5 ms·

Programming Book Profits (2008)

75 points by max_ 6y ago

dang 6y ago
Discussed at the time (a bit): Programming Book Profits - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=101483 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=101483 - Jan 2008 (4 comments)
jesperlang 6y ago
Interesting quote! > No one buys eBooks. You’d have to be pretty… special… in order to not be able to find a free ebook of Pro JavaScript Techniques. Funny how things changed, today I would prefer the ebook version over physical for reading on an eink display. Actually, these days I hardly do any kind of reading on a regular light emitting display (only coding and video). It's just so much more comfortable to read e-ink despite its short comings. Does wonder with focus as well. I even started reading short form articles on my e-reader after first saving them on Pocket.
- UtahDave 6y ago
  Which e-reader do you use?
  - jesperlang 6y ago
    Kobo Clara HD, has Pocket support!
- gmiller123456 6y ago
  I've only had bad experiences trying e-readers for programming/math related content. The text is great, but the Kindle does not do a tolerable job mixing in math, images, or programming content. Generally any math equation was displayed as an image, and the Kindle had no concept of how to keep the letters in the image related to the size of the text. Literally some books would have just the letter X take up the whole screen, while others it was literally invisible.
matthewfelgate 6y ago
I feel bad that writers of quality programming books don't get paid more for their efforts. Yet I too am guilty of finding ebooks for free, maybe I'm a hypocrite. The problem with paying for books is its like £30+ up front before you find out if the book is any good or not. And lots of programming books are very badly written. You might make more money by making a series of Youtube videos than writing a book?
- gmiller123456 6y ago
  I too have downloaded a lot of e-books, but really have a hard time with managing them. Several years ago I decided to subscribe to Packt's e-book service, at $10/mo it's a pretty safe investment to try out. I honestly found the fact that it manages the book for you (favorites, folders, keeps the right page amongst multiple devices, history, etc) was pretty much worth the price. After the first year I upgraded to SafariBooksOnline, which is quite a bit pricier, but has all of the Packt, Orieley, and more books. There are still a lot of books that suck, or aren't what you're looking for, but you do get to look at the whole thing before investing any more money or time into it.
- cosmodisk 6y ago
  I've been pirating all I can since the first time I got my hands on a computer: from Windows to AutoCAD,etc. Fast forward some years, and I'm the one in the company who decides that we need more and more from Microsoft,so the bills just keep going up. I often download an ebook, read a few pages,if it's any good,I buy it from Amazon. I can't recall really reading any pirated book for more than a few pages, as I either delete it or just get a hard copy.
dd82 6y ago
https://martin.kleppmann.com/2020/09/29/is-book-writing-worth-it.html https://martin.kleppmann.com/2020/09/29/is-book-writing-wort... Martin Kleppmann, the author behind Designing Data Intensive Applications, wrote about his experience as well, and it shows an interesting contrast with Resig's experience with digital publishing. As you can see in Martin's graph, ebook sales starting Sept 2014 were a _major_ part of his royalties due to it being available as "early release", and integration with the O'Reilly platform increased his exposure, and therefore royalties. Its hard to guage accurately, but it seems O'Reilly + ebook sales contributed to about 2/3rds of his overall royalty returns, which is a pretty darn good result! Of course, Kleppmann and Resig are writing about very different eras in terms of publishing, but I can't help but wonder if Resig would have a different experience if he was able to publish an equally relevant work in 2015 vs 2008.
- schwinn140 6y ago
  I knew this in loose terms but it's insane to see the revenue sharing percentages going to the creator vs. the publisher. "My contract with the publisher specifies that I get 25% of publisher revenue from ebooks, online access, and licensing, 10% of revenue from print sales, and 5% of revenue from translations." Imagine a world where the creators actually are the primary financial beneficiaries and the pipes/infrastructure (aka Publishers) are compensated appropriately for their value. Without creators, Publishers cannot exist.
  - benrbray 6y ago
    I can think of at least one bearded individual from Germany who would likely agree with you. :)
  - wishinghand 6y ago
    I haven't made a book with them, but Newline splits 50% on profit.
  - jonsen 6y ago
    The publisher is gambling. I don’t know much about non-fiction, but regarding fiction they actually loose on most books and win big on a few. Would you think it’s better if publishers only published if they were really sure it would sell?
CalChris 6y ago
Donald Knuth wrote the criminally under-appreciated Mathematical Writing [1] [2] which was the collected lectures from a class at Stanford. One of the guest lectures was Jeffrey Ullman On Getting Rich. In it, he discusses the economics of book writing and compares its pay with that of other 'professions'. [1] https://jmlr.csail.mit.edu/reviewing-papers/knuth_mathematical_writing.pdf https://jmlr.csail.mit.edu/reviewing-papers/knuth_mathematic... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydsutR72lsg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydsutR72lsg
- svat 6y ago
  Direct link to specifically Ullman's lecture, in context of the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmnQoDjsWDA&list=PLOdeqCXq1tXihn5KmyB2YTOqgxaUkcNYG&index=21 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmnQoDjsWDA&list=PLOdeqCXq1t... Direct links (if your browser/workflow supports it) to the transcript of that lecture: https://jmlr.csail.mit.edu/reviewing-papers/knuth_mathematical_writing.pdf#page=68 https://jmlr.csail.mit.edu/reviewing-papers/knuth_mