14 ms·

Why my book can be downloaded for free (2014)

386 points by luu 7y ago

insulanian 7y ago
"Free stuff sells well!" -- I can't remember where I've read it.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- bachmeier 7y ago
  Mark Twain
marijn 7y ago
This aligns with my experience with https://eloquentjavascript.net https://eloquentjavascript.net, except that I put it online before publishing on paper, and my hunch is that it wouldn't have reached anywhere near the level of fame (and thus sales) it did if it hadn't been available online.
- keeganpoppen 7y ago
  well, regardless of whether or not that is true (i genuinely hope it is-- for your sake and the world's) thank you very much for the choice that you did make. betting on yourself and your work in this way had the nice side effect of making the world a better place! :)
- billpollock 7y ago
  You're probably right.
- cosmodisk 7y ago
  Here's how I buy most technical books: I get a pirated copy,as those are available for 99% of the books.Skim it to see if it's any good at all and then I go on Amazon and buy it. With your book, I did the same, except that I didn't need to get a pirated copy- I went to the book's website. It's pointless for publishers not to release digital versions,as any book can and will digitised in a matter of hours and available for anyone to download. By the way,your book is excellent.Any plans to publish more books?
  - diggan 7y ago
    Agree. I feel there are two main audiences for technical books. Those who are interested in the subject and might have a career in/close to it in the future, and those who are interested in the subject and already work with it/similar things. The first group won't be able to afford the book right now, but if you can still manage to give them the knowledge, they won't forget about it, and might come back to buy the book when they can afford it. I certainly did this for many books that been available for free, but as soon as I could, wanted to support the author. Same goes for Open Source software with donation jars. The second group just want to be able to review something before they buy it, and the purchase is still not just about getting the content, but supporting the person creating the content. So by having it available for free online, you can easier reach both these groups, as otherwise you mainly get the second one (and pirate copies with varying degree of quality all over the place)
    - enitihas 7y ago
      > Same goes for Open Source software with donation jars. But no open source software is being sustainably developed on contributions form donation jars. There might be 1-2 exceptions, but most open source projects make pennies from donations.
      - diggan 7y ago
        I think the same goes for technical books. I don't have any source available for this but remember reading blog posts from authors that wrote; compared to the time spent on writing a book, the earnings doesn't justify writing the book for just the income. Rather, you do it for all the side-effects (sans income) of writing a book, exposure and the alike. Not sure there are people who survive on only writing technical books, usually they have another job and do the book on the side of other things. At least as far as I can gather.
        ghaff 7y ago
        I think that's correct about technical books for the most part. Certainly the case with me. Writing the books has been very valuable career-wise. But the money is trivial. The difference with open source projects is that there are a lot of project leaders who in my experience get sucked into an ongoing full-time role for which they receive very little money. Such a role can lead to a good job of course. But my sense is that there are more people doing a full-timeish largely unpaid gig writing software/managing a project than in the case of technical books--which people are more likely to do as a one-off project that they may even do partly on work time.
- aswanson 7y ago
  Your book is excellent. Downloading and reading it made me feel incredibly guilty for not paying for it, so I bought a hard copy.
- throw0101a 7y ago
  > wouldn't have reached anywhere near the level of fame (and thus sales) Cory Doctorow in 2008: > For me — for pretty much every writer — the big problem isn’t piracy, it’s obscurity (thanks to Tim O’Reilly for this great aphorism). Of all the people who failed to buy this book today, the majority did so because they never heard of it, not because someone gave them a free copy. * https://craphound.com/littlebrother/about/ https://craphound.com/littlebrother/about/ Now that he's more established and has a fan base it may be less applicable (just like Stephen King may not want to give away his stuff), but if anyone is starting out, getting readers is a challenge in the first place.
- specialist 7y ago
  Gorgeous book. You have great typographic esthetic. I like your writing voice. Thank you for sharing. FWIW: I skimmed to see, but did not find, if you specify the target JavaScript version and coding style. I can't keep up with the rapid change in JS Universe. And I have absolutely no opinions. I just want someone to declare their preferred idiom and stick to it. House rules for objectness, for error handling, for concurrency, for modules, and so forth. So a project would declare "ES2015, Eloquent JavaScript 3rd Edition, eslint w/ Twitter rules 2018-09-01". Thanks for listening.
- notechback 7y ago
  A tin, suggestion: I can't see anywhere on the page the year of finalisation/publication. Might be helpful to add as tech books are so quickly outdated :-)
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
harryf 7y ago
Higher Order Perl is one of the most enjoyable books I ever read on programming for being both a great intro to functional programming and also highly pragmatic in application of FP. Sadly it’s hard to recommend because prejudice against Perl
- lsiebert 7y ago
  I like to tell people that Perl is like shell scripting but with actual package management, proper data structures and flow control, easy testing, and a thoughtful and supportive community. I mean, that's like saying C is good for embedded devices, true but definitely not the whole story. But it's been enough to get a few people to try it.
gorgoiler 7y ago
Darn, I was hoping to see the code that formatted the beautiful final typesetting. The author’s workflow ends with HTML, alas. However, I’m also kind of glad to see that the typesetting was done by a real person earning a living as a craftsman designer. While I selfishly would love to have access to automated book-quality typesetting I’m also in favour of craftsfolk having a place in the economy!
- jfk13 7y ago
  Looks like it was done by an agency based in India, using a TeX-based system. But most likely with custom in-house macro packages etc rather than just off-the-shelf LaTeX or ConTeXt styles.
  - mjd 7y ago
    The interior design and macro packages were done by a brilliant Morgan-Kaufmann employee named Julio Esperas. The actual typesetting was outsourced to a firm in Bangalore that didn't have much experience with TeX and that did a very bad job. I had to work hard to correct as many of their mistakes as possible.
    - dorfsmay 7y ago
      In what format did you write the source?
      - LukeShu 7y ago
        Per https://hop.perl.plover.com/book/ https://hop.perl.plover.com/book/ he used a modified version of the "POD" markup associated with Perl.
      - mjd 7y ago
        I implemented a simple markup language, “Mod”, that was similar to the “POD” language used to format the Perl man pages. There's a summary here: https://github.com/mjdominus/mod https://github.com/mjdominus/mod The main desideratum was that I should be able to use the same sources to generate TeX to send to the compositors, HTML for the web version, and a plain text version output. (In the end I sent the HTML version to the compositors instead.) Also I wanted inline tests, so that when the book said "function `foo` returns 7" I could have an inline test that would check that automatically. I added some features I needed that POD didn't have, like a code to generate an index entry. And I fixed some things I didn't like about POD. Markdown hadn't been invented yet or I probably would have modified that instead of POD. Pandoc hadn't been invented yet or I probably would have used it. But Mod didn't take long to make, and it worked well enough that it didn't get in the way while I wrote a book in it.
notRobot 7y ago
Article is from '14.
DrNuke 7y ago
It makes sense for authors if they get an increment in status and different leads, say: a number of sponsored appearances, a promotion at work, etc. Generally speaking and in most cases, though, it is just free work for the world, which is good at large and yet unsustainable as a business model?
- cosmodisk 7y ago
  Technical writing is almost never about revenue: there are very very few authors,who could live off writing about computer related subjects.Most of the revenue comes from alternative sources, such as consulting, conferences,maybe even some online courses and etc.
  - asicsp 7y ago
