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I've had a similar experience with http://hlrb.org http://hlrb.org. Sales flagged until I gave away the PDF/HTML; not that they're smashing now, but they are w

I've had a similar experience with http://hlrb.org http://hlrb.org. Sales flagged until I gave away the PDF/HTML; not that they're smashing now, but they are way better than they were. I keep saying this: People don't like to pay for eBooks (yet). When I wrote the Rails Upgrade Handbook, I initially put out market feelers at $20, but most people said that was too expensive. I settled pretty arbitrarily at $12. It sold well, but as sales began to slope off, I ran a $6 sale for some time (stated as a celebration of Rails 3 stable I think and then just continued on just because), and wouldn't you know, sales soared for a while. I plan on implementing a pricing structure similar to what he's done here once Rails 3.1 hits next month; we'll see what that experiment yields. My eBook on writing eBooks (http://authoringebooks.com http://authoringebooks.com) hasn't sold well by most mainstream standards, and I can almost guarantee the $49 price tag is partially to blame. Unfortunately, it'd be really problematic to have a print edition of a book on writing eBooks, so I'm just going to have to figure out a better way to market it. :) Maybe one day soon people will be willing to pay more for eBooks, but at this point I can't blame them. You don't get a tangible good that you can give specific value to. With current rights scehemes, if you delete the file on accident or something, it's possible that you're hosed for good. The medium in general still isn't a solved problem, but maybe one day soon it will be...

ashearer 16y ago
I'm sure there are many kinds of authors curious about entering the e-book market, and those with the most to learn would be traditionalists who don't themselves buy e-books. So I wouldn't entirely dismiss the idea of a printed book on writing e-books. (It's bound to generate a few snickers. But then again, you could use that sentence to promote it.)
silentbicycle 16y ago
As a data point: I'm reluctant to pay too much for ebooks, because they have no resale value. There are plenty of print books that I've happily spent $30-100 for, because I know that I can resell them for most of the cost (typically $5 less, at most) if I don't consider them worth keeping. Arguably, this makes their effective cost more like $5-10, give or take - mostly shipping. I'm quite willing to pay more for books that are worthwhile, but it's hard to tell upfront. I really like the MEAP subscription model of, "free trial chapter(s), subscribe and get further chapters as they're written, get the book when it's done". Plus, it works even better for serial fiction. Also: I have a kindle, and I use the hell out of it (citeseer!); I'm in no way opposed to ebooks. Just, pricing them is tricky. I've bought several. I also worked in a library for several years. Make what of that you will.
- roel_v 16y ago
  Who pays (sticker - $5) for a used book? Add the shipping cost and you're more expensive than a new one! Plus, what kind of book do you buy that have resale value? They surely aren't programming/IT books, because those become worthless after 3 years or so.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  - gjm11 16y ago
    They don't all become worthless after 3 years or so, though the ones that don't tend to be the ones you aren't going to want to sell. Some categories of programming books whose utility and/or interest needn't drop much years after they were written: Algorithms books (Knuth, Cormen/Leiserson/Rivest/Stein). Books on fundamentals and high-level principles (SICP, Code Complete, Pragmatic Programmer, Design Patterns). Books whose tool-specific content relates to tools that aren't changing much (Paradigms of AI Programming, Thinking Forth) or at least that have a large enough stable-enough core (Effective C++). (Note: "hasn't lost much value" isn't quite the same thing as "has a great deal of value". Some of those books are better than others.)
- rmc 16y ago
  Tech books depreciate quickly. I'd guess a 5-10 year old Ruby or javascript book would not have a lot of resale value.
  - silentbicycle 16y ago
    Not necessarily; that says more about Ruby and Javascript than anything. I have plenty of tech books from ten or twenty years ago that are still valuable resources. Actual computer science books have a much longer shelf life than "$Tech_of_the_moment In Action".
- bemmu 16y ago
  I actually consider physical books to have negative resale value. I recently moved to Japan so I wanted to get rid of all my heavy belongings. I listed all my books on an auction site and on bookmooch. All in all I ended up spending hours thinking about those books, mailing them, meeting people who came to pick them up etc. and all for some insignificant sum compared to the time spent. It would have been cheaper to throw them in the trash, but being a physical thing potentially useful for someone, I didn't have the heart to do that.
