9 ms·

I gave away my books and sales increased

416 points by geerlingguy 7y ago

paultopia 7y ago
There are a number of claims that this happens in the academic market as well. Sources: 1. Peter Suber's Open Access monograph, chapter 5, p. 107-110 (itself open access, of course). https://cyber.harvard.edu/hoap/Open_Access_(the_book) https://cyber.harvard.edu/hoap/Open_Access_(the_book) argues that OA books facilitate "searching and sampling," and then people want to read the whole thing in the nicer print format. 2. University of Michigan Press says it happens sometimes thanks to increased "awareness and visibility": https://www.press.umich.edu/openaccess https://www.press.umich.edu/openaccess 3. A phd thesis reviewing studies, and finding a negative relationship between OA and sales: https://openaccess.leidenuniv.nl/handle/1887/68465 https://openaccess.leidenuniv.nl/handle/1887/68465 4. A swiss study of matched pairs of books, one OA, one traditional; no statistically significant difference in sales http://www.snf.ch/SiteCollectionDocuments/OAPEN-CH_schlussbericht_en.pdf http://www.snf.ch/SiteCollectionDocuments/OAPEN-CH_schlussbe...
- OrgNet 7y ago
  > There are a number of claims that this happens in the academic market as well. it probably does until it doesn't
- dorchadas 7y ago
  It would make sense to me, at least with textbooks, that it also helps the cream rise to the top (outside of mandated ones for college classes). You can sample several, find the one you like the most, then buy a nice copy of it to keep. I've done that with several books, checking them out from a uni library or finding them by other means and then buying once I decided it was good and I was going to stick with it. I feel like others do as well, others who would never buy them otherwise. Also, if people can sample textbooks, you can easily start to see which ones are the best (subjective, in a way) and they can rise to the top.
- outlace 7y ago
  Hypothesis: Books that already have high exposure and demand will likely be negatively impacted by making a free version available. Books that would have good sales if more people knew about them will likely benefit from the increased exposure from making free versions available. But yeah I personally have had the experience of the first link - I've purchased many physical books that have free (and legal) PDFs online because I like print books better.
- teruakohatu 7y ago
  The Elements of Statistical Learning and Introduction to Statistical Learning are THE textbooks for an introduction to statistical methods of data science. They are free and very high quality. Most of my class didn't buy it, but many including myself did.
stockkid 7y ago
Hi Jeff, interesting statistics. Your Ansible book has been a great resource to me. Thanks for writing it.
mpalmer 7y ago
Nice write-up but I'm really commenting in appreciation of the perfect iambic pentameter in the HN title.
- sethammons 7y ago
  wow, how did you notice that?
  - mpalmer 7y ago
    Not sure really, it just had that 'bounce'!
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
Der_Einzige 7y ago
Thank you for this anecdote. I made a post awhile ago about how it's almost never small-time authors who get screwed by piracy and was promptly downvoted Yet again, we find that benefits of exposure > costs of some free-loading
- geerlingguy 7y ago
  To add to that point: I have a few google searches set up to get links to my books from warez/free download/random blog sites, and I see, on average, 3-5 new sites per day that have full PDF copies of my books. In the beginning I worried about this, but in the end, there are two reasons why I stopped caring: 1. I keep the book updated and relevant, so those versions of the book are basically historic artifacts and become more and more worthless over time. This value helps people who actually care about the knowledge in the book to decide to buy from LeanPub or Amazon, eventually. 2. Most of the people who put up with getting popup ads and malware on their computers just to download my book aren't likely to pay for it anyways. I have only filed one or two takedown notices, to people who posted YouTube videos infringing on the content of some of my talks and past videos, and once to a more popular / non-malicious site that was sharing a PDF.
  - mehrdadn 7y ago
    I just read the 2016 bit about how you published individual chapters to gauge interest; that was pretty cool. Could I ask you a couple of questions about it? 1. How does "purchasing" a few chapters look on the user side? e.g. Do you price every chapter and they only pay for the difference if they want to purchase the full book later? Do updates (which you said they're entitled to?) come out for individual chapters? 2. How do you get the word out initially? (I see you mentioned going to conferences; it'd be nice if you could elaborate or mention if there are other potentially effective approaches.) Thanks, and congrats on your success so far!
    - geerlingguy 7y ago
      In my case, using LeanPub, the way it works is as follows: 1. I choose a point in time to start 'publishing' (in my case with A4D it was after 3 chapters were written, first draft). 2. Users can start buying at this point, at a minimum price I determine (starting at 'free', or 4.99 and up). 3. Any user who buys the book gets DRM-free downloads in any format from LeanPub, and the book is on their permanent shelf on LeanPub, so they can download any newer version forever, free. As an author, when I push a new update, I have the ability to also send a notification email to all subscribed readers so they know a new version is available—otherwise I can just silently update it (e.g. for smaller bugfixes in the text or slight corrections).
bovermyer 7y ago
I'm not surprised. These books, and Jeff Geerling's contributions to Ansible in general, are a very strong resource for new Ansible users.
mobilio 7y ago
Nothing new... https://paulocoelhoblog.com/2008/02/03/pirate-coelho/ https://paulocoelhoblog.com/2008/02/03/pirate-coelho/ https://torrentfreak.com/alchemist-author-pirates-own-books-080124/ https://torrentfreak.com/alchemist-author-pirates-own-books-... In short Coelho pirate his own books for free. Sales was 0 in the beginning, then 10k, next year 100k, next year 1m.
- gameofcode 7y ago
  Slightly off topic, but it took me a few attempts to really get into The Alchemist - maybe because I didn't appreciate where it was going or it just wasn't good reading material for where I was in life. Eventually I stuck with it and found it a really eye-opening read, I feel like it's a life guidance book in disguise and I'm usually averse to them but the concept of a Personal Legend really did resonate with me. Not really surprised by all the negative reviews on Goodreads, I stubbornly felt a similar way for a while.
  - bananamerica 7y ago
    Brazilian speaking. Coelho is considered one of our finest songwriters of all time. He sells a lot, but is considered low literature over here. The Alchemist is basically a bunch of mystical and self help cliches. Paulo Coelho likes to propagate the notion that he posses actual magical powers. When a news crew went to his house, he refused to unsheathe a sword because it might unleash catastrophic events. That said, I read The Alchemist when I was a teenager and found it pretty fun. As a adult, I would never would never take him seriously.
    - lowdose 7y ago
      You have to appreciate the imagination of the guy!
      - bananamerica 7y ago
        Well, that’s the thing: he’s not that original. He does know how to write enjoyable best sellers with mystic overtones.
bArray 7y ago