    I wish that weren't the case. A good book can help millions and I feel we'd get more good books if authors were paid well. Writing a book isn't an easy task and it can take years to write.
    - Swenrekcah 7y ago
      On the other hand, I'd much rather read a technical book written by an expert on the topic than an professional writer.
  - pbhjpbhj 7y ago
    Just to add some background. My lad has just started a Udemy online course in Unity/C#. From the number of course completions and the price the 2 authors appear to have taken ~$10M for what amounts to, it seems, a relatively straight forward course. (I'm not saying it wasn't hard work setting up, but it seems like less work than a year's regular teaching.)
    - rpeden 7y ago
      With Udemy, keep in mind that most people will have purchased the course for about $10, and not whatever shows up as the list price. That doesn't mean the course creators aren't still doing well. Just that there's almost always some kind of '90% off' sale or promotion available. So I find the list prices for courses on there to be mildly dishonest because hardly anybody pays anywhere near that price. I don't let that stop me from buying courses via Udemy because I've been very happy with the quality of what I've gotten so far.
diggan 7y ago
"Clojure For The Brave and True" is also another book who's author explicitly chose their publisher (No Starch) because they could also publish the book for free on their website. Not only is it free but also amazing book, one of the most enjoyable books I've read about programming overall and also made me dive into the Clojure rabbit hole that I'm now lucky to work professionally with during my day job. https://www.braveclojure.com/clojure-for-the-brave-and-true/ https://www.braveclojure.com/clojure-for-the-brave-and-true/
- asicsp 7y ago
  Similarly, Automate the Boring Stuff with Python [0] (No Starch) and Think Python [1] (Green Tea Press) [0] https://automatetheboringstuff.com/ https://automatetheboringstuff.com/ [1] https://greenteapress.com/wp/think-python-2e/ https://greenteapress.com/wp/think-python-2e/
  - docPangloss 7y ago
    I, too, can vouch for Automate the Boring Stuff with Python -- one of the first resources I used to learn a bit of Python since I wanted hands-on, practical lessons. I'll check out Think Python as well.
    - asicsp 7y ago
      There's an interactive version as well, with changes https://runestone.academy/runestone/books/published/thinkcspy/index.html https://runestone.academy/runestone/books/published/thinkcsp...
- nonrecursive 7y ago
  thank you for the kind words :)
- Poems 7y ago
  This looks really good. I'm looking to dive in to Clojure. Do you recommend my first book be something like this, or something more "traditional", like O'Reilly's "Living Clojure" or "Clojure"?
CorbenDallas 7y ago
Makes sense, but it's still exclusively up to author to decide if he wants to have his work available for free or not.
- falcor84 7y ago
  That's a nice sentiment, but the reality is that every good book will be scanned, OCR'd and put online by sometime almost immediately. Whether the author may like it or not, these are just the facts of life in the digital world. The faster one embraces it, the less heartache.
  - CorbenDallas 7y ago
    Yes, reality is harsh, people like free stuff and don't mind to steal if punishment is unlikely, but that doesn't change the fact that one's work is one's private property and it's up to one to decide its fate.
  - zerr 7y ago
    Nowadays books get leaked directly from the publisher, no need to OCR.
    - perpetualpatzer 7y ago
      More typically, broken drm on digital editions, but yes. It's pervasive and typically doesn't require scanning.
  - DanBC 7y ago
    Last time I looked this book was not available as a pirate version anywhere. Has that changed? Pozner and Dodd Cross-Examination Science and Techniques. Here's a review: https://barristerblogger.com/2019/05/16/pozner-dodd-cross-examination-science-and-techniques-a-review/ https://barristerblogger.com/2019/05/16/pozner-dodd-cross-ex...
    - jessaustin 7y ago
arkpafisto 7y ago
"... the book was published in 2005, and has been available as a free download since 2008" Actually he didn't follow the advice.
- zerr 7y ago
  Interesting to see how did it affect the sales.
- jimhefferon 7y ago
  I thought he implied that the publisher agreed to a free online version after a delay of two or three years. (Although I don't think he said so directly.)
  - mjd 7y ago
    The publisher _requested_ that I wait six months, and I agreed to that.
    - frandroid 7y ago
      That is a very fair length... Capture launch sales from the most eager readers, then expand the reader base.
- mjd 7y ago
  Yeah, I'm very disorganized. Also, I had a new baby in mid-2004 and I was really busy for a couple of years.
  - zerr 7y ago
    Btw, any plans for Raku variant of the book?
    - mjd 7y ago
      Not a chance.
IAmEveryone 7y ago
There are different types of authors. For this author, and many others, the book is somewhat of a loss-leader of some sort: a form of marketing for a consultant, freelancer, aspiring politician, scientist, activist, or similar. PhD theses often work like this, too. In that scenario, the royalty cheque is sometimes nice, but not considered necessary. If given a choice between, say, ten people reading the book for free versus one person buying it and never getting around to reading it, these authors will always chose the former. But there is, quite obviously, a different kind: the professional author. GoT wouldn't have happened within George RR Martin's lifetime if he had to teach English or run a really strange cult on the side to pay rent. Many non-fiction authors fall into the same category. James Gleick might be one people here enjoy. This isn't necessarily a binary distinction. Noam Chomsky, Richard Feynman, or Edward Tufte could have all lived quite comfortably on just their salary as professors and the occasional Nobel prize. But their success as authors drastically increased their freedom, possibly allowing them to take risks in their work they would have avoided otherwise, like talking truth to NASA (and/or capitalism). As an analogy, consider the not-uncommon offer to work for free on someone's (commercial) software project in exchange for "exposure". This is more common among designers and musicians these days, but used to happen quite frequently to programmers as well. It's exactly the same logic, and not always entirely wrong. Nonetheless, it has become somewhat of a running joke/faux pas/universally recognised sign of a person having no clue of the industry and to be avoided.
- virvar 7y ago
  I think you have it wrong, there are different types of audiences. It’s not exactly hard to find a free source for learning any tech because there is just so much material out there, and in that environment it’s often better to get paid by people who have liked the work you offered them for free. I would have never read, or later purchased, the testing goat book for Django if it wasn’t freely available because I would have simply selected another source. People don’t really do that with fiction because there isn’t 9 million different Harry Potters that are all almost equally good. A further benefit of having a lot of people read your tech book is that you get more feedback which makes it easier to improve it, and a lot of tech books are really rather terrible until they’ve been heavily edited. And unlike fiction there is often a correct way to do things with tech.
Fragoel2 7y ago
The author has a point but I also believe that it exceptional longevity also comes from the fact not many authors are writing books for Perl. More popular languages, like Java, JavaScript or Python have a lot more competition going on.
ChrisMarshallNY 7y ago
I am not a fan of book DRM. I have one reader app that I prefer, and want to read everything on it. I have absolutely no issues with paying for most books; especially if they are about my work. I do have an issue with “price-gouging” books, though. I think those are usually textbooks. The markup on them can be eye-watering, and I give them a hard pass. When I write, I like to make it public and free. I have been approached about having my work behind a paywall, and have declined. Maybe I’ll consider it in the future, but I’m not doing it for the money. As the author of the post mentioned, writing a book is a fraught process. It would have to be an Oprah’s Book Club special to make it truly worth it, monetarily, and that ain’t happening with geek books. I do it mainly because I love writing. I’ve been doing it since I was a child. It also helps me to learn, and organize my own thoughts. But that’s just me. YMMV
franze 7y ago
