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The Game Engine Black Book: Doom
- LeonM 8y ago> The result is $1.59 royalty and $0.77 profit per book sold. That's brutal. I mean I get it that production and distribution is costly (books are heavy), but only taking a 77 cent profit on one year of work seems insane. What does the breakdown usually look like for e-books?
- seanwilson 8y ago>Here are all the numbers. When I upload the PDF on Amazon, a minimal price is automatically calculated. In the case of the DOOM, Amazon sets the minimal price at $51.35. There is a slider which authors can use in order to add their "share" on top of Amazon price. I have added $3.88 which Amazon also takes a cut on. The result is $1.59 royalty and $0.77 profit per book sold. I didn't understand this part either. Wouldn't charging $59.99 sustainably increase the author's profit?
- shakna 8y agoOnly if the book would sustainable sell volume at that price point.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- shakna 8y agoYes, books are not a great way to make an income for most people. Kindle sells at either 30% to 70% royalties, usually at $2.99/book or less.
- mdpopescu 8y agoIt's 30% for <$2.99 or >$9.99, 70% in between. (This is for ebooks, as you said - paper books might be different.)
- jokoon 8y ago> In the case of the DOOM, Amazon sets the minimal price at $51.35. I have trouble understanding this
- LeonM 8y agoAmazon calculates production costs (number of pages, paper finish, etc) and handling costs (weight, based on number of pages). And probably also makes a estimate of the number of books being sold (given the huge dataset they own, some ML analysis could probably make a fairly accurate estimate). The minimum price is what they charge for the production and distribution, anything on top of that is your revenue.
- freeflight 8y ago> only taking a 77 cent profit on one year of work seems insane While I agree that the percentages are way too lopsided for the distributor, you have to remember that income from this book will persist for years, if not decades. Many a mickle, makes a muckle. So while it might look like "little" on its own, I'm pretty sure this can easily add up over time, particularly if an author keeps releasing books that keep on selling. Which makes the high distributor take even more outrageous.
- kmlx 8y agowait, how can the distributor take 40% and production 57%? why isn't there a competitor that takes a lower percentage? say 10% for both. are the economics of book selling so atrocious for the authors in general? how can one accept .77ct profit on $54 of sale? it's probably just me not being accustomed to the book selling ripoff, but still feels like a monumental, epic-level ripoff.
- domlebo70 8y agoIs there a way I can give Fabien some extra cash for this, outside of the usual flow? I don't think those percentages are fair.
- ekianjo 8y ago> it's probably just me not being accustomed to the book selling ripoff, but still feels like a monumental, epic-level ripoff. It's not just Amazon. I have friends who have published books with traditional publishers as well and the author's margin is razor thin vs the book price.
- dpwm 8y agoI was researching this recently, specifically in the UK. I found a 2013 article from a small indie publisher that didn't want to publish any more books. [0] eBooks are where you can make money, but even then the distributor will make disproportionately more relative to the effort they put in. [0] http://blog.celandor.co.uk/?p=75 http://blog.celandor.co.uk/?p=75
- detaro 8y ago> say 10% for both. Why do you think you could print a 400 page full-color book for $5 and make a profit, especially at lowest volumes/print on demand? That stuff isn't just expensive because printing companies are evil.
- Sharlin 8y agoYeah, ~30¤ seems a very reasonable price for that sort of a printing job.
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- tekkk 8y agoI am baffled at the amount how much the author makes from each book. 31$ production costs seem high but since it's 427 full-colored pages it seems reasonable. However, how come Amazon takes 22$ dollars on top of that? There is no way it's that expensive to distribute the book, there must be some other services involved? Although the pricing seems weird, the pie chart shown on the page is even more so. How it's possible that Amazon is most of the pie with 40% percentage?
- hjek 8y agoConfusing pie chart indeed.
- jokoon 8y agoCould be nice to have a list of chapters.
- vahji 8y agoBeing transparent about pricing is working against you. If I want to pay $54 for a book and I know only $0.77 are going to you, I'm simply not going to buy it. The production costs might be reasonable, but $20+ to Amazon just for existing? Fuck that. I mean I use Amazon when I know their margins are razor thin (for most things they are), but in this case, big nope here.
