that _why guide it's great!!" It was a mess. I couldn't learn anything from it at all. I had the same experience (started Rubying in late 2015). I had much more success with RubyMonk, Metaprogramming Ruby 2, and some other "Ruby for Perl hackers" blog posts and such.

ejo0 10y ago

Congrats Nate! Really glad to see you doing well post JudoJobs, forwarding this along to a few people who are into self-publishing technical books. Accounting for taxes on self-publishing just seems to be something you need to be careful about if you are selling via a few different channels like gumroad so you aren't audited.

bphogan 10y ago

This article is full of great advice on how to write a book, whether you publish for yourself or for someone else. I have written 10 books. 9 for the Pragmatic Bookshelf. I've made a nice side income on my books by doing many of the same things he lists. This isn't so much about self-publishing as it is about writing great technical content. Full disclosure - in addition to writing, I am a development editor for the Pragmatic Bookshelf. But I publish my own books with them because they offer the best of both worlds. They split the profits with you 50/50, but you get an editor to work with throughout the process, and they take care of a lot of other things, like distribution, sales, billing, copy-edit, typesetting, etc so you don't have to. But the important thing is to get your message out there to people in a quality way, like this article suggests. Do the research, find your voice, write about something people care about. If you go the self-published route, get technical reviewers, hire a development editor, and get a copy editor. Your end results will go far. [edited to clarify value add for publisher]

pc86 10y ago
Any suggestions on how to produce better technical content?
polysaturate 10y ago
I think for those writing a technical book, myself included, just don't know if it's worth going self-publish with a minimal cut from payment providers and such. Or getting on board with PragProg who would help with marketing, editing, etc and still get a decent royalty. I understand there are no clear-cut rules to go by, but even a generic "If you don't have 10k email list, 50% of PragProgs sales will most likely be higher" might helper writers understand when to get help.

umen 10y ago

Great thread ! can you please suggest from experience what is the best way to copy right and translate book to english , if i want to self publish ? as none native english writer ? Thanks!

hota_mazi 10y ago

> I have sold just over 500 copies, for gross revenue of $70,714.20 Er... what? Each copy of the book is $140?!?

milesvp 10y ago
That's what it sounds like. You have to realize, that anyone that actually has a performance problem is likely to save many multiples of that monthly. Just getting an engineer to look at a performance problem for an hour is costing a company at least $100 (probably more in opportunity costs). If you can save time with some training it's totally worth it to buy a book like this and give it to one of your devs to see if they can reduce your AWS footprint. Mostly likely most of that $70k came from corporate credit cards.
Finnucane 10y ago
The book is part of a bundle of course materials--so it isn't exactly all of that money for the book alone. The book may represent a significant part of the value, but it's a bit misleading.

dsschnau 10y ago

>I have sold just over 500 copies, for gross revenue of $70,714.20 ($1350/week). Uhh that is a really expensive book then

siruva07 10y ago

You were once my (first!) intern trying to hock background checks before any p2p services needed identity verifications as a service. I couldn't be more proud. This may get downvoted to hell (or to invisible), but ef it ;-)

z3t4 10y ago

Good advice on persistence. It will be easier if you love it. But there will also be times when you'll hate it. Sticking to the plan though is most crucial.

jgalt212 10y ago

It blows my mind why all these smart people write books for such little payoff, but maybe it has to do with man's desire to feel important. This is why I love books. You can get to hear what somewhat smarter than you has to say for $15. There isn't a better deal out there.

ghaff 10y ago
Sure. Part of it is probably egoboo (and/or unrealistic expectations). But, as I wrote in another comment, a lot of people in tech depend on their public reputation for work/salary/etc. Published books help that reputation.
angelbob 10y ago
I got a raise of around $30,000 as a result (ish, hard to measure) of writing my technical book. I'm also sufficiently well-known that I'm unlikely to ever have trouble getting a Ruby job. That's hard to quantify exactly, but I think it's fair to say it's worth $5,000-$10,000 annually, as a rough equivalent. (My book sells for around $30-$40 rather than $15, but the math is similar.)