my book[1] is 1) beautiful print book - paid and giveaway 2) paid kindle on amazon 3) DRM free epub, pdf, mobi on gumroad - paid and free there is a reason for all three cases. my general agenda is that I wrote the book to a) improve the status quo of the topic (SEO) as it's a horrible b#lls#it driven discepline. and b) to reach new clients. these were the driving factors. the money return from the book is not a main motivator, for this it is too niche, as it targets developers who don't want to suffer under SEO anymore. ad 1) so I created a print book that gets displayed in the offices, so that people talk about it, easily share and borrow it. it is a paid product so that it percieved to have inherent value. also I don't want to make a loss with print. but I also give it away at workshops so that it spreads wildely. additonal I hope that in the future I can start from a higher knowledge level and that the knowledge stays longer in the organization. ad 2) the kindle store is a strong channel in its own. you can not set the price to zero, so it costs something. even if I promore the free DRM version (see 3) people download it via the kindle store, as it is easier. ad 3) DRM free on gumroad. free because DRM sucks. has a pricteag as if it's free($) onlye people might not see it as valueable. free with vouchers, as I regularly promote it via all kind of events. I set it to 0 for some time in general on gumroad, there was no positive uplift in the long term, so I use promotion vouchers. [1] the book is https://www.fullstackoptimization.com/b/understanding-seo https://www.fullstackoptimization.com/b/understanding-seo, gumroad is https://gumroad.com/l/understanding-seo/hacker-news https://gumroad.com/l/understanding-seo/hacker-news [with 100% voucher for hacker-news], Kindle is https://www.amazon.com/Understanding-SEO-Systematic-Approach-Optimization-ebook/dp/B07L3BSQHG https://www.amazon.com/Understanding-SEO-Systematic-Approach... 5 stars, 16 reviews
econcon 7y ago
I never pay for any book even tho I am high net worth, I always downloaded books from libgen. Most of the books are not worth it
- andai 7y ago
  Sometimes I worry if Karma exists (or may one day be implemented by the AI that grows out of internet surveillance) and I will be forced to pay back everything I have pirated, that it would take me many lifetimes to do so.
  - thulecitizen 7y ago
    > I will be forced to pay back everything I have pirated There's nothing to 'pay back'. Rentier capitalism has us convinced copying is theft, but only because the propertied classes have created artificial scarcity and high exploitative rents. [1] After we move to Commons based peer production, we will have a new reality, and artificial scarcity will be seen for what it is: domination. [1] https://www.resilience.org/stories/2017-08-03/book-day-corruption-capitalism-guy-standing/ https://www.resilience.org/stories/2017-08-03/book-day-corru...
    - andai 7y ago
      That was a great read, thank you. Though, if I publish a book, and everyone pirates it, how do I buy food?
      - bergstromm466 7y ago
        Glad you enjoyed it! I'm convinced we've just taken the industrial age economic and banking system and copied it into the digital age, but we haven't accounted for the near-zero marginal cost of information creation, storage and transmission. So the actual scarcity vs. the artificial scarcity of things is off. I think we can get there by valuing knowledge differently: subsidizing the cost of knowledge production and distribution - all costs from the start - so that it doesn't need a business model once produced. I think that's the key. To read more on this phenomenon I enjoy Yochai Benkler, who came up with the term 'Commons based peer production'. Some examples include Linux, Github, Open Source Ecology, Precious Plastic, Wikipedia, Sensorica, Valueflows (Holo-REA) and Holochain. + "Money is just information, a way we measure what we trade, nothing of value in itself." [1] [2] I am closely following the work of Arthur Brock and Eric Harris-Braun of the MetaCurrency Project. They've been working on digital age wealth acknowledgement systems (protocol cooperativism) for over a decade: https://medium.com/holochain/beyond-blockchain-simple-scalable-cryptocurrencies-1eb7aebac6ae https://medium.com/holochain/beyond-blockchain-simple-scalab... [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwmM5Nb6hiE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwmM5Nb6hiE [2] http://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2007/05/14/id-53 http://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2007/05/14/id-53, http://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2007/11/05/id-55 http://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2007/11/05/id-55 (if down, you can get an archived copy on Archive.org)
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
maps7 7y ago
Does anyone have a list of free programming books?
- asicsp 7y ago
  https://github.com/EbookFoundation/free-programming-books/blob/master/free-programming-books.md https://github.com/EbookFoundation/free-programming-books/bl... https://devfreebooks.github.io/ https://devfreebooks.github.io/
  - brogrammer2018 7y ago
    Thank you for sharing
roland35 7y ago
This is great advice, it seems like offering the book for free is just as good, if not better, than marketing it with traditional advertising! The author's point that having it online keeps the book relevant is also a great point to consider. An online book is now integrated with the rest of the internet, instead of being firewalled away into obscurity.
rikroots 7y ago
The key takeaway from the article (as far as I'm concerned) is this: > "So if you write a book it should not be because you want to make a lot of money from it but because you have an idea that you want to present to the world. And as an author, you owe it to yourself to get your idea in front of as many people as possible. By putting the book in your web site, you make it available to many people who would not otherwise have access to it: poor people, high school students, people in developing countries, and so on." ... Which is why I give all my books away for free[1][2], and have been doing so for over 10 years. [1] Obligatory spam link to my website: https://rikverse2020.rikweb.org.uk/publications https://rikverse2020.rikweb.org.uk/publications [2] The fact that there's no money in writing poetry is entirely incidental.
- radicalbyte 7y ago
  Can I just say that I find this incredibly cool and inspiring. Especially how you fulfilled your ambition and got your degree via the OU. I share your ambition but had to put my OU course on hold when I migrated abroad. I hope to one day either finish it or restart. Once the kids are a bit older, perhaps.
- qqn 7y ago
  Yes! Same takeaway, and the main reason I published my thesis online first, turning it into a video tutorial to boot: https://spmx.ca/trp https://spmx.ca/trp. Specifically I was frustrated at all the sources I had to get behind various kinds of walls, pay- and otherwise: https://spmx.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/00-headaches.png https://spmx.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/00-headaches.png Nina Paley (from Rita Sings the Blues) had a great talk five years ago on how restricting information is a form of cultural cancer that is very relevant here: https://youtube.com/watch?v=XO9FKQAxWZc https://youtube.com/watch?v=XO9FKQAxWZc.
  - mjcohen 7y ago
    That's "Sita Sings the Blues". And I highly recommend it.
    - 7y ago
hn_check 7y ago
This is one of those articles that is self-promotion disguised as a "lesson" of some sort, and it gets upvoted by loads of people who then want to engage in their own self-promotion. "Oh yes, this is true..my experiencing with my book [link]"... Tech/software dev books make extremely little money. The #1 reason people write such books -- knowing that they're unlikely to see much more than a coffee or two of proceeds -- is for reputation/career development. Getting a book "published", even through actual publishing houses, is the easiest part of the process: Agile printing and the absence of editorial standards makes it a close to riskless process for them.
- mjd 7y ago
  I hope that someday you discover that people sometimes do things for reasons other than “self-promotion”.
  - hn_check 7y ago
    Quaint. Maybe you can write a blog post detailing how idealized of a human being you are, teaching us that self-promotion is a myth? Offer it to publishers and get amazed when everyone will `publish' anything, showing how truly remarkable you are. Self-promotion is the vehicle that drives a good percentage of HN content. And that's okay and is just a reality of life as we all claw and scramble for our place in the hierarchy. But far too often it has dishonest packaging, with hilarious lead-ins like "people often ask me" (no they don't) and wrapping some self-aggrandizing prattle as if it's instructive for others. It gets called out on most other venues. HN is a particularly gullible, complicit crowd (loads of low level developers who desperately want to feel like they're in the big boy club, wearing big boy pants) so it plays well here. Day after day. It's pretty shameless.
  - hn_check 7y ago