- OberstKrueger 8y agoThe PDF is $10 on Google Play, DRM-free. A quick search shows that Google pays out about half of the selling price. Doesn't beat having a paper book though, if that's your thing.
- ekianjo 8y agoFunny, it's 2000 JPY in Japan. Which is 17.7 USD. Why the +75% Markup for Japan on Google Books?
- OberstKrueger 8y agoThe US store has the normal price at $17 and marked as on sale at $10. So the normal price matches with conversion about right.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 8y ago
- ascavalcante80 8y agoI'm quite sure it's a great book. But like I'm really impressed for the first thing this book has taught me and it's not about games... It's just unbelievable how much money Amazon makes selling books!
- tanilama 8y agoI went on to a publisher site to buy ebook because kindle version is not available, and during checkout I was thrown out because mysterious error message. I do think Amazon is winning for a game reason.
- jammygit 8y agoSame happened to me with the Pearson site recently. Customer service took days to reply and their response was some version 'try writing us back at this email since they handle your specific problem better than we do.' Its ridiculous how hard it gets to give people your money edit: still locked out of my cart on Pearson
- edc117 8y agoYeah, I know this is becoming common and online markets are a race to a bottom, but in stark numbers like this...it really feels like there isn't a good ending to this story.
- jf- 8y agoAs long as I can remember it’s been this way, authors have always made very tiny percentage royalties on physical books. I don’t know what the figures are like for digital distribution but if they aren’t better it’s a travesty.
- albertgoeswoof 8y agoThat’s because it costs money to print (and maybe pulp) physical books. It doesn’t cost anything to “print” a digital book
- 8y ago
- gigatexal 8y agoDamn shame the author only gets 77 cents per copy. No wonder Amazon started as a book seller.
- dustinmoris 8y agoThe reality is even worse than what this graph suggests. From the $1.59 royalty only $0.77 stay with the author (the rest is tax), but the $0.77 are barely any profit if you account for the cost of human labour that went into writing this book in the first place. Depending on how many copies he'll sell through Amazon I think it's likely that the time spent on writing this book could have earned him more by cleaning the floor at McDonalds, which is a really sad state of affairs.
- Asooka 8y agoAt this point the ethical thing to do is to pirate the book and donate the money to the author. Like, if I were him, I would just put the PDF up on the pirate bay with a link to my patreon. Edit: I see it's also on Google Books, which I presume has a more ethical paying structure. Sadly, that's not available in my corner of the EU yet.
- sgroppino 8y agoAre there no other publishing platforms that do this for a flat fee? Apart from taking payment and applying DRM, what else is involved? Checks to ensure the author is the legal owner of the copyright?
- dpwm 8y ago> Checks to ensure the author is the legal owner of the copyright? As far as I can tell, the check is basically a tick-box declaration that you have the rights to publish. Amazon also want tax and payment information. Some self-publishers publish on Kobo, but they're a bit opaque on what their cut is.
- golergka 8y agoThis is completely unethical to the entities the author have given the rights for distribution to.
- dpwm 8y ago
- dirktheman 8y agoApparently the Amazon low margin strategy doesn't count for their book sales... that is absolutely brutal! Wouldn't it make more sense for the author to sell the book directly on his website as well?
- rhardih 8y agoI wonder how much Google Books takes compared to Amazon and if Fabien considered other publishing platforms, with less egregious profit cuts.
- sharken 8y agoGoogle Books seem to pay 55% for each sale (Source: https://www.quora.com/For-an-ebook-sold-on-Google-Books-how-much-do-authors-receive-in-royalties https://www.quora.com/For-an-ebook-sold-on-Google-Books-how-...) The book is being sold from the 10th on my local Google Books store for around USD 19.
- 0xmohit 8y agoSimilar story: "My Amazon bestseller made me nothing" https://www.salon.com/2013/03/15/hey_amazon_wheres_my_money/ https://www.salon.com/2013/03/15/hey_amazon_wheres_my_money/ Authors make little or nothing, but Bezos keeps getting richer :)
- mdpopescu 8y agoI have no idea what Amazon has got to do with his money... he didn't self-publish, he sold through a publisher (though an indie one). What did he expect? I'm amazed he made as much as he did ($12K).