I think there are a few reasons this works well (a simplification): 1. Ideally, you want everybody who wants to consume your product to do so at the highest price they are willing to pay (as long as that is above the cost of production and some minimum profit margin). People willing to spend a lot of money are willing to also spend less, but people who are only willing to spend less money are not willing to spend more. Therefore you target the high-buyers first and the low-buyers second, until you reach zero. 2. Value loss over time means that there is some non-infinite window in which to sell your product in order to maximize profits. The trade-off is likely market (people wanting to purchase), selling price and exposure (how many people even know it exists) - x axis is time and y is profit. In relation to this story, the exposure was low and the market was lower as a result. Reducing price increased exposure and therefore allowed the visibility of the product to the market out there. Don't under value word-of-mouth! I think this is why the film and music industry need to calm down about piracy. The EU for example withheld a study because it showed that piracy didn't provably harm sales [1]. How many people have had their internet shut off, been fined or worse because of piracy - when there's no proven victim. In fact, if anecdotes like this story are anything to go by - it may even improve sales. My anecdote: After pirating the Matrix trilogy (in a time where I had no money), I ended up buying the films on DVD twice (each film individually and then the box set). I never would have purchased these films had I first not pirated them. Similarly, I found a PDF for a book on scrum before purchasing it - and then recommending my team do the same. Side note: I remember interviewing for a company that did this kind of analysis and automatically adjusted prices for online websites. I don't think those guys actually had any clue (it was all very young programmers and no mathematicians/machine learning people) - but in theory it's entirely possible. [1] https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/09/eu-study-finds-piracy-doesnt-hurt-game-sales-may-actually-help/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/09/eu-study-finds-piracy...
- rconti 7y ago
  This an interesting addition to my line of thought which was, basically, "giving them away free is good PR" which, of course, drives attention and sales. If every book publisher (say, in the tech industry) announced free books at the same time, would this person's sales have increased by the same amount? Almost certainly not. Would they have increased at all? .. probably? But your comment adds a new twist, which is the timing/price discrimination side, where, to run an experiment, we'd also have to control for works that were already out vs not, by running this experiment on new releases as well as works already available for sale for some amount of time.
petercooper 7y ago
"For a typical author, obscurity is a far greater threat than piracy." - Tim O'Reilly
- yesenadam 7y ago
  "Human life is so far a game of cross-purposes. If we wish a thing to be kept secret, it is sure to transpire: if we wish it to be known, not a syllable is breathed about it." – Hazlitt
dilandau 7y ago
Amazon hates him! One weird trick for 10x-ing your way into the 5 hour work week!
timClicks 7y ago
Nice one Jeff! Amazed to see these kinds of sales figures. I hope that you're saving some of the income for yourself - you deserve it.
- geerlingguy 7y ago
  Of course, and thanks! I turned an almost-emergency 'need a replacement' laptop purchase into a 'wow this new laptop is so much nicer' purchase. (My 2016 non-TB MacBook Pro's battery had started ballooning and it was getting difficult to click the trackpad. The bottom case was touching the table in the middle and the front feet were about .5mm in the air. Didn't want to let it get worse!)
m52go 7y ago
It can make sense. It's also better for longevity of the work. I'm surprised Jeff is offering his videos for free too though...that seems like a perfect candidate for a paywall to capture some of the value created from the books he's giving away. Of course I don't know the whole story and realize it's a personal choice -- but, in any case, this is exactly why giving a book away for free can be so powerful. I'm planning to launch a book marketplace that offers books for free if downloaded via P2P while charging a small fee for direct HTTP downloads. https://100millionbooks.org/librery/ https://100millionbooks.org/librery/
- geerlingguy 7y ago
  > I'm surprised Jeff is offering his videos for free too though I figured it would also offer people a distraction / way to learn something during the workday (or night, I guess, outside of US and most of Europe). I've considered doing a full-fledged course a few times (and have had offers to do it for a couple different platforms), but live streaming it kind of forces the issue, and has helped me get a little more structure on my YouTube channel, which has kind of been festering since 2006 :D Now I'm considering moving on to a similar 'Kubernetes 101' at some point, maybe. It's _relatively_ fun for me, and if it opens up possibilities of another group like Device42 sponsoring portions of it, that would be a net benefit IMO—most of the free content I see is absolute-ground-level and doesn't really get far enough to make someone productive. I know for myself, having really good intro-course-level content free would've helped my growth earlier in my career (before I was able to get my workplace to pay for decent training material and conference travel).
  - geerlingguy 7y ago
    One other aside, I'm often reminded of: There's a saying "Those who can't do, teach." I think, on the contrary, a good teacher has to not only be an expert on a topic, but has to poke and prod it further, then distill everything about it down to the essentials to turn it into teachable lessons. Anyways, I figure that I have a certain amount of knowledge in my head. It would be nice if I could spread that knowledge as far and wide as possible, since that could ignite a bit more passion for good software and solid automation in others.
gnicholas 7y ago
Of course, by blogging and posting on HN about this experience, it will be more difficult to tell what portion of future sales is due to giving the books away for free, and what portion is due to blogging about having done so. Seriously, with the downvoting? This was meant to be a philosophical comment on the self-referential effect of posting about the experience.
- itake 7y ago
  What do you mean? By giving his book way for free, he was able to get HN attention (and thus get more sales).
  - gnicholas 7y ago
    Right, but if the message from his blog post is "do what I did, and you'll see similar results", then it's not sufficient just to give away your book. You also have to have a notable story to tell about it, and then go tell that story elsewhere. It's an indirect effect, not a direct effect. Also, if lots of people do this, then the publicity benefit of blogging about it will shrink because the stories won't get clicks anymore.
    - geerlingguy 7y ago
      Note that I did post about it twice (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22589339 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22589339 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22743353 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22743353) in the past, when the promo was ongoing, and those posts didn't front page. And I admit, it's not just "make something free and sales go up"—I've probably spent more time during this lockdown working on tying together social media + YouTube videos + book marketing, once I noticed the uptake on the free offer. The strangest thing to me? The 'ignition point' for going from a few hundred to multiple thousand copies of the book being given away in just a few hours was a LinkedIn post that was shared pretty heavily. LinkedIn... seriously!