    The fact that my other comment -- which is completely true, btw -- was flagged while the insipid, patronizing comment above isn't: Beautiful, classic Hacker News. I'd never leave this place, though. Where else am I going to read AGW denial or see hilariously tenuous attempts at defending whatever insipid thing the POTUS said recently. This place has more far-right anti-science imbeciles than InfoWars. When HN puts its collective genius together and repeatedly gives their take on SARS-CoV-2, it truly is a sight to see. I mean, it's ignorant nonsense by a bunch of over-confident clowns who think that the accomplishment of throwing a shitty webpage together makes them a Great Thinker. It's stupid as hell, but also incredibly funny. Just earlier today some fans asked me, "hn_check, being so handsome and so gloriously smart, not to mention so well hung, how do you tolerate such antics?" It isn't easy to answer, though I received sight-unseen contracts from six major publishers to tell my tale. I'm above that, though. Truly, a selfless, zero-self-promotion genius.
Veera_Sivarajan 7y ago
I'm a student and I always scout for books online. I promise myself that, if the book helps me, I'll buy a copy of it in the future.
fullstop 7y ago
I highly recommend Worm [1], available for free and it's some of the best fiction I've read in ages. It's only available online and not in any sort of (official) e-book format, although there are scrapers which can do that pretty seamlessly. It's a great story and I would gladly throw money at the author for an official e-book version. [1] https://parahumans.wordpress.com/ https://parahumans.wordpress.com/
- jessaustin 7y ago
  I think that needs a loud "WARNING: RABBIT HOLE" notation. Wildbow is great at writing, kind of bad at monetization. If he sold any merch, his many fans would have bought lots of it. I'd love a a hoodie that had "Property of Parahuman Response Team ENE: Brockton Bay" on it. Or even just some black sweatpants with "VILLAIN" printed down one leg. I've given off and on with Patreon, but that is somehow much less compelling.
  - fullstop 7y ago
    Yep. Even something far more subtle like a hoodie with a Gold Morning symbol on the sleeve would sell very well. Edit: as for the rabbit hole, I spent a fair amount of my free time over the course of three months reading this. It definitely sucked me in.
mark_l_watson 7y ago
I used to make my eBooks available for free download on my web site (and still do for my older books) but in the last few years I have sold my books (on leanpub) with a Creative Commons Share and Share Alike, No commercial Derivatives License. I also try to "seed" my books by giving copies away. In the prefaces, I make it clear that the eBooks can be shared. I think this is a good compromise since I earn a little 'walking around money' and my stuff gets fairly widely read. The super-power advantage of writing books is getting to meet interesting people and expand networking.
- kragen 7y ago
  If you remove the no-derivatives clause it becomes legal for people to translate them into other languages.
  - mark_l_watson 7y ago
    Thanks, I will look into that. Good idea! Fun story: some guy in China emailed me about five years ago that he was translating my old Java AI book and placing his name as the author. He said sorry but there was nothing I could do about it. It was strange, but I appreciated him being up front about it. My wife and I had recently returned from a fun trip to China (very friendly people, lots of interesting things to see) and to be honest I didn’t much care.
    - kragen 7y ago
      Awesome :D
svat 7y ago
Related and similar: See also the blog post (“Why Textbooks Should Be Free”) “The Case for Free Online Books”[1] by Remzi Arpaci-Dusseau, professor at Wisconsin and (co-)author of the fantastic Operating Systems book “Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces” (http://www.ostep.org/ http://www.ostep.org/) [1]: http://from-a-to-remzi.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-case-for-free-online-books-fobs.html http://from-a-to-remzi.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-case-for-fre...
djaychela 7y ago
I have written a book - on music technology, specifically using Cubase, but giving a good all-round basis to start understanding and creating music using Cubase. It took me a long time to write (years of prep work, and then a full year of spare time to actually properly write, typeset and proof and self-publish), and then it languished as I'd never thought about publicity; it was used by students of mine who found it immensely useful, but that was pretty much that. Only a fluke meeting of the book with someone from the software house who create the book led to some increased popularity and sales, along with incremental improvements in sales from my youtube channel [1]. The book is only available in print form, as I've never trusted any DRM to be worthwhile, and nearly everyone I know who makes music does so with software they haven't paid for. I know this is entirely counter to the article and also everyone's experience on here, but I'm wondering if this is a little different as there aren't consultancies etc in the music tech segment. The most you'll get from someone who has read your book is a few hours' work (at normal rates) either classroom teaching, or one-to-one online. At the current time (as nearly everything I normally do is face-to-face), the sales from the book are the only income I have; it's not a lot, but last month's sales were about half the baseline I need to pay my bills, so I can't complain. I know I could be completely wrong about this, but I can't imagine that giving it away would do anything other than decimate this income. [0] - http://tinyurl.com/cubasebookamazon http://tinyurl.com/cubasebookamazon [1] - https://www.youtube.com/c/musictechtuition https://www.youtube.com/c/musictechtuition
dang 7y ago
Discussed at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8692627 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8692627
munificent 7y ago
In this post and most of the comments here, people assume you have a binary choice: 1. You can put your book online for free and sacrifice extrinsic reward (money) for greater intrinsic reward (popularity, impact on the world). 2. You can maximize your financial income by only selling the book. I thought I was making that choice when I decided to put "Game Programming Patterns" online for free, but that's not actually how it turned out. I have made much more money from the book than I would have if I'd gone with a traditional publisher and not put the book online for free. The model I have now is something like the classic marketing funnel. To make the most money from a thing, you need to have as many people go through this series of steps as possible: 1. Know that the product exists. 2. Decide to want it. 3. Be just willing to pay the price to acquire it. (Anything less and you're leaving money on the table.) 4. Keep as much of that money for yourself as possible. (In other words, reduce costs.) For technical books, most people don't get past step 1. Putting the book online dramatically improves that. Of the people who do, many stop at step 2. There are so many articles out there, it's easy to convince yourself you don't need a acquire a whole book. Again, putting the book online helps: you can try before you buy. Step 3 is the interesting one. Putting the book online for free obviously leaves, like, all money on the table. But what I have found is that there a self-selected market segmentation seems to come into play. Many people do read the book for free, but some choose to pay anyway. Step 4 is the dirty secret of the big technical book publishers. They take an embarrassingly large chunk of each sale. That could maybe be justified in the old days of publishing when you needed to run a whole printing press and maintain relationships with independent book publishers and all that. But, frankly, they do not do enough to justify how much they take. Self-publishing fixes that, at the expense of having to do more of the work and management yourself. I had to find a freelance copy editor, and typeset and design the cover. But I effectively "got paid" to do that work at a much better rate than it would have cost me to "pay" a publisher to do that by giving them the lion's share of each sale. I don't want to generalize too much from my one single data point, but it seemed that for me, the increased widening of the first two steps and the greater share at step 4 more than compensated for the money left on the table for some readers at step 3. It was a clear enough signal that I'm taking the same approach with my second book. And, equally importantly, I really liked the subjective experience of it being my book and being able to put it out into the world exactly the way I wanted to.
lazyant 7y ago
For ebooks only, there are options to charge and make them available for free as well. One option is honor system: pay if you can, see for ex https://twitter.com/b0rk/status/1254396387703361536 https://twitter.com/b0rk/status/1254396387703361536 . Another option is where people can buy the book and pay for other people as well.
railing1650 7y ago
So a nobel prize winning scientist giving his opinion is banned? Keep bending over buddy.. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23062531 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23062531