- agumonkey 8y agoKing of the river in the middle
- andrepd 8y agoThis system is clearly working to the benefit of all. There is no need to consider alternatives. Now head down and keep working!
- vasili111 8y ago$0.77 from $54 for the author is a disaster.
- maa5444 8y agoin poland is 52 zl
- Maro 8y agoWhy doesn't the author just put up the PDF for sale on this site? I'd pay ~$20 with Paypal right now for the PDF, straight to the author.
- mrleinad 8y agoProbably there's some contract attached to it that says he can't do that. Otherwise, yeah, he should go down that road.
- dpwm 8y agoI doubt that, since his distributor is Google Play. It's not a standard term on e-book platforms and I can't see why any author would go for exclusivity on Google Play.
- ThinkBeat 8y agoI agree. Do you think he is worried about people sharing it? Might just put a watermark on it.
- jf- 8y agoAuthor needs to add a patreon link to the article.
- erikbye 8y agoAnyone with experience selling content on SendOwl? I have bought digital goods from sellers using its service a couple of times, as a customer it was hassle-free.
- izacus 8y agoYou can easily click on the Play Store button and pay for the PDF there. Is that really too hard?
- w0utert 8y agoBut then I assume Google will take a cut. I would much rather pay the author directly and get nothing but a download link for the PDF. How much of my money goes to Google if I order the PDF there?
- vtesucks 8y agoI don't understand the point of selling a DRM free eBook. It's going to be pirated, wouldn't it? What could be some reasons behind him doing so?
- clemParis 8y agoSome people like to share knowledge more than they like (or need, seeing the numbers) to make money.
- kowdermeister 8y agoIf it's digital it's going to be pirated regardless the DRM attempts .
- username223 8y agoIt might be pirated, but probably not very much. First, a book PDF is probably 100MB or more, so too big to email. Second, it's a niche market, so there probably won't be enough seeders for a decent torrent. Third, it takes some amount of effort to host a copy on the web, and there's very little benefit in doing so.
- OberstKrueger 8y agoHaving it be DRM-free means he doesn't have to mess around with every store under the sun. I'm not a Google Play user normally, but this lets me purchase it through the web interface, download the PDF, and then read it however I want. For his book on Wolfenstein, I did just that by reading it in Apple Books on my iPad.
- melling 8y agoWhat format is the book in? A regular PDF isn’t as good in Apple Books, for example. Taking notes, night mode, bookmarks, ...
- Ace17 8y ago> What could be some reasons behind him doing so? Giving his readers the ability to read the book without requiring them to install proprietary software.
- izacus 8y agoWow, not a single comment about contents or quality of the book.
- pizza234 8y agoThe author's published material is very well known (and appreciated); in a positive and paradoxical sense, "there's nothing new under the sun". The content is also extremely technical. I don't think in itself is "easy" to comment (at least, not in early stages). What's new, in a negative and surprising sense, is how little the author is profiting from the books.
- simplicio 8y agoIt's a 400 page book that came out a few hours ago. I doubt anyone unconnected to the author is in a position to comment on its contents. (But plenty of people have noted the previous volume was worthwhile).
- TomGullen 8y agoIt's a niche book, why not sell it for $60? That's 10% more for the buyer, and 380% more for the author. The optimal price might even be higher than that if you're looking to maximize author profit.
- simplicio 8y agoYea, at least part of the reason the authors cut is so small is that he priced it so that his share is minimal. Even a small increase would double his per-book earnings. Presumably he doesn't care too much about maximizing his income from this, and just wants to have the book be as widespread as possible.
- kumarvvr 8y agoIs this book relevant in the current scenario of game development tools? Just curious.
- sbarre 8y agoI am sure there are interesting insights and lessons and details if you're into game development, but the book is about a game engine - and underlying hardware of the same era - that is 25 years old.. So, caveat emptor?
- kumarvvr 8y agoI read a similar book a few years back. I think it was called "Game programming bible" or something. While the techniques were interesting, more interesting was the way developers solved critical problems (like large scale collision detection). However, in this day and age, almost all low level problems have been extracted away by game engines such as Unity / Unreal, etc. The relevancy of the book as a manual to learn seem limited, looks more of an interesting read than a helpful resource.