gnicholas 7y ago
Lots of edtech companies gave away their tools for free [1] to support distance learning during school shutdowns. I'm sure most of them hope to garner additional sales in the long run, and possibly the short run also. My edtech startup has been giving away our most popular tool for a couple months, and paid sales are probably up 30% during that time. It certainly wasn't why we did it (we've had philanthropic programs from the beginning [1]), but it doesn't hurt. 1: https://www.amazingeducationalresources.com/ https://www.amazingeducationalresources.com/ 2: https://medium.com/@BeeLineReader/why-every-edtech-company-should-have-a-buy-1-give-1-program-97285608097b https://medium.com/@BeeLineReader/why-every-edtech-company-s...
Thorentis 7y ago
I guess this is another nail in the coffin for the "economic argument" in favour of monopolistic copyright law. People will continue making good content even if it is freely available, and sales may even increase rather than decrease.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- macintux 7y ago
  I don’t follow your logic. Without copyright, someone else could take the author’s books and give them away or sell them without attribution. How would he benefit from that?
  - Thorentis 7y ago
    I am not opposed to copyright law that makes it illegal to sell somebody else's work for profit. But what's the difference between me giving you a copy of the book for free (with attribution) and the author giving you a copy of the book? I am opposed to copyright that stops people from copying works they have purchased (or obtained elsewhere) and distributing them. And my argument was that, as shown by the post, giving copies away for free can actually increase overall sales rather than decrease them.
    - macintux 7y ago
      This is weak evidence for that conclusion. LeanPub makes it possible to buy a free book, so everyone who came for the free copy had an opportunity to immediately “tip” the author.
      - Thorentis 7y ago
        I'm not saying one anecdote along is sufficient evidence. But I've seen a fair few cases where content creators who previously had little audience or readership suddenly gained one by giving away their content for free. In the digital age, it is so easy to copy books, films, TV shows. The arguments against making it legal, is that film studios will make less money. But what percentage of people are currently not pirating content because it's illegal? I'd say a very very small handful. I would much rather have the option to obtain a copy for free, and donate to the author if I thought it was worth it. Patreon works exactly like this.
Melting_Harps 7y ago
> I guess this is another nail in the coffin for the "economic argument" in favour of monopolistic copyright law. People will continue making good content even if it is freely available, and sales may even increase rather than decrease. This reminds me of a semi-relevant experiment that happened in the underground UK bass music community; most labels are privately owned and self-releasing albums are the norm. So, somewhere in 2009ish Vinyl was coming back within the consumer Market, it was always strong within the DJ and producer community as dubplates were a form of currency to show exclusiveness and clout to get people to come out to the raves to hear a certain 'sound.' But, it occurred to the label owners and producers that they were losing a lot of money to the downloads, so instead they started to offer free digital DLs with the purchase of any vinyl pressing from these labels/producers. This was a direct response to customers voicing their opinions on forums and radio show chats/comments that made an effective feedback system possible. I used to have to wait 2-5 weeks for a vinyl to arrive, and the USD-GBP exchange rate was horrible, so I often resorted just getting the digital version, but after having lost my collections due to failed HDDs twice I knew I had to change. And once they offered this option the community responded and an influx of vinyl purchases started to come in from everywhere creating 2-3rd pressings just to fulfill demand Soon after that low-cost vinyl players were starting to gain traction and it really took off, as it was seen as somewhat of a status symbol. Now, every bandcamp artist worth it's salt has limited pressings with exclusive deals that offer this as the model proved successful--many of the artists I follow are often sold out within a week. The Freemium model can be pretty effective, I used it in my startup to some success: but 60x is beyond anyone's expectations, congrats! Sidenote: the aforementioned music community had its humble beginnings as a Pirate Radio station and being a platform to highlight local talent in an emerging scene. Years later Red Bull Music Academy would come around and invest tons of money in PR and events for those same artists.
- Thorentis 7y ago
  Great anecdote, thanks for sharing that. The more I hear these stories, the more I'm convinced that copyright law does not protect content producers at all. It protects the interests of very, very big distributors (record labels, movie producers) while in some cases making it more difficult for indie producers to distribute (licensing, derivative works, distribution, it's all a nightmare).
bg24 7y ago
You do a good service to the society, Jeff. One hypothesis can be that many people (like me) ended up paying for both the books (ansible and kubernetes) even if it was free. Someone puts their soul into creating good books that we benefit from, so why not pay if we can.
asicsp 7y ago
That's crazy sales numbers. Congrats. And I noticed an issue with leanpub sales notifications as well, was pleasantly surprised to see I'd earned more than what my emails were indicating. Seems to have been fixed, no discrepancy in last two weeks. For all my books, I've made it free for a few days and promoted it on HN/reddit/twitter/etc. That period gives me the most sales (as both leanpub and gumroad allow people to pay more than the price of the book). Before my latest book, due to increasing fear of the pandemic, I made all my books free for the foreseeable future and released the markdown source as well. Then, released the new book early (cutting down exercises and few more things). My post on HN [1] reached front page, in which I also mentioned about my other books. Last month saw the biggest sale ever for me, covers about four months of my living costs. After about two week break, I decided to update all my books (will take about two months). And then back to writing another book. I also got an offer for one of my books from a publishing company, which I turned down. A few users wrote me a mail, felt nice to discuss and goes a long way in motivating me to continue writing and improving my content. A big thanks to all the readers :) [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22758217 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22758217
- geerlingguy 7y ago
  For any author, I think the biggest joy we have is when a reader writes us and gives us some encouragement or helpful ideas/corrections/suggestions. Sometimes, yes, it can be a little burdensome if someone dumps 20 different subjective grammar fixes, but even then, it shows someone cares enough about something I produced that they spent the time to give me some feedback about it. Half the reason I keep updating Ansible for DevOps is because readers keep pushing new ideas or helping fix technical debt incurred by the passage of time in the book's GitHub repo!
dba7dba 7y ago
I really appreciate Jeff's "Ansible for DevOps". It's what got me going in using Ansible. I didn't even finish the book (due to lack of time) or know all the features in the book but I appreciate knowing Ansible whenever I use it. And his book is the reason I started writing my own ebook. It will never be as good as his but it's been a great experience.