386 points by luu 7y ago

insulanian 7y ago

"Free stuff sells well!" -- I can't remember where I've read it.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
bachmeier 7y ago
Mark Twain

marijn 7y ago

This aligns with my experience with https://eloquentjavascript.net https://eloquentjavascript.net, except that I put it online before publishing on paper, and my hunch is that it wouldn't have reached anywhere near the level of fame (and thus sales) it did if it hadn't been available online.

keeganpoppen 7y ago
well, regardless of whether or not that is true (i genuinely hope it is-- for your sake and the world's) thank you very much for the choice that you did make. betting on yourself and your work in this way had the nice side effect of making the world a better place! :)
billpollock 7y ago
You're probably right.
cosmodisk 7y ago
Here's how I buy most technical books: I get a pirated copy,as those are available for 99% of the books.Skim it to see if it's any good at all and then I go on Amazon and buy it. With your book, I did the same, except that I didn't need to get a pirated copy- I went to the book's website. It's pointless for publishers not to release digital versions,as any book can and will digitised in a matter of hours and available for anyone to download. By the way,your book is excellent.Any plans to publish more books?
- diggan 7y ago
  Agree. I feel there are two main audiences for technical books. Those who are interested in the subject and might have a career in/close to it in the future, and those who are interested in the subject and already work with it/similar things. The first group won't be able to afford the book right now, but if you can still manage to give them the knowledge, they won't forget about it, and might come back to buy the book when they can afford it. I certainly did this for many books that been available for free, but as soon as I could, wanted to support the author. Same goes for Open Source software with donation jars. The second group just want to be able to review something before they buy it, and the purchase is still not just about getting the content, but supporting the person creating the content. So by having it available for free online, you can easier reach both these groups, as otherwise you mainly get the second one (and pirate copies with varying degree of quality all over the place)
  - enitihas 7y ago
    > Same goes for Open Source software with donation jars. But no open source software is being sustainably developed on contributions form donation jars. There might be 1-2 exceptions, but most open source projects make pennies from donations.
    - diggan 7y ago
      I think the same goes for technical books. I don't have any source available for this but remember reading blog posts from authors that wrote; compared to the time spent on writing a book, the earnings doesn't justify writing the book for just the income. Rather, you do it for all the side-effects (sans income) of writing a book, exposure and the alike. Not sure there are people who survive on only writing technical books, usually they have another job and do the book on the side of other things. At least as far as I can gather.
      - ghaff 7y ago
        I think that's correct about technical books for the most part. Certainly the case with me. Writing the books has been very valuable career-wise. But the money is trivial. The difference with open source projects is that there are a lot of project leaders who in my experience get sucked into an ongoing full-time role for which they receive very little money. Such a role can lead to a good job of course. But my sense is that there are more people doing a full-timeish largely unpaid gig writing software/managing a project than in the case of technical books--which people are more likely to do as a one-off project that they may even do partly on work time.
aswanson 7y ago
Your book is excellent. Downloading and reading it made me feel incredibly guilty for not paying for it, so I bought a hard copy.
throw0101a 7y ago
> wouldn't have reached anywhere near the level of fame (and thus sales) Cory Doctorow in 2008: > For me — for pretty much every writer — the big problem isn’t piracy, it’s obscurity (thanks to Tim O’Reilly for this great aphorism). Of all the people who failed to buy this book today, the majority did so because they never heard of it, not because someone gave them a free copy. * https://craphound.com/littlebrother/about/ https://craphound.com/littlebrother/about/ Now that he's more established and has a fan base it may be less applicable (just like Stephen King may not want to give away his stuff), but if anyone is starting out, getting readers is a challenge in the first place.
specialist 7y ago
Gorgeous book. You have great typographic esthetic. I like your writing voice. Thank you for sharing. FWIW: I skimmed to see, but did not find, if you specify the target JavaScript version and coding style. I can't keep up with the rapid change in JS Universe. And I have absolutely no opinions. I just want someone to declare their preferred idiom and stick to it. House rules for objectness, for error handling, for concurrency, for modules, and so forth. So a project would declare "ES2015, Eloquent JavaScript 3rd Edition, eslint w/ Twitter rules 2018-09-01". Thanks for listening.
notechback 7y ago
A tin, suggestion: I can't see anywhere on the page the year of finalisation/publication. Might be helpful to add as tech books are so quickly outdated :-)

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

harryf 7y ago

Higher Order Perl is one of the most enjoyable books I ever read on programming for being both a great intro to functional programming and also highly pragmatic in application of FP. Sadly it’s hard to recommend because prejudice against Perl

lsiebert 7y ago
I like to tell people that Perl is like shell scripting but with actual package management, proper data structures and flow control, easy testing, and a thoughtful and supportive community. I mean, that's like saying C is good for embedded devices, true but definitely not the whole story. But it's been enough to get a few people to try it.

gorgoiler 7y ago

Darn, I was hoping to see the code that formatted the beautiful final typesetting. The author’s workflow ends with HTML, alas. However, I’m also kind of glad to see that the typesetting was done by a real person earning a living as a craftsman designer. While I selfishly would love to have access to automated book-quality typesetting I’m also in favour of craftsfolk having a place in the economy!

jfk13 7y ago
Looks like it was done by an agency based in India, using a TeX-based system. But most likely with custom in-house macro packages etc rather than just off-the-shelf LaTeX or ConTeXt styles.
- mjd 7y ago
  The interior design and macro packages were done by a brilliant Morgan-Kaufmann employee named Julio Esperas. The actual typesetting was outsourced to a firm in Bangalore that didn't have much experience with TeX and that did a very bad job. I had to work hard to correct as many of their mistakes as possible.
  - dorfsmay 7y ago
    In what format did you write the source?
    - LukeShu 7y ago
      Per https://hop.perl.plover.com/book/ https://hop.perl.plover.com/book/ he used a modified version of the "POD" markup associated with Perl.
    - mjd 7y ago
      I implemented a simple markup language, “Mod”, that was similar to the “POD” language used to format the Perl man pages. There's a summary here: https://github.com/mjdominus/mod https://github.com/mjdominus/mod The main desideratum was that I should be able to use the same sources to generate TeX to send to the compositors, HTML for the web version, and a plain text version output. (In the end I sent the HTML version to the compositors instead.) Also I wanted inline tests, so that when the book said "function `foo` returns 7" I could have an inline test that would check that automatically. I added some features I needed that POD didn't have, like a code to generate an index entry. And I fixed some things I didn't like about POD. Markdown hadn't been invented yet or I probably would have modified that instead of POD. Pandoc hadn't been invented yet or I probably would have used it. But Mod didn't take long to make, and it worked well enough that it didn't get in the way while I wrote a book in it.

notRobot 7y ago

Article is from '14.