patio11 16y ago
People don't like to pay for eBooks (yet) People make a lot of money selling eBooks, including to programmers. (Indeed, the recent change in the market is that thanks to the Kindle you can actually do well selling books which don't cost ~$50 and/or fiction.) Ask Amy Hoy, who cowrote a fairly successful one with her husband about JS performance. Your problem is not your pricing. Your problem is that your marketing does not communicate value sufficient to justify a higher pricing. If you hear someone on HN or demographically similar say "That's too much money!", file them away in the pathological customer bin. Look at the difference between your site and these sites, then optimize accordingly: http://javascriptrocks.com/performance/ http://javascriptrocks.com/performance/ http://www.startupbook.net/ http://www.startupbook.net/ http://peepcode.com/products/meet-rails-3-i http://peepcode.com/products/meet-rails-3-i <-- not an ebook, but similar
- jeremymcanally 16y ago
  Trust me, I know people are buying (I've made nearly as much as or more than Amy off my eBooks other than the authoring one). The volume for something that sells well isn't the issue. It's really that people don't want to pay as much for eBooks as one would hope/think. Part of the problem is the "I don't get something tangible for my money." Never mind you're receiving a lot of, you know, information or anything. People want something they can point to and be like "Yo, I bought that." That's hard to do with eBooks, so you have to consistently price them lower. Also, marketing to programmers/the HN crowd is significantly harder than a mainstream crowd because you have to deal with the Nick Burns Effect: you are an idiot and I could totally do everything better than you in a weekend. Rails 3 Upgrade Handbook? Received hate mail for weeks about how I should have made it free, how I charge too much, how the book isn't available in HTML, how they could write the whole thing in a weekend using an automated script (seriously), etc. I still get the occasional e-mail about how "I'm probably going to write my own FREE AND OPEN SOURCE guide (which is MORALLY SUPERIOR TO YOURS), so you should just give me a free copy of yours to help you fix any errors." It's a culture issue that's difficult to work around. Even worse, selling them on something that isn't essential to their job function is difficult (most people don't write eBooks for a living), and the problem with http://authoringebooks.com http://authoringebooks.com is compounded with the fact that I'm competing against people who are entrenched and SEO'd out the butt. I don't have time to sit around and tweak my SEO stuff all day, so my organic Google traffic is significantly lower than what it would be if I were more visible. And also, the market for those who want to write a technical ebook may not be as big as I originally anticipated. :) So, uh yeah, I agree. Pathological customer bad.
gommm 16y ago
Just as a personal datapoint. Personally I know that my impulse buy limit for ebooks is up to 15$, over that I hesitate, spend a lot time thinking and so on. For books my impulse buy limit is around 25$ but that's because I can resell it if I don't like it and because while I enjoy reading fiction as ebooks, I prefer paperback for technical content.
- gommm 16y ago
  Another point where I'm a bit irrational, if I find out that an ebook had a sale for a substantially lower price than now (like the 15$ sale for the "authoring ebooks" book), I'm much less likely to want to buy it at full price because then I feel cheated... It's the same thing for Iphone Apps and so on... I'm not sure if there are many people like me, it's a bit irrational but it's something that might be a good idea to take into account before doing a sale... By doing a sale you fix the value of your product in the mind of the customer to the price of the sale.
davidw 16y ago
> You don't get a tangible good that you can give specific value to. Some various problems with eBooks are that 1) you can't resell it, 2) they're difficult to loan to people, or 3) difficult to leave lying around in the office for people to peruse. That said, I think it's a very, very interesting space and am working on a product myself: http://www.liberwriter.com http://www.liberwriter.com - I'll hopefully do a 'show HN' in a few days.
haraball 16y ago
My problem with buying books, both printed and ebooks, related to programming something in a specific version, is that I know that in a few months the code in the book will be outdated. Give me a price for the current book including updates in the future and I would gladly pay a bit extra.