- geerlingguy 7y ago
  According to Amazon reviewers, your book would be much better than mine if you just add an index :)
IAmGraydon 7y ago
It’s difficult to truly measure the outcome of this sort of promotion in completely new market conditions such as those we’re currently experiencing. I run a retail business on the side (still work full time) and sales have more than doubled during the pandemic with no other changes to incentivize it. I’ve been selling the same product for 1.5 years, so I have a good idea of what an average month looks like. Could be that people are spending more time online and therefore shopping. Could be that people are spending more time with their hobbies (it’s a product for musicians). Could be people spending their stimulus checks. Could be a number of other factors. My point is that’s it’s probably unwise to draw conclusions from data which was gathered in an unprecedented market, and its best to wait for market stability before running promotional trials.
- tren 7y ago
  I agree with this, I work for an ebook company and our sales are 2-3x what they usually are for this time of year. Even so, well done experimenting with a different model Jeff, you'll have a larger (and more appreciative) fan base because of it.
  - MaxBarraclough 7y ago
    > you'll have a larger (and more appreciative) fan base because of it. That's an important point. Writers don't just want sales, they want readers.
thevagrant 7y ago
I stumbled across Jeff's post about giving away his books in March. The books looked particularly useful. I felt I would get value from them so I opted to pay. It's great to see others did also! What also influenced my decision was that another of Jeff's projects had been quite helpful to me (DrupalVM).
quickthrower2 7y ago
This is pretty much the freemium model. Free gives you free marketing as people will be talking about it. Sharing on social etc. The pricing page is effectively: Free: Book Premium: Book + nice feeling of helping out a nice guy And sounds like a lot of people thought the premium version was worth it. Great stuff.
ChuckMcM 7y ago
This is great, and it was interesting that Jeff could do the experiment. I know two book agents and both agree that the #1 killer of new author sales is the fact that nobody else has read one of their books. There was an excellent article from book agents that found the "piracy" rate of new books foreshadowed their sales success. It is one of the more interesting things about information economics that information can become valuable as a reward for production.
axegon_ 7y ago
I think this has more to do with your target audience. The books in question are aimed at an audience which overall has a really good purchasing power. To many people 15 euros is an expensive book but looking at my tech books shelf, and seeing an average price of around 50 euros(many of which I would have paid double without a single doubt of hesitation), you quickly see a huge gap between the different audiences. Good developers and tech people certainly appreciate the complexity of tech books and are well aware that they are often guides to prototypes, as opposed to full, production solutions. Hence the reason why many are more than happy to support open source projects from our own pockets. Take "The Rust Programming Language" book for instance - it's completely free online but I was more than happy to purchase the paper version in order to support the authors, the same way I donate to the Linux foundation, the PSF foundation and so on. And sure enough, I appreciate someone's hard work here and I'd happily buy their books should I see them useful to me. I can't recall which artist it was (I recall it being Jan Garbarek but don't quote me on this) who gave away an album online where you could get it for free or any amount you like. I recall several sales in the 5-digits which is a clear message. But much like textbooks, such music has a very particular audience and such... Let's call them "stunts" wouldn't be successful for most products and would backfire terribly.
mcprwklzpq 7y ago
It seem like an illustration of the power of reciprocity in social psychology.[1] You give something away for free and then those who took what you gave feel obligated to give something back to you. I sometimes wonder if those who give away their book for an email would get more emails if they would first give away their book and only then ask your email. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reciprocity_(social_psychology)#The_power_of_reciprocity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reciprocity_(social_psychology...
- geerlingguy 7y ago
  I hate it when people ask for an email for something free; feels the same as those annoying pop ups when reading half of the world’s blogs these days. If I want to follow someone I’ll find an RSS feed :P
enriquto 7y ago
I buy a lot of physical books because I love them, an I can relate to this. Whenever I see a book in my field that the author is offering for download, I systematically buy it. When still wanting a book that is not freely downloadable by the author, I first look at a pirate copy and read it for a few days before buying. Would never consider buying a book before having seen an electronic copy.
mark_l_watson 7y ago
Congratulations, those are great give-away and also sales numbers! I do something similar on leanpub [1] by setting the minimum price very low, free reading online, and a Creative Common share license and encouraging people to share my books with their friends. As you mentioned, leanpub makes it really easy to update books and I am probably going to pull my books from Kindle Marketplace because of the overhead of updating them. I like your approach - I am tempted to copy your process. [1] https://leanpub.com/u/markwatson https://leanpub.com/u/markwatson
- geerlingguy 7y ago
  Yeah updating books on Amazon is a painful process; I wish they made it way easier, but their model is very much tied to the traditional publishing model.
  - mark_l_watson 7y ago
    Yes, but there is no reason that Amazon's self-serve Kindle publishing platform could not support easy updates with automatic notifications to readers (if they opt-in for notifications). Leanpub does it very well.
BizadmarkNY 7y ago
Those are crazy numbers and bravo to you. I am trying to use ebook as lead magnet for Sales Funnel and your insights are very helpful.
acd 7y ago
Great work Jeff! I think it works like marketing when you give away the books. More people who are willing to pay knows about the books through the free copies.
Arkanosis 7y ago
> Nobody who bought my book will buy it again This might be mostly true, however when you've got something for free (because of a giveaway or through piracy) and you love it, you may want to buy it afterwards to show you support and maximize the chances of having more stuff you like in the future. I actually quite often pay for stuff I already have and my level of satisfaction is on average much higher than when I pay for stuff I don't have (should I say obviously?).
jlgaddis 7y ago
Out of curiosity, has (the print version of) Ansible for DevOps been updated since it was first published? I purchased the dead-tree version probably three or four years ago and, unfortunately, it was basically already outdated by that time. I learned a bit from it but so Ansible moves pretty fast -- or did back then, at least -- so it wasn't nearly as useful as it could have been. (I don't remember any specifics, sorry.) That experience led me to stop buying books on new and/or fast-moving technologies.
thyrsus 7y ago
What's the best way to get a paper copy? I see Amazon for the DevOps book; are they the easiest to deal with? Most reliable? Highest margin?