DrNuke 7y ago

It makes sense for authors if they get an increment in status and different leads, say: a number of sponsored appearances, a promotion at work, etc. Generally speaking and in most cases, though, it is just free work for the world, which is good at large and yet unsustainable as a business model?

cosmodisk 7y ago
Technical writing is almost never about revenue: there are very very few authors,who could live off writing about computer related subjects.Most of the revenue comes from alternative sources, such as consulting, conferences,maybe even some online courses and etc.
- asicsp 7y ago
  I wish that weren't the case. A good book can help millions and I feel we'd get more good books if authors were paid well. Writing a book isn't an easy task and it can take years to write.
  - Swenrekcah 7y ago
    On the other hand, I'd much rather read a technical book written by an expert on the topic than an professional writer.
- pbhjpbhj 7y ago
  Just to add some background. My lad has just started a Udemy online course in Unity/C#. From the number of course completions and the price the 2 authors appear to have taken ~$10M for what amounts to, it seems, a relatively straight forward course. (I'm not saying it wasn't hard work setting up, but it seems like less work than a year's regular teaching.)
  - rpeden 7y ago
    With Udemy, keep in mind that most people will have purchased the course for about $10, and not whatever shows up as the list price. That doesn't mean the course creators aren't still doing well. Just that there's almost always some kind of '90% off' sale or promotion available. So I find the list prices for courses on there to be mildly dishonest because hardly anybody pays anywhere near that price. I don't let that stop me from buying courses via Udemy because I've been very happy with the quality of what I've gotten so far.

diggan 7y ago

"Clojure For The Brave and True" is also another book who's author explicitly chose their publisher (No Starch) because they could also publish the book for free on their website. Not only is it free but also amazing book, one of the most enjoyable books I've read about programming overall and also made me dive into the Clojure rabbit hole that I'm now lucky to work professionally with during my day job. https://www.braveclojure.com/clojure-for-the-brave-and-true/ https://www.braveclojure.com/clojure-for-the-brave-and-true/

asicsp 7y ago
Similarly, Automate the Boring Stuff with Python [0] (No Starch) and Think Python [1] (Green Tea Press) [0] https://automatetheboringstuff.com/ https://automatetheboringstuff.com/ [1] https://greenteapress.com/wp/think-python-2e/ https://greenteapress.com/wp/think-python-2e/
- docPangloss 7y ago
  I, too, can vouch for Automate the Boring Stuff with Python -- one of the first resources I used to learn a bit of Python since I wanted hands-on, practical lessons. I'll check out Think Python as well.
  - asicsp 7y ago
    There's an interactive version as well, with changes https://runestone.academy/runestone/books/published/thinkcspy/index.html https://runestone.academy/runestone/books/published/thinkcsp...
nonrecursive 7y ago
thank you for the kind words :)
Poems 7y ago
This looks really good. I'm looking to dive in to Clojure. Do you recommend my first book be something like this, or something more "traditional", like O'Reilly's "Living Clojure" or "Clojure"?

CorbenDallas 7y ago

Makes sense, but it's still exclusively up to author to decide if he wants to have his work available for free or not.

falcor84 7y ago
That's a nice sentiment, but the reality is that every good book will be scanned, OCR'd and put online by sometime almost immediately. Whether the author may like it or not, these are just the facts of life in the digital world. The faster one embraces it, the less heartache.
- CorbenDallas 7y ago
  Yes, reality is harsh, people like free stuff and don't mind to steal if punishment is unlikely, but that doesn't change the fact that one's work is one's private property and it's up to one to decide its fate.
- zerr 7y ago
  Nowadays books get leaked directly from the publisher, no need to OCR.
  - perpetualpatzer 7y ago
    More typically, broken drm on digital editions, but yes. It's pervasive and typically doesn't require scanning.
- DanBC 7y ago
  Last time I looked this book was not available as a pirate version anywhere. Has that changed? Pozner and Dodd Cross-Examination Science and Techniques. Here's a review: https://barristerblogger.com/2019/05/16/pozner-dodd-cross-examination-science-and-techniques-a-review/ https://barristerblogger.com/2019/05/16/pozner-dodd-cross-ex...
  - jessaustin 7y ago

arkpafisto 7y ago

"... the book was published in 2005, and has been available as a free download since 2008" Actually he didn't follow the advice.

zerr 7y ago
Interesting to see how did it affect the sales.
jimhefferon 7y ago
I thought he implied that the publisher agreed to a free online version after a delay of two or three years. (Although I don't think he said so directly.)
- mjd 7y ago
  The publisher _requested_ that I wait six months, and I agreed to that.
  - frandroid 7y ago
    That is a very fair length... Capture launch sales from the most eager readers, then expand the reader base.
mjd 7y ago
Yeah, I'm very disorganized. Also, I had a new baby in mid-2004 and I was really busy for a couple of years.
- zerr 7y ago
  Btw, any plans for Raku variant of the book?
  - mjd 7y ago
    Not a chance.

IAmEveryone 7y ago

There are different types of authors. For this author, and many others, the book is somewhat of a loss-leader of some sort: a form of marketing for a consultant, freelancer, aspiring politician, scientist, activist, or similar. PhD theses often work like this, too. In that scenario, the royalty cheque is sometimes nice, but not considered necessary. If given a choice between, say, ten people reading the book for free versus one person buying it and never getting around to reading it, these authors will always chose the former. But there is, quite obviously, a different kind: the professional author. GoT wouldn't have happened within George RR Martin's lifetime if he had to teach English or run a really strange cult on the side to pay rent. Many non-fiction authors fall into the same category. James Gleick might be one people here enjoy. This isn't necessarily a binary distinction. Noam Chomsky, Richard Feynman, or Edward Tufte could have all lived quite comfortably on just their salary as professors and the occasional Nobel prize. But their success as authors drastically increased their freedom, possibly allowing them to take risks in their work they would have avoided otherwise, like talking truth to NASA (and/or capitalism). As an analogy, consider the not-uncommon offer to work for free on someone's (commercial) software project in exchange for "exposure". This is more common among designers and musicians these days, but used to happen quite frequently to programmers as well. It's exactly the same logic, and not always entirely wrong. Nonetheless, it has become somewhat of a running joke/faux pas/universally recognised sign of a person having no clue of the industry and to be avoided.

virvar 7y ago
I think you have it wrong, there are different types of audiences. It’s not exactly hard to find a free source for learning any tech because there is just so much material out there, and in that environment it’s often better to get paid by people who have liked the work you offered them for free. I would have never read, or later purchased, the testing goat book for Django if it wasn’t freely available because I would have simply selected another source. People don’t really do that with fiction because there isn’t 9 million different Harry Potters that are all almost equally good. A further benefit of having a lot of people read your tech book is that you get more feedback which makes it easier to improve it, and a lot of tech books are really rather terrible until they’ve been heavily edited. And unlike fiction there is often a correct way to do things with tech.

Fragoel2 7y ago

The author has a point but I also believe that it exceptional longevity also comes from the fact not many authors are writing books for Perl. More popular languages, like Java, JavaScript or Python have a lot more competition going on.