- Jach 8y agoFrom the prologue of the previous book on Wolf3D: "It may appear like a waste of time to read and write about "old" engines dedicated to extinct machines, compilers, and operating systems, but they carry tremendous value. Not only are they packed with clever tricks, they also remind us of the constraints programmers from the past had to overcome. They remind us of the spirit it once took to reach new frontiers. Things have not changed much. These days we may deal with gigabytes, dedicated hardware accelerators, and multi-core CPUs but the spirit it takes to keep on moving forward remains the same."
- neogenix 8y agoYou can upload it to peecho.com, according to their website printing and shipping would be about 50USD in full color. So setting the same 55USD as Amazon would give you a 5USD profit (instead of the 77cents).
- bni 8y agoIm confused how to buy it. If it just was a link with PayPal or credit card I would have already bought it. Instead I get linked to crap sites Amazon and Google
- segmondy 8y agoPublish the screenshots & drawings as a separate book in color. Sell it as an optional bundle for those who want it in published form. For those who don't care, Publish the book in black and white, with a QR code to open links to a web page with the screenshot & drawings. There's no way in hell I'm going to put in all that effort to earn 77cents :-( when other's are profiting much more. I'll rather give away the book for free. I can't believe in 2018 folks are still getting gouged to publish.
- qd6pwu4 8y agoIt seems that book authors make almost no money across the world in this era (especially they put a lot of efforts into writing a book), I feel pathetic
- msh 8y agoWierd, I can get the ebook from google play books but not for the kindle. Amazon is only selling the paper book.
- zorked 8y agoVery happy to see this published. I bought the book on Wolfenstein 3D and read every single word of it even though I don't much care for Wolf3D - the book is inherently interesting. I immediately ordered the physical version. It's a pity that the profit is so incredibly low. I'd consider just selling it for $69 or $99 or whatever. I'm not sure it would make such a difference in term of sales - the people who can read this book are in a very nice industry after all. The PDF can be sold at a much higher margin for accessibility for those who really can't pay for the physical book.
- AJ007 8y agoAll of the comments so far are about the author’s cut. This is the second book he’s written, with the same situation. Clearly it’s worth it to him. You should just consider it a hobby project, and he’s giving readers the option to get a full color print copy of the book. The first book, Game Engine Black Book Wolfenstein 3D is fantastic. This goes back to an era where one person can read the source code for a game and understand what it actually is doing at the hardware level. It would be fantastic for an entry level computer science class or someone who just wants to understand how a game engine works. The exhaustive color illustrations and images, the reason why the author makes no money, make is so much easier to grasp the concepts. If you are an experienced developer or someone who can understand complex topics just by reading text and formulas, the this isn’t such a big deal. Can’t wait to read this new book.
- jankins 8y agoSuch a good writer. His Wolfenstein book had the best explanation I’ve ever seen for how floating point numbers are encoded, and that explanation is in the first several pages. If you don’t have an understanding of floating point encoding, that alone is worth the purchase price.
- D_Guidi 8y agoHere the "floating point" excerpt from the book: http://fabiensanglard.net/floating_point_visually_explained/index.php http://fabiensanglard.net/floating_point_visually_explained/...
- packetpirate 8y agoAm I alone in thinking that the sign, exponent and mantissa model makes more sense, and that (-1)^S * 1.M * 2^(E-127) isn't that hard to understand? Maybe because I already understand that model, but his explanation just made it more confusing for me.
- sharken 8y agoAm also looking forward to this book, seems better than navigating the sources on your own, where you often lack context. I do wonder if there are other books that give detailed insight into commercial software (not games) and how it is built.
- mentos 8y agoWhat do you guys think of a kickstarter for his next book? He sets a funding goal that achieves profit for him and then people can pledge $10 for an e-book, $25 for b&w or $50 for color. This way he gets to hold onto the intellectual property until he has cleared his goal and make the prints of the books a limited time offer which could drive up their demand.
- derangedHorse 8y agoThis doesn’t seem like a bad idea! This way he can gauge demand and proceed working accordingly. The price could also be set at something reasonable which makes it available to the casual reader and not at a $99 price tag that would probably only be purchased by die hard fans.
- jere 8y agoIs this a historical piece or is there enough detail on how you would recreate your own version of Doom? If not, is there anything like the latter?