416 points by geerlingguy 7y ago

There are a number of claims that this happens in the academic market as well. Sources: 1. Peter Suber's Open Access monograph, chapter 5, p. 107-110 (itself open access, of course). https://cyber.harvard.edu/hoap/Open_Access_(the_book) https://cyber.harvard.edu/hoap/Open_Access_(the_book) argues that OA books facilitate "searching and sampling," and then people want to read the whole thing in the nicer print format. 2. University of Michigan Press says it happens sometimes thanks to increased "awareness and visibility": https://www.press.umich.edu/openaccess https://www.press.umich.edu/openaccess 3. A phd thesis reviewing studies, and finding a negative relationship between OA and sales: https://openaccess.leidenuniv.nl/handle/1887/68465 https://openaccess.leidenuniv.nl/handle/1887/68465 4. A swiss study of matched pairs of books, one OA, one traditional; no statistically significant difference in sales http://www.snf.ch/SiteCollectionDocuments/OAPEN-CH_schlussbericht_en.pdf http://www.snf.ch/SiteCollectionDocuments/OAPEN-CH_schlussbe...

OrgNet 7y ago
> There are a number of claims that this happens in the academic market as well. it probably does until it doesn't
dorchadas 7y ago
It would make sense to me, at least with textbooks, that it also helps the cream rise to the top (outside of mandated ones for college classes). You can sample several, find the one you like the most, then buy a nice copy of it to keep. I've done that with several books, checking them out from a uni library or finding them by other means and then buying once I decided it was good and I was going to stick with it. I feel like others do as well, others who would never buy them otherwise. Also, if people can sample textbooks, you can easily start to see which ones are the best (subjective, in a way) and they can rise to the top.
outlace 7y ago
Hypothesis: Books that already have high exposure and demand will likely be negatively impacted by making a free version available. Books that would have good sales if more people knew about them will likely benefit from the increased exposure from making free versions available. But yeah I personally have had the experience of the first link - I've purchased many physical books that have free (and legal) PDFs online because I like print books better.
teruakohatu 7y ago
The Elements of Statistical Learning and Introduction to Statistical Learning are THE textbooks for an introduction to statistical methods of data science. They are free and very high quality. Most of my class didn't buy it, but many including myself did.

stockkid 7y ago

Hi Jeff, interesting statistics. Your Ansible book has been a great resource to me. Thanks for writing it.

mpalmer 7y ago

Nice write-up but I'm really commenting in appreciation of the perfect iambic pentameter in the HN title.

sethammons 7y ago
wow, how did you notice that?
- mpalmer 7y ago
  Not sure really, it just had that 'bounce'!
deleted 7y ago
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Der_Einzige 7y ago

Thank you for this anecdote. I made a post awhile ago about how it's almost never small-time authors who get screwed by piracy and was promptly downvoted Yet again, we find that benefits of exposure > costs of some free-loading

geerlingguy 7y ago
To add to that point: I have a few google searches set up to get links to my books from warez/free download/random blog sites, and I see, on average, 3-5 new sites per day that have full PDF copies of my books. In the beginning I worried about this, but in the end, there are two reasons why I stopped caring: 1. I keep the book updated and relevant, so those versions of the book are basically historic artifacts and become more and more worthless over time. This value helps people who actually care about the knowledge in the book to decide to buy from LeanPub or Amazon, eventually. 2. Most of the people who put up with getting popup ads and malware on their computers just to download my book aren't likely to pay for it anyways. I have only filed one or two takedown notices, to people who posted YouTube videos infringing on the content of some of my talks and past videos, and once to a more popular / non-malicious site that was sharing a PDF.
- mehrdadn 7y ago
  I just read the 2016 bit about how you published individual chapters to gauge interest; that was pretty cool. Could I ask you a couple of questions about it? 1. How does "purchasing" a few chapters look on the user side? e.g. Do you price every chapter and they only pay for the difference if they want to purchase the full book later? Do updates (which you said they're entitled to?) come out for individual chapters? 2. How do you get the word out initially? (I see you mentioned going to conferences; it'd be nice if you could elaborate or mention if there are other potentially effective approaches.) Thanks, and congrats on your success so far!
  - geerlingguy 7y ago
    In my case, using LeanPub, the way it works is as follows: 1. I choose a point in time to start 'publishing' (in my case with A4D it was after 3 chapters were written, first draft). 2. Users can start buying at this point, at a minimum price I determine (starting at 'free', or 4.99 and up). 3. Any user who buys the book gets DRM-free downloads in any format from LeanPub, and the book is on their permanent shelf on LeanPub, so they can download any newer version forever, free. As an author, when I push a new update, I have the ability to also send a notification email to all subscribed readers so they know a new version is available—otherwise I can just silently update it (e.g. for smaller bugfixes in the text or slight corrections).

bovermyer 7y ago

I'm not surprised. These books, and Jeff Geerling's contributions to Ansible in general, are a very strong resource for new Ansible users.

mobilio 7y ago

Nothing new... https://paulocoelhoblog.com/2008/02/03/pirate-coelho/ https://paulocoelhoblog.com/2008/02/03/pirate-coelho/ https://torrentfreak.com/alchemist-author-pirates-own-books-080124/ https://torrentfreak.com/alchemist-author-pirates-own-books-... In short Coelho pirate his own books for free. Sales was 0 in the beginning, then 10k, next year 100k, next year 1m.

gameofcode 7y ago
Slightly off topic, but it took me a few attempts to really get into The Alchemist - maybe because I didn't appreciate where it was going or it just wasn't good reading material for where I was in life. Eventually I stuck with it and found it a really eye-opening read, I feel like it's a life guidance book in disguise and I'm usually averse to them but the concept of a Personal Legend really did resonate with me. Not really surprised by all the negative reviews on Goodreads, I stubbornly felt a similar way for a while.
- bananamerica 7y ago
  Brazilian speaking. Coelho is considered one of our finest songwriters of all time. He sells a lot, but is considered low literature over here. The Alchemist is basically a bunch of mystical and self help cliches. Paulo Coelho likes to propagate the notion that he posses actual magical powers. When a news crew went to his house, he refused to unsheathe a sword because it might unleash catastrophic events. That said, I read The Alchemist when I was a teenager and found it pretty fun. As a adult, I would never would never take him seriously.
  - lowdose 7y ago
    You have to appreciate the imagination of the guy!
    - bananamerica 7y ago
      Well, that’s the thing: he’s not that original. He does know how to write enjoyable best sellers with mystic overtones.