ChrisMarshallNY 7y ago

I am not a fan of book DRM. I have one reader app that I prefer, and want to read everything on it. I have absolutely no issues with paying for most books; especially if they are about my work. I do have an issue with “price-gouging” books, though. I think those are usually textbooks. The markup on them can be eye-watering, and I give them a hard pass. When I write, I like to make it public and free. I have been approached about having my work behind a paywall, and have declined. Maybe I’ll consider it in the future, but I’m not doing it for the money. As the author of the post mentioned, writing a book is a fraught process. It would have to be an Oprah’s Book Club special to make it truly worth it, monetarily, and that ain’t happening with geek books. I do it mainly because I love writing. I’ve been doing it since I was a child. It also helps me to learn, and organize my own thoughts. But that’s just me. YMMV

franze 7y ago

my book[1] is 1) beautiful print book - paid and giveaway 2) paid kindle on amazon 3) DRM free epub, pdf, mobi on gumroad - paid and free there is a reason for all three cases. my general agenda is that I wrote the book to a) improve the status quo of the topic (SEO) as it's a horrible b#lls#it driven discepline. and b) to reach new clients. these were the driving factors. the money return from the book is not a main motivator, for this it is too niche, as it targets developers who don't want to suffer under SEO anymore. ad 1) so I created a print book that gets displayed in the offices, so that people talk about it, easily share and borrow it. it is a paid product so that it percieved to have inherent value. also I don't want to make a loss with print. but I also give it away at workshops so that it spreads wildely. additonal I hope that in the future I can start from a higher knowledge level and that the knowledge stays longer in the organization. ad 2) the kindle store is a strong channel in its own. you can not set the price to zero, so it costs something. even if I promore the free DRM version (see 3) people download it via the kindle store, as it is easier. ad 3) DRM free on gumroad. free because DRM sucks. has a pricteag as if it's free($) onlye people might not see it as valueable. free with vouchers, as I regularly promote it via all kind of events. I set it to 0 for some time in general on gumroad, there was no positive uplift in the long term, so I use promotion vouchers. [1] the book is https://www.fullstackoptimization.com/b/understanding-seo https://www.fullstackoptimization.com/b/understanding-seo, gumroad is https://gumroad.com/l/understanding-seo/hacker-news https://gumroad.com/l/understanding-seo/hacker-news [with 100% voucher for hacker-news], Kindle is https://www.amazon.com/Understanding-SEO-Systematic-Approach-Optimization-ebook/dp/B07L3BSQHG https://www.amazon.com/Understanding-SEO-Systematic-Approach... 5 stars, 16 reviews

econcon 7y ago

I never pay for any book even tho I am high net worth, I always downloaded books from libgen. Most of the books are not worth it

andai 7y ago
Sometimes I worry if Karma exists (or may one day be implemented by the AI that grows out of internet surveillance) and I will be forced to pay back everything I have pirated, that it would take me many lifetimes to do so.
- thulecitizen 7y ago
  > I will be forced to pay back everything I have pirated There's nothing to 'pay back'. Rentier capitalism has us convinced copying is theft, but only because the propertied classes have created artificial scarcity and high exploitative rents. [1] After we move to Commons based peer production, we will have a new reality, and artificial scarcity will be seen for what it is: domination. [1] https://www.resilience.org/stories/2017-08-03/book-day-corruption-capitalism-guy-standing/ https://www.resilience.org/stories/2017-08-03/book-day-corru...
  - andai 7y ago
    That was a great read, thank you. Though, if I publish a book, and everyone pirates it, how do I buy food?
    - bergstromm466 7y ago
      Glad you enjoyed it! I'm convinced we've just taken the industrial age economic and banking system and copied it into the digital age, but we haven't accounted for the near-zero marginal cost of information creation, storage and transmission. So the actual scarcity vs. the artificial scarcity of things is off. I think we can get there by valuing knowledge differently: subsidizing the cost of knowledge production and distribution - all costs from the start - so that it doesn't need a business model once produced. I think that's the key. To read more on this phenomenon I enjoy Yochai Benkler, who came up with the term 'Commons based peer production'. Some examples include Linux, Github, Open Source Ecology, Precious Plastic, Wikipedia, Sensorica, Valueflows (Holo-REA) and Holochain. + "Money is just information, a way we measure what we trade, nothing of value in itself." [1] [2] I am closely following the work of Arthur Brock and Eric Harris-Braun of the MetaCurrency Project. They've been working on digital age wealth acknowledgement systems (protocol cooperativism) for over a decade: https://medium.com/holochain/beyond-blockchain-simple-scalable-cryptocurrencies-1eb7aebac6ae https://medium.com/holochain/beyond-blockchain-simple-scalab... [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwmM5Nb6hiE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwmM5Nb6hiE [2] http://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2007/05/14/id-53 http://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2007/05/14/id-53, http://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2007/11/05/id-55 http://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2007/11/05/id-55 (if down, you can get an archived copy on Archive.org)

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

maps7 7y ago

Does anyone have a list of free programming books?

asicsp 7y ago
https://github.com/EbookFoundation/free-programming-books/blob/master/free-programming-books.md https://github.com/EbookFoundation/free-programming-books/bl... https://devfreebooks.github.io/ https://devfreebooks.github.io/
- brogrammer2018 7y ago
  Thank you for sharing

roland35 7y ago

This is great advice, it seems like offering the book for free is just as good, if not better, than marketing it with traditional advertising! The author's point that having it online keeps the book relevant is also a great point to consider. An online book is now integrated with the rest of the internet, instead of being firewalled away into obscurity.

rikroots 7y ago

The key takeaway from the article (as far as I'm concerned) is this: > "So if you write a book it should not be because you want to make a lot of money from it but because you have an idea that you want to present to the world. And as an author, you owe it to yourself to get your idea in front of as many people as possible. By putting the book in your web site, you make it available to many people who would not otherwise have access to it: poor people, high school students, people in developing countries, and so on." ... Which is why I give all my books away for free[1][2], and have been doing so for over 10 years. [1] Obligatory spam link to my website: https://rikverse2020.rikweb.org.uk/publications https://rikverse2020.rikweb.org.uk/publications [2] The fact that there's no money in writing poetry is entirely incidental.

radicalbyte 7y ago
Can I just say that I find this incredibly cool and inspiring. Especially how you fulfilled your ambition and got your degree via the OU. I share your ambition but had to put my OU course on hold when I migrated abroad. I hope to one day either finish it or restart. Once the kids are a bit older, perhaps.
qqn 7y ago
Yes! Same takeaway, and the main reason I published my thesis online first, turning it into a video tutorial to boot: https://spmx.ca/trp https://spmx.ca/trp. Specifically I was frustrated at all the sources I had to get behind various kinds of walls, pay- and otherwise: https://spmx.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/00-headaches.png https://spmx.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/00-headaches.png Nina Paley (from Rita Sings the Blues) had a great talk five years ago on how restricting information is a form of cultural cancer that is very relevant here: https://youtube.com/watch?v=XO9FKQAxWZc https://youtube.com/watch?v=XO9FKQAxWZc.
- mjcohen 7y ago
  That's "Sita Sings the Blues". And I highly recommend it.
  - 7y ago

hn_check 7y ago

This is one of those articles that is self-promotion disguised as a "lesson" of some sort, and it gets upvoted by loads of people who then want to engage in their own self-promotion. "Oh yes, this is true..my experiencing with my book [link]"... Tech/software dev books make extremely little money. The #1 reason people write such books -- knowing that they're unlikely to see much more than a coffee or two of proceeds -- is for reputation/career development. Getting a book "published", even through actual publishing houses, is the easiest part of the process: Agile printing and the absence of editorial standards makes it a close to riskless process for them.

mjd 7y ago
I hope that someday you discover that people sometimes do things for reasons other than “self-promotion”.
- hn_check 7y ago
  Quaint. Maybe you can write a blog post detailing how idealized of a human being you are, teaching us that self-promotion is a myth? Offer it to publishers and get amazed when everyone will `publish' anything, showing how truly remarkable you are. Self-promotion is the vehicle that drives a good percentage of HN content. And that's okay and is just a reality of life as we all claw and scramble for our place in the hierarchy. But far too often it has dishonest packaging, with hilarious lead-ins like "people often ask me" (no they don't) and wrapping some self-aggrandizing prattle as if it's instructive for others. It gets called out on most other venues. HN is a particularly gullible, complicit crowd (loads of low level developers who desperately want to feel like they're in the big boy club, wearing big boy pants) so it plays well here. Day after day. It's pretty shameless.
- hn_check 7y ago
  The fact that my other comment -- which is completely true, btw -- was flagged while the insipid, patronizing comment above isn't: Beautiful, classic Hacker News. I'd never leave this place, though. Where else am I going to read AGW denial or see hilariously tenuous attempts at defending whatever insipid thing the POTUS said recently. This place has more far-right anti-science imbeciles than InfoWars. When HN puts its collective genius together and repeatedly gives their take on SARS-CoV-2, it truly is a sight to see. I mean, it's ignorant nonsense by a bunch of over-confident clowns who think that the accomplishment of throwing a shitty webpage together makes them a Great Thinker. It's stupid as hell, but also incredibly funny. Just earlier today some fans asked me, "hn_check, being so handsome and so gloriously smart, not to mention so well hung, how do you tolerate such antics?" It isn't easy to answer, though I received sight-unseen contracts from six major publishers to tell my tale. I'm above that, though. Truly, a selfless, zero-self-promotion genius.