taude 10y ago

This is an interesting read. I published a tech book for a major publisher, received a $7K advance which never earned-out. Of course, the timing of my technical topic couldn't have been worse, as the industry shifted. But if I were to do it all over again, I'd definitely go the self-publishing route. Especially, since I understand a professional editor/writer workfow. Edit: one other thing that's interesting is that he did this in 2016, about a decade after Ruby on Rails was introduced, and after the market was saturated with Ruby on Rails material . Great work, and congrats on boosting your consulting business. When I published my book, I definitely got clients and work because of it, that was the real payoff.

marak830 10y ago

thank you for this. As I have mentioned in previous comments a fellow chef and I are looking into publishing our own chef's guides with an application and indepth wrote ups. Posts like this and all the comments are immensely helpful(and really help to keep the motivation up!) Thank you :-)

3legcat 10y ago

I think the fact this is book is a success shows just how many people are having problems with Ruby on Rail performance. If they would be willing to rethink their stack, they might have lesser need for such books.

kovacs 10y ago
Well luckily these customers have the money for the book because they were able to launch an actual business at least 2 months sooner and can move 5x more quickly than all the competitors still mulling over which lesser productive alternative framework they'd like to use.

EternalData 10y ago

As a long-term play, I think as much as people think about investing capital, they should think about investing their time the same way. You put some blocks of time into a particular project that scales well, and it'll eventually provide you with enough passive income to escape being a service layer for hire. In that sense, a job would be a portfolio of investments you can make time-wise in building yourself and passive income assets.

adamwathan 10y ago
+1000, thinking about digital products like books as assets akin to investing in stocks has been an important realization for me over the past few months. Most of us who participate in communities like this have this insane super power of being able to create something out of nothing (but time and effort) that has value to people. We can build little things that work their asses off for us forever, just requiring a nudge once in a while to keep them moving. I've released two digital products in the last year, a book and a video course. The book will be a year old in May and still makes me $2500-5000/month, and the course (which came out in November) is still making ~$30,000/month, although I expect that to slow down soon. Even still, with a little bit of maintenance marketing effort, I can expect those products to keep making a few thousand dollars each month for the next couple years while being able to dedicate the vast majority of my time to creating new products (assets) for my portfolio. It feels a lot like the mentality that's pushed in "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" of owning things that generate cash flow, but instead of having to find money to purchase real estate, folks like us can invent these assets out of thin air. Really blows my mind.
- rwmurrayVT 10y ago
  Quick question, where did you release the video course? Udemy or a similar marketplace?
  - adamwathan 10y ago
    No I actually built my own platform for self-hosting the course. I don't think you can make much money through sites like Udemy, I would instead recommend a platform like Coach (https://www.withcoach.com/ https://www.withcoach.com/).

ziikutv 10y ago

Good read. I am wondering, why did you decide not to do a free HTML version of the book; aside from the obvious, it is tedious to do. Did you consider Physical printing of books?

nateberkopec 10y ago
I actually have an HTML version of the course, it comes with the purchase. This is because Gitbook can automatically output an HTML version. It's not the best, but it works. I didn't do a free version because it's a premium product - if you want the "free version" of my stuff, you read my blog. I did not consider physical printing.

desireco42 10y ago

Hmm... I intend to make an info product that I believe could be used by most developers, however, my idea is to sell it for $10, thinking that no developer should say he can't afford it. Mostly because of that as I want as many to actually read and apply. From what I read here, this product, which would have two parts and is largely done, I should sell it for $49 specifically with higher tiers. Not sure what to think honestly. I am close to finishing it and I want to make money, but mostly want to share with other developers and open communication. I like idea about slack channel and community.

dboreham 10y ago

A good read. One of the more interesting, informative and well written pieces to appear here in a while. The one concern I have with this playbook is that fashions in niche technical subjects change (I think) very quickly. For this to beat simply selling coding services on a T+M basis the revenue stream would need to continue for several years, with a suite of similar books/courses added over time. Are people still going to be interested in paying money to learn about Ruby performance in 2 years from now? Can two, three, four equally profitable subject be identified and mined every year? Probably not, unfortunately, due to this industry's eternal desire to churn the tech (often to no obvious positive purpose).