bArray 7y ago

I think there are a few reasons this works well (a simplification): 1. Ideally, you want everybody who wants to consume your product to do so at the highest price they are willing to pay (as long as that is above the cost of production and some minimum profit margin). People willing to spend a lot of money are willing to also spend less, but people who are only willing to spend less money are not willing to spend more. Therefore you target the high-buyers first and the low-buyers second, until you reach zero. 2. Value loss over time means that there is some non-infinite window in which to sell your product in order to maximize profits. The trade-off is likely market (people wanting to purchase), selling price and exposure (how many people even know it exists) - x axis is time and y is profit. In relation to this story, the exposure was low and the market was lower as a result. Reducing price increased exposure and therefore allowed the visibility of the product to the market out there. Don't under value word-of-mouth! I think this is why the film and music industry need to calm down about piracy. The EU for example withheld a study because it showed that piracy didn't provably harm sales [1]. How many people have had their internet shut off, been fined or worse because of piracy - when there's no proven victim. In fact, if anecdotes like this story are anything to go by - it may even improve sales. My anecdote: After pirating the Matrix trilogy (in a time where I had no money), I ended up buying the films on DVD twice (each film individually and then the box set). I never would have purchased these films had I first not pirated them. Similarly, I found a PDF for a book on scrum before purchasing it - and then recommending my team do the same. Side note: I remember interviewing for a company that did this kind of analysis and automatically adjusted prices for online websites. I don't think those guys actually had any clue (it was all very young programmers and no mathematicians/machine learning people) - but in theory it's entirely possible. [1] https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/09/eu-study-finds-piracy-doesnt-hurt-game-sales-may-actually-help/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/09/eu-study-finds-piracy...

rconti 7y ago
This an interesting addition to my line of thought which was, basically, "giving them away free is good PR" which, of course, drives attention and sales. If every book publisher (say, in the tech industry) announced free books at the same time, would this person's sales have increased by the same amount? Almost certainly not. Would they have increased at all? .. probably? But your comment adds a new twist, which is the timing/price discrimination side, where, to run an experiment, we'd also have to control for works that were already out vs not, by running this experiment on new releases as well as works already available for sale for some amount of time.

petercooper 7y ago

"For a typical author, obscurity is a far greater threat than piracy." - Tim O'Reilly

yesenadam 7y ago
"Human life is so far a game of cross-purposes. If we wish a thing to be kept secret, it is sure to transpire: if we wish it to be known, not a syllable is breathed about it." – Hazlitt

dilandau 7y ago

Amazon hates him! One weird trick for 10x-ing your way into the 5 hour work week!

timClicks 7y ago

Nice one Jeff! Amazed to see these kinds of sales figures. I hope that you're saving some of the income for yourself - you deserve it.

geerlingguy 7y ago
Of course, and thanks! I turned an almost-emergency 'need a replacement' laptop purchase into a 'wow this new laptop is so much nicer' purchase. (My 2016 non-TB MacBook Pro's battery had started ballooning and it was getting difficult to click the trackpad. The bottom case was touching the table in the middle and the front feet were about .5mm in the air. Didn't want to let it get worse!)

m52go 7y ago

It can make sense. It's also better for longevity of the work. I'm surprised Jeff is offering his videos for free too though...that seems like a perfect candidate for a paywall to capture some of the value created from the books he's giving away. Of course I don't know the whole story and realize it's a personal choice -- but, in any case, this is exactly why giving a book away for free can be so powerful. I'm planning to launch a book marketplace that offers books for free if downloaded via P2P while charging a small fee for direct HTTP downloads. https://100millionbooks.org/librery/ https://100millionbooks.org/librery/

geerlingguy 7y ago
> I'm surprised Jeff is offering his videos for free too though I figured it would also offer people a distraction / way to learn something during the workday (or night, I guess, outside of US and most of Europe). I've considered doing a full-fledged course a few times (and have had offers to do it for a couple different platforms), but live streaming it kind of forces the issue, and has helped me get a little more structure on my YouTube channel, which has kind of been festering since 2006 :D Now I'm considering moving on to a similar 'Kubernetes 101' at some point, maybe. It's _relatively_ fun for me, and if it opens up possibilities of another group like Device42 sponsoring portions of it, that would be a net benefit IMO—most of the free content I see is absolute-ground-level and doesn't really get far enough to make someone productive. I know for myself, having really good intro-course-level content free would've helped my growth earlier in my career (before I was able to get my workplace to pay for decent training material and conference travel).
- geerlingguy 7y ago
  One other aside, I'm often reminded of: There's a saying "Those who can't do, teach." I think, on the contrary, a good teacher has to not only be an expert on a topic, but has to poke and prod it further, then distill everything about it down to the essentials to turn it into teachable lessons. Anyways, I figure that I have a certain amount of knowledge in my head. It would be nice if I could spread that knowledge as far and wide as possible, since that could ignite a bit more passion for good software and solid automation in others.

gnicholas 7y ago

Of course, by blogging and posting on HN about this experience, it will be more difficult to tell what portion of future sales is due to giving the books away for free, and what portion is due to blogging about having done so. Seriously, with the downvoting? This was meant to be a philosophical comment on the self-referential effect of posting about the experience.

itake 7y ago
What do you mean? By giving his book way for free, he was able to get HN attention (and thus get more sales).
- gnicholas 7y ago
  Right, but if the message from his blog post is "do what I did, and you'll see similar results", then it's not sufficient just to give away your book. You also have to have a notable story to tell about it, and then go tell that story elsewhere. It's an indirect effect, not a direct effect. Also, if lots of people do this, then the publicity benefit of blogging about it will shrink because the stories won't get clicks anymore.
  - geerlingguy 7y ago
    Note that I did post about it twice (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22589339 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22589339 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22743353 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22743353) in the past, when the promo was ongoing, and those posts didn't front page. And I admit, it's not just "make something free and sales go up"—I've probably spent more time during this lockdown working on tying together social media + YouTube videos + book marketing, once I noticed the uptake on the free offer. The strangest thing to me? The 'ignition point' for going from a few hundred to multiple thousand copies of the book being given away in just a few hours was a LinkedIn post that was shared pretty heavily. LinkedIn... seriously!

gnicholas 7y ago

Lots of edtech companies gave away their tools for free [1] to support distance learning during school shutdowns. I'm sure most of them hope to garner additional sales in the long run, and possibly the short run also. My edtech startup has been giving away our most popular tool for a couple months, and paid sales are probably up 30% during that time. It certainly wasn't why we did it (we've had philanthropic programs from the beginning [1]), but it doesn't hurt. 1: https://www.amazingeducationalresources.com/ https://www.amazingeducationalresources.com/ 2: https://medium.com/@BeeLineReader/why-every-edtech-company-should-have-a-buy-1-give-1-program-97285608097b https://medium.com/@BeeLineReader/why-every-edtech-company-s...

Thorentis 7y ago

I guess this is another nail in the coffin for the "economic argument" in favour of monopolistic copyright law. People will continue making good content even if it is freely available, and sales may even increase rather than decrease.

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macintux 7y ago
I don’t follow your logic. Without copyright, someone else could take the author’s books and give them away or sell them without attribution. How would he benefit from that?
- Thorentis 7y ago
  I am not opposed to copyright law that makes it illegal to sell somebody else's work for profit. But what's the difference between me giving you a copy of the book for free (with attribution) and the author giving you a copy of the book? I am opposed to copyright that stops people from copying works they have purchased (or obtained elsewhere) and distributing them. And my argument was that, as shown by the post, giving copies away for free can actually increase overall sales rather than decrease them.
  - macintux 7y ago
    This is weak evidence for that conclusion. LeanPub makes it possible to buy a free book, so everyone who came for the free copy had an opportunity to immediately “tip” the author.
    - Thorentis 7y ago
      I'm not saying one anecdote along is sufficient evidence. But I've seen a fair few cases where content creators who previously had little audience or readership suddenly gained one by giving away their content for free. In the digital age, it is so easy to copy books, films, TV shows. The arguments against making it legal, is that film studios will make less money. But what percentage of people are currently not pirating content because it's illegal? I'd say a very very small handful. I would much rather have the option to obtain a copy for free, and donate to the author if I thought it was worth it. Patreon works exactly like this.

Melting_Harps 7y ago

> I guess this is another nail in the coffin for the "economic argument" in favour of monopolistic copyright law. People will continue making good content even if it is freely available, and sales may even increase rather than decrease. This reminds me of a semi-relevant experiment that happened in the underground UK bass music community; most labels are privately owned and self-releasing albums are the norm. So, somewhere in 2009ish Vinyl was coming back within the consumer Market, it was always strong within the DJ and producer community as dubplates were a form of currency to show exclusiveness and clout to get people to come out to the raves to hear a certain 'sound.' But, it occurred to the label owners and producers that they were losing a lot of money to the downloads, so instead they started to offer free digital DLs with the purchase of any vinyl pressing from these labels/producers. This was a direct response to customers voicing their opinions on forums and radio show chats/comments that made an effective feedback system possible. I used to have to wait 2-5 weeks for a vinyl to arrive, and the USD-GBP exchange rate was horrible, so I often resorted just getting the digital version, but after having lost my collections due to failed HDDs twice I knew I had to change. And once they offered this option the community responded and an influx of vinyl purchases started to come in from everywhere creating 2-3rd pressings just to fulfill demand Soon after that low-cost vinyl players were starting to gain traction and it really took off, as it was seen as somewhat of a status symbol. Now, every bandcamp artist worth it's salt has limited pressings with exclusive deals that offer this as the model proved successful--many of the artists I follow are often sold out within a week. The Freemium model can be pretty effective, I used it in my startup to some success: but 60x is beyond anyone's expectations, congrats! Sidenote: the aforementioned music community had its humble beginnings as a Pirate Radio station and being a platform to highlight local talent in an emerging scene. Years later Red Bull Music Academy would come around and invest tons of money in PR and events for those same artists.

Thorentis 7y ago
Great anecdote, thanks for sharing that. The more I hear these stories, the more I'm convinced that copyright law does not protect content producers at all. It protects the interests of very, very big distributors (record labels, movie producers) while in some cases making it more difficult for indie producers to distribute (licensing, derivative works, distribution, it's all a nightmare).

bg24 7y ago

You do a good service to the society, Jeff. One hypothesis can be that many people (like me) ended up paying for both the books (ansible and kubernetes) even if it was free. Someone puts their soul into creating good books that we benefit from, so why not pay if we can.

asicsp 7y ago

That's crazy sales numbers. Congrats. And I noticed an issue with leanpub sales notifications as well, was pleasantly surprised to see I'd earned more than what my emails were indicating. Seems to have been fixed, no discrepancy in last two weeks. For all my books, I've made it free for a few days and promoted it on HN/reddit/twitter/etc. That period gives me the most sales (as both leanpub and gumroad allow people to pay more than the price of the book). Before my latest book, due to increasing fear of the pandemic, I made all my books free for the foreseeable future and released the markdown source as well. Then, released the new book early (cutting down exercises and few more things). My post on HN [1] reached front page, in which I also mentioned about my other books. Last month saw the biggest sale ever for me, covers about four months of my living costs. After about two week break, I decided to update all my books (will take about two months). And then back to writing another book. I also got an offer for one of my books from a publishing company, which I turned down. A few users wrote me a mail, felt nice to discuss and goes a long way in motivating me to continue writing and improving my content. A big thanks to all the readers :) [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22758217 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22758217

geerlingguy 7y ago
For any author, I think the biggest joy we have is when a reader writes us and gives us some encouragement or helpful ideas/corrections/suggestions. Sometimes, yes, it can be a little burdensome if someone dumps 20 different subjective grammar fixes, but even then, it shows someone cares enough about something I produced that they spent the time to give me some feedback about it. Half the reason I keep updating Ansible for DevOps is because readers keep pushing new ideas or helping fix technical debt incurred by the passage of time in the book's GitHub repo!