Veera_Sivarajan 7y ago

I'm a student and I always scout for books online. I promise myself that, if the book helps me, I'll buy a copy of it in the future.

fullstop 7y ago

I highly recommend Worm [1], available for free and it's some of the best fiction I've read in ages. It's only available online and not in any sort of (official) e-book format, although there are scrapers which can do that pretty seamlessly. It's a great story and I would gladly throw money at the author for an official e-book version. [1] https://parahumans.wordpress.com/ https://parahumans.wordpress.com/

jessaustin 7y ago
I think that needs a loud "WARNING: RABBIT HOLE" notation. Wildbow is great at writing, kind of bad at monetization. If he sold any merch, his many fans would have bought lots of it. I'd love a a hoodie that had "Property of Parahuman Response Team ENE: Brockton Bay" on it. Or even just some black sweatpants with "VILLAIN" printed down one leg. I've given off and on with Patreon, but that is somehow much less compelling.
- fullstop 7y ago
  Yep. Even something far more subtle like a hoodie with a Gold Morning symbol on the sleeve would sell very well. Edit: as for the rabbit hole, I spent a fair amount of my free time over the course of three months reading this. It definitely sucked me in.

mark_l_watson 7y ago

I used to make my eBooks available for free download on my web site (and still do for my older books) but in the last few years I have sold my books (on leanpub) with a Creative Commons Share and Share Alike, No commercial Derivatives License. I also try to "seed" my books by giving copies away. In the prefaces, I make it clear that the eBooks can be shared. I think this is a good compromise since I earn a little 'walking around money' and my stuff gets fairly widely read. The super-power advantage of writing books is getting to meet interesting people and expand networking.

kragen 7y ago
If you remove the no-derivatives clause it becomes legal for people to translate them into other languages.
- mark_l_watson 7y ago
  Thanks, I will look into that. Good idea! Fun story: some guy in China emailed me about five years ago that he was translating my old Java AI book and placing his name as the author. He said sorry but there was nothing I could do about it. It was strange, but I appreciated him being up front about it. My wife and I had recently returned from a fun trip to China (very friendly people, lots of interesting things to see) and to be honest I didn’t much care.
  - kragen 7y ago
    Awesome :D

svat 7y ago

Related and similar: See also the blog post (“Why Textbooks Should Be Free”) “The Case for Free Online Books”[1] by Remzi Arpaci-Dusseau, professor at Wisconsin and (co-)author of the fantastic Operating Systems book “Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces” (http://www.ostep.org/ http://www.ostep.org/) [1]: http://from-a-to-remzi.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-case-for-free-online-books-fobs.html http://from-a-to-remzi.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-case-for-fre...

djaychela 7y ago

I have written a book - on music technology, specifically using Cubase, but giving a good all-round basis to start understanding and creating music using Cubase. It took me a long time to write (years of prep work, and then a full year of spare time to actually properly write, typeset and proof and self-publish), and then it languished as I'd never thought about publicity; it was used by students of mine who found it immensely useful, but that was pretty much that. Only a fluke meeting of the book with someone from the software house who create the book led to some increased popularity and sales, along with incremental improvements in sales from my youtube channel [1]. The book is only available in print form, as I've never trusted any DRM to be worthwhile, and nearly everyone I know who makes music does so with software they haven't paid for. I know this is entirely counter to the article and also everyone's experience on here, but I'm wondering if this is a little different as there aren't consultancies etc in the music tech segment. The most you'll get from someone who has read your book is a few hours' work (at normal rates) either classroom teaching, or one-to-one online. At the current time (as nearly everything I normally do is face-to-face), the sales from the book are the only income I have; it's not a lot, but last month's sales were about half the baseline I need to pay my bills, so I can't complain. I know I could be completely wrong about this, but I can't imagine that giving it away would do anything other than decimate this income. [0] - http://tinyurl.com/cubasebookamazon http://tinyurl.com/cubasebookamazon [1] - https://www.youtube.com/c/musictechtuition https://www.youtube.com/c/musictechtuition

dang 7y ago

Discussed at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8692627 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8692627

munificent 7y ago

In this post and most of the comments here, people assume you have a binary choice: 1. You can put your book online for free and sacrifice extrinsic reward (money) for greater intrinsic reward (popularity, impact on the world). 2. You can maximize your financial income by only selling the book. I thought I was making that choice when I decided to put "Game Programming Patterns" online for free, but that's not actually how it turned out. I have made much more money from the book than I would have if I'd gone with a traditional publisher and not put the book online for free. The model I have now is something like the classic marketing funnel. To make the most money from a thing, you need to have as many people go through this series of steps as possible: 1. Know that the product exists. 2. Decide to want it. 3. Be just willing to pay the price to acquire it. (Anything less and you're leaving money on the table.) 4. Keep as much of that money for yourself as possible. (In other words, reduce costs.) For technical books, most people don't get past step 1. Putting the book online dramatically improves that. Of the people who do, many stop at step 2. There are so many articles out there, it's easy to convince yourself you don't need a acquire a whole book. Again, putting the book online helps: you can try before you buy. Step 3 is the interesting one. Putting the book online for free obviously leaves, like, all money on the table. But what I have found is that there a self-selected market segmentation seems to come into play. Many people do read the book for free, but some choose to pay anyway. Step 4 is the dirty secret of the big technical book publishers. They take an embarrassingly large chunk of each sale. That could maybe be justified in the old days of publishing when you needed to run a whole printing press and maintain relationships with independent book publishers and all that. But, frankly, they do not do enough to justify how much they take. Self-publishing fixes that, at the expense of having to do more of the work and management yourself. I had to find a freelance copy editor, and typeset and design the cover. But I effectively "got paid" to do that work at a much better rate than it would have cost me to "pay" a publisher to do that by giving them the lion's share of each sale. I don't want to generalize too much from my one single data point, but it seemed that for me, the increased widening of the first two steps and the greater share at step 4 more than compensated for the money left on the table for some readers at step 3. It was a clear enough signal that I'm taking the same approach with my second book. And, equally importantly, I really liked the subjective experience of it being my book and being able to put it out into the world exactly the way I wanted to.

lazyant 7y ago

For ebooks only, there are options to charge and make them available for free as well. One option is honor system: pay if you can, see for ex https://twitter.com/b0rk/status/1254396387703361536 https://twitter.com/b0rk/status/1254396387703361536 . Another option is where people can buy the book and pay for other people as well.

railing1650 7y ago

So a nobel prize winning scientist giving his opinion is banned? Keep bending over buddy.. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23062531 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23062531