ashearer 16y ago

I'm sure there are many kinds of authors curious about entering the e-book market, and those with the most to learn would be traditionalists who don't themselves buy e-books. So I wouldn't entirely dismiss the idea of a printed book on writing e-books. (It's bound to generate a few snickers. But then again, you could use that sentence to promote it.)

silentbicycle 16y ago

As a data point: I'm reluctant to pay too much for ebooks, because they have no resale value. There are plenty of print books that I've happily spent $30-100 for, because I know that I can resell them for most of the cost (typically $5 less, at most) if I don't consider them worth keeping. Arguably, this makes their effective cost more like $5-10, give or take - mostly shipping. I'm quite willing to pay more for books that are worthwhile, but it's hard to tell upfront. I really like the MEAP subscription model of, "free trial chapter(s), subscribe and get further chapters as they're written, get the book when it's done". Plus, it works even better for serial fiction. Also: I have a kindle, and I use the hell out of it (citeseer!); I'm in no way opposed to ebooks. Just, pricing them is tricky. I've bought several. I also worked in a library for several years. Make what of that you will.

roel_v 16y ago
Who pays (sticker - $5) for a used book? Add the shipping cost and you're more expensive than a new one! Plus, what kind of book do you buy that have resale value? They surely aren't programming/IT books, because those become worthless after 3 years or so.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- gjm11 16y ago
  They don't all become worthless after 3 years or so, though the ones that don't tend to be the ones you aren't going to want to sell. Some categories of programming books whose utility and/or interest needn't drop much years after they were written: Algorithms books (Knuth, Cormen/Leiserson/Rivest/Stein). Books on fundamentals and high-level principles (SICP, Code Complete, Pragmatic Programmer, Design Patterns). Books whose tool-specific content relates to tools that aren't changing much (Paradigms of AI Programming, Thinking Forth) or at least that have a large enough stable-enough core (Effective C++). (Note: "hasn't lost much value" isn't quite the same thing as "has a great deal of value". Some of those books are better than others.)
rmc 16y ago
Tech books depreciate quickly. I'd guess a 5-10 year old Ruby or javascript book would not have a lot of resale value.
- silentbicycle 16y ago
  Not necessarily; that says more about Ruby and Javascript than anything. I have plenty of tech books from ten or twenty years ago that are still valuable resources. Actual computer science books have a much longer shelf life than "$Tech_of_the_moment In Action".
bemmu 16y ago
I actually consider physical books to have negative resale value. I recently moved to Japan so I wanted to get rid of all my heavy belongings. I listed all my books on an auction site and on bookmooch. All in all I ended up spending hours thinking about those books, mailing them, meeting people who came to pick them up etc. and all for some insignificant sum compared to the time spent. It would have been cheaper to throw them in the trash, but being a physical thing potentially useful for someone, I didn't have the heart to do that.

patio11 16y ago

People don't like to pay for eBooks (yet) People make a lot of money selling eBooks, including to programmers. (Indeed, the recent change in the market is that thanks to the Kindle you can actually do well selling books which don't cost ~$50 and/or fiction.) Ask Amy Hoy, who cowrote a fairly successful one with her husband about JS performance. Your problem is not your pricing. Your problem is that your marketing does not communicate value sufficient to justify a higher pricing. If you hear someone on HN or demographically similar say "That's too much money!", file them away in the pathological customer bin. Look at the difference between your site and these sites, then optimize accordingly: http://javascriptrocks.com/performance/ http://javascriptrocks.com/performance/ http://www.startupbook.net/ http://www.startupbook.net/ http://peepcode.com/products/meet-rails-3-i http://peepcode.com/products/meet-rails-3-i <-- not an ebook, but similar

jeremymcanally 16y ago
Trust me, I know people are buying (I've made nearly as much as or more than Amy off my eBooks other than the authoring one). The volume for something that sells well isn't the issue. It's really that people don't want to pay as much for eBooks as one would hope/think. Part of the problem is the "I don't get something tangible for my money." Never mind you're receiving a lot of, you know, information or anything. People want something they can point to and be like "Yo, I bought that." That's hard to do with eBooks, so you have to consistently price them lower. Also, marketing to programmers/the HN crowd is significantly harder than a mainstream crowd because you have to deal with the Nick Burns Effect: you are an idiot and I could totally do everything better than you in a weekend. Rails 3 Upgrade Handbook? Received hate mail for weeks about how I should have made it free, how I charge too much, how the book isn't available in HTML, how they could write the whole thing in a weekend using an automated script (seriously), etc. I still get the occasional e-mail about how "I'm probably going to write my own FREE AND OPEN SOURCE guide (which is MORALLY SUPERIOR TO YOURS), so you should just give me a free copy of yours to help you fix any errors." It's a culture issue that's difficult to work around. Even worse, selling them on something that isn't essential to their job function is difficult (most people don't write eBooks for a living), and the problem with http://authoringebooks.com http://authoringebooks.com is compounded with the fact that I'm competing against people who are entrenched and SEO'd out the butt. I don't have time to sit around and tweak my SEO stuff all day, so my organic Google traffic is significantly lower than what it would be if I were more visible. And also, the market for those who want to write a technical ebook may not be as big as I originally anticipated. :) So, uh yeah, I agree. Pathological customer bad.

gommm 16y ago

Just as a personal datapoint. Personally I know that my impulse buy limit for ebooks is up to 15$, over that I hesitate, spend a lot time thinking and so on. For books my impulse buy limit is around 25$ but that's because I can resell it if I don't like it and because while I enjoy reading fiction as ebooks, I prefer paperback for technical content.

gommm 16y ago
Another point where I'm a bit irrational, if I find out that an ebook had a sale for a substantially lower price than now (like the 15$ sale for the "authoring ebooks" book), I'm much less likely to want to buy it at full price because then I feel cheated... It's the same thing for Iphone Apps and so on... I'm not sure if there are many people like me, it's a bit irrational but it's something that might be a good idea to take into account before doing a sale... By doing a sale you fix the value of your product in the mind of the customer to the price of the sale.

davidw 16y ago

> You don't get a tangible good that you can give specific value to. Some various problems with eBooks are that 1) you can't resell it, 2) they're difficult to loan to people, or 3) difficult to leave lying around in the office for people to peruse. That said, I think it's a very, very interesting space and am working on a product myself: http://www.liberwriter.com http://www.liberwriter.com - I'll hopefully do a 'show HN' in a few days.

haraball 16y ago

My problem with buying books, both printed and ebooks, related to programming something in a specific version, is that I know that in a few months the code in the book will be outdated. Give me a price for the current book including updates in the future and I would gladly pay a bit extra.