dba7dba 7y ago

I really appreciate Jeff's "Ansible for DevOps". It's what got me going in using Ansible. I didn't even finish the book (due to lack of time) or know all the features in the book but I appreciate knowing Ansible whenever I use it. And his book is the reason I started writing my own ebook. It will never be as good as his but it's been a great experience.

geerlingguy 7y ago
According to Amazon reviewers, your book would be much better than mine if you just add an index :)

IAmGraydon 7y ago

It’s difficult to truly measure the outcome of this sort of promotion in completely new market conditions such as those we’re currently experiencing. I run a retail business on the side (still work full time) and sales have more than doubled during the pandemic with no other changes to incentivize it. I’ve been selling the same product for 1.5 years, so I have a good idea of what an average month looks like. Could be that people are spending more time online and therefore shopping. Could be that people are spending more time with their hobbies (it’s a product for musicians). Could be people spending their stimulus checks. Could be a number of other factors. My point is that’s it’s probably unwise to draw conclusions from data which was gathered in an unprecedented market, and its best to wait for market stability before running promotional trials.

tren 7y ago
I agree with this, I work for an ebook company and our sales are 2-3x what they usually are for this time of year. Even so, well done experimenting with a different model Jeff, you'll have a larger (and more appreciative) fan base because of it.
- MaxBarraclough 7y ago
  > you'll have a larger (and more appreciative) fan base because of it. That's an important point. Writers don't just want sales, they want readers.

thevagrant 7y ago

I stumbled across Jeff's post about giving away his books in March. The books looked particularly useful. I felt I would get value from them so I opted to pay. It's great to see others did also! What also influenced my decision was that another of Jeff's projects had been quite helpful to me (DrupalVM).

quickthrower2 7y ago

This is pretty much the freemium model. Free gives you free marketing as people will be talking about it. Sharing on social etc. The pricing page is effectively: Free: Book Premium: Book + nice feeling of helping out a nice guy And sounds like a lot of people thought the premium version was worth it. Great stuff.

ChuckMcM 7y ago

This is great, and it was interesting that Jeff could do the experiment. I know two book agents and both agree that the #1 killer of new author sales is the fact that nobody else has read one of their books. There was an excellent article from book agents that found the "piracy" rate of new books foreshadowed their sales success. It is one of the more interesting things about information economics that information can become valuable as a reward for production.

axegon_ 7y ago

I think this has more to do with your target audience. The books in question are aimed at an audience which overall has a really good purchasing power. To many people 15 euros is an expensive book but looking at my tech books shelf, and seeing an average price of around 50 euros(many of which I would have paid double without a single doubt of hesitation), you quickly see a huge gap between the different audiences. Good developers and tech people certainly appreciate the complexity of tech books and are well aware that they are often guides to prototypes, as opposed to full, production solutions. Hence the reason why many are more than happy to support open source projects from our own pockets. Take "The Rust Programming Language" book for instance - it's completely free online but I was more than happy to purchase the paper version in order to support the authors, the same way I donate to the Linux foundation, the PSF foundation and so on. And sure enough, I appreciate someone's hard work here and I'd happily buy their books should I see them useful to me. I can't recall which artist it was (I recall it being Jan Garbarek but don't quote me on this) who gave away an album online where you could get it for free or any amount you like. I recall several sales in the 5-digits which is a clear message. But much like textbooks, such music has a very particular audience and such... Let's call them "stunts" wouldn't be successful for most products and would backfire terribly.

mcprwklzpq 7y ago

It seem like an illustration of the power of reciprocity in social psychology.[1] You give something away for free and then those who took what you gave feel obligated to give something back to you. I sometimes wonder if those who give away their book for an email would get more emails if they would first give away their book and only then ask your email. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reciprocity_(social_psychology)#The_power_of_reciprocity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reciprocity_(social_psychology...

geerlingguy 7y ago
I hate it when people ask for an email for something free; feels the same as those annoying pop ups when reading half of the world’s blogs these days. If I want to follow someone I’ll find an RSS feed :P

enriquto 7y ago

I buy a lot of physical books because I love them, an I can relate to this. Whenever I see a book in my field that the author is offering for download, I systematically buy it. When still wanting a book that is not freely downloadable by the author, I first look at a pirate copy and read it for a few days before buying. Would never consider buying a book before having seen an electronic copy.

mark_l_watson 7y ago

Congratulations, those are great give-away and also sales numbers! I do something similar on leanpub [1] by setting the minimum price very low, free reading online, and a Creative Common share license and encouraging people to share my books with their friends. As you mentioned, leanpub makes it really easy to update books and I am probably going to pull my books from Kindle Marketplace because of the overhead of updating them. I like your approach - I am tempted to copy your process. [1] https://leanpub.com/u/markwatson https://leanpub.com/u/markwatson

geerlingguy 7y ago
Yeah updating books on Amazon is a painful process; I wish they made it way easier, but their model is very much tied to the traditional publishing model.
- mark_l_watson 7y ago
  Yes, but there is no reason that Amazon's self-serve Kindle publishing platform could not support easy updates with automatic notifications to readers (if they opt-in for notifications). Leanpub does it very well.

BizadmarkNY 7y ago

Those are crazy numbers and bravo to you. I am trying to use ebook as lead magnet for Sales Funnel and your insights are very helpful.

acd 7y ago

Great work Jeff! I think it works like marketing when you give away the books. More people who are willing to pay knows about the books through the free copies.

Arkanosis 7y ago

> Nobody who bought my book will buy it again This might be mostly true, however when you've got something for free (because of a giveaway or through piracy) and you love it, you may want to buy it afterwards to show you support and maximize the chances of having more stuff you like in the future. I actually quite often pay for stuff I already have and my level of satisfaction is on average much higher than when I pay for stuff I don't have (should I say obviously?).

jlgaddis 7y ago

Out of curiosity, has (the print version of) Ansible for DevOps been updated since it was first published? I purchased the dead-tree version probably three or four years ago and, unfortunately, it was basically already outdated by that time. I learned a bit from it but so Ansible moves pretty fast -- or did back then, at least -- so it wasn't nearly as useful as it could have been. (I don't remember any specifics, sorry.) That experience led me to stop buying books on new and/or fast-moving technologies.

thyrsus 7y ago

What's the best way to get a paper copy? I see Amazon for the DevOps book; are they the easiest to deal with? Most reliable? Highest margin?