- Jach 8y agoIt's like the previous book on Wolf3D, "an engineering book", so there ought to be enough detail to recreate your own version of Doom. Furthermore, your own version of Doom on the original hardware it was made for. For Wolf3D, that would be the 386. Of course you're more likely interested in recreating for modern hardware, in which case the book should still be applicable, but some things they had to do will be different, and some things you'd have to do would also be different -- probably less work for you to get to the same place. https://jonathanwhiting.com/games/knossu/ https://jonathanwhiting.com/games/knossu/ is an example of "What can you do with a Doom style raycasting engine if you're tired of realism and shooting things?" I don't know where the author would have learned about Doom's techniques (perhaps just looking at it, perhaps the source code, perhaps .plan archives, or perhaps Fabien's earlier review here with included further reading at the end: http://fabiensanglard.net/doomIphone/doomClassicRenderer.php http://fabiensanglard.net/doomIphone/doomClassicRenderer.php ) but there's definitely other resources out there. I'd recommend the book though just from having read the previous one.
- beezle 8y agoI don't know where he is getting his pricing. I can do an 8.5x11 400 page color perfect bound for a print cost of $16.31. Using a list of $30 and Amazon/B&N (ie, online retailer) distribution wholesale discount of 30% gives author $4.69 per copy. (I have no idea what size author intends, if he has it in 6x9 trade size cost is even lower)
- llao 8y agoAnd where do you get such price?
- lostgame 8y agoI can confirm similar pricing here in Canada. I have no idea where the author lives but their statistics there seem incredibly off.
- beezle 8y agoNot sure if that was directed at me but my estimate is using Lightning Source as the printer/distributor. The wholesale cut only applies to online (ie, Amazon, BN.com, etc) distribution and not bricks n mortar (as then the compensation is much higher and you must take returns). Using a firm like Lightning Source requires a little more upfront legwork than Amazon, but not substantially so and really is appropriate if author plans to publish again.
- egypturnash 8y agoI bet he’s only looking at POD. He could get a lot less if he did an offset run but then he has to manage warehousing books for an indefinite amount of time.
- whatever_dude 8y ago(Changing the subject away from the cut) I applaud Fabiens' work. I have been following since his blog days on the source code analysis of games and I'm so happy he's writing books on the matter. I will fully support him going forward. However, the first edition of the Wolfenstein Black Book left me a bit miffed. It had many grammatical errors and even some layout awkwardness that would not pass an editor's review. I understand the reasons: English is not his first language, this was a work of passion, etc. But it still mars the experience. I assume the second edition fixed those; I wish I had waited. I've been eagerly waiting for his book on Doom. But I recommend waiting for the second edition, once he had time to take the readers' feedback into account.
- lostgame 8y agoEDIT 2: I sent a direct email to the author asking if he could place a direct buy link on the page, or if I could directly send him some money for the book. I’m extremely confused and curious as to why on Earth the author simply didn’t place a PDF on their site with a PayPal (or less evil alternative) button on his site. I personally absolutely refuse to purchase it knowing that Amazon is taking all of the Author’s money. I actually think it’s detrimental to display that data - as it seems it’s not just myself that seems less likely to purchase based off that data. Instead of many of the comments here being about the staggering loss the authour is taking by not following this simple route, at $10-20 a PDF we could all be discussing the contents of the book, instead. Hopefully the author sees this and can make some sensible decisions for themselves - from what I hear their last book was fantastic. EDIT: To the author: if I see a direct buy link on your page I will buy two copies within the day, as it seems that even $5-10 profit off two sales at $10-20 would provide you as much as up to 15 sales. I’m in the music business. I get slim royalties and I get how much effort we put into art.
- fabiensanglard 8y agoYou can buy the Google Play version for which authors get 55%. The PDF is DRM free so you can read it anywhere and I don't have to take care of billing/hosting.
- panzagl 8y agoAmazing how many people think they know better than the author on print and distribution- like a guy who spends years researching and writing a work like this is some sort of rube taken by the first huckster he runs across. There are several well known options in POD, he went with Amazon, maybe he knows something we don't.
- cafebabbe 8y agoIf you're outraged at the author's cut, then i have some bad news for you, you'll need to stop buying food and clothes.