angelbob 10y ago
At his price point, he'll probably get a continual trickle of customers. I sell a book called "Rebuilding Rails" -- not as successful as his, but I've also made a few tens of thousands of dollars, so not nothing. And I reliably make a few more thousands of dollars yearly, years after I wrote it. After Ruby is a "hot" language (years ago), it becomes a legacy language where companies will pay money for assistance with their products. In the $10-$15 niche, you need individual engineers to think a language is neat. In the $40-$10,000 niches, you need companies to think they can save some engineering time. Both can be very valuable.

chris_hawk 10y ago

Just to add a data point, I earned about $2,000 with a self-published "how to start a podcast" book in 2015: http://record-and-release.com http://record-and-release.com I wrote it and released it in 10 days and followed a highly-abbreviated version of the promotional plan from Nathan Barry's _Authority_ to market it. I know $2,000 is small money compared to some of the figures being tossed around in here, but I'm thankful to have earned that much. My 2nd book was a total flop, commercially: https://gumroad.com/l/clientconflictbook https://gumroad.com/l/clientconflictbook The people who bought the book found the content super-useful, but the subject matter just did NOT catch on as something my audience was willing to spend money on. I found d a real pain point, just not one that was compelling enough. I also prompted it poorly. Here's hoping my 3rd book does better! I feel optimistic about the profit potential of self-publishing, generally speaking. As has been mentioned here, you have to market it well AND have a compelling subject matter with a hungry audience. It's not easy.

sanmon3186 10y ago

Noob question. What are the implications of writing books on platforms that are commercial in nature? Say I want to write a book or apigee or IBM bluemix. Are there licensing restrictions on what I can cover and what not.

josho 10y ago
Why not start writing a few articles for IBM developerWorks. At the very least it will connect you to some good editors and give you credibility for the longer book. Potentially IBM will even pay you to write the book and publish it under their press. To your specific question the vendor's EULA may have language that puts in restrictions (e.g. most restrict benchmarks). So, give the EULA a close read to get a sense. Second issue that you will have to pay attention to is trademarks, you'll need to seek some guidance so as to not put you on the wrong side of trademark law.

wjgilmore 10y ago

I can share some perspective on this which will lend evidence to Austin's conclusions regarding the financial gains to be had self-publishing. Having written ~10 books, including a bestselling technical book for a publisher (13 years in print), worked as an acquisitions editor for large technical publishing house (signed more than 60 books during my time there), and written a bestselling self-published book (http://www.easylaravelbook.com/ http://www.easylaravelbook.com/), it's suffice to say I have a well-rounded understanding of publishing financials. If you're willing to put the time into writing a quality book (not to mention are a subject matter expert), there are significant profits to be made taking the self-publishing route. It all boils down to the huge profit margin to be had as compared to traditional publishing. Take my Easy Laravel book for instance: I sell it at $28 via Leanpub and Gumroad. Gumroad takes 8.5% + $0.30 per sale, meaning I make $25.32 per unit. Compare this to traditional publishing, in which the same book at $28 would sell into a chain at say a 40% discount ($16.80). The author's royalty is calculated from this, which in most cases starts at 10% (sometimes it scales), meaning the author makes $1.68 per unit sold. This means comparatively the self-published author is making 15 times what the traditional author is making. So ask yourself: as a self-published author could you sell at least 1/15 the number of books a traditional publisher would otherwise sell? If yes, then you're going to come out ahead. If the book is of sufficient quality, and you are actively promoting it by blogging and maintaining an e-mail list, then there is no doubt in my mind anybody with adequate writing skills (you don't have to be Shakespeare) and determination will come out ahead, particularly given the ability to electronically distribute the book through all major channels. If you're thinking about self-publishing, just do it. Even if you don't finish the book (many will not), you'll have a lot of fun doing it! [Edit: Just realized I didn't actually reply in Austin's thread. Despite lurking for years I think this is actually my first ever HN comment. Sorry for being clueless.]

j2bax 10y ago
Congrats on finally jumping into the conversation, so to speak! Also, thanks for the perspective, this is really encouraging.

uberneo 10y ago

Another good idea if somebody make a Good self paced book for Machine Learning. There are millions of tutorials available online but its the similar situation as Ruby on Rails. All somebody need is to just aggregate all this info in a single book and with Machine Learning hotness these days you will probably end up selling few of them. Just an idea

tomcam 10y ago
Damn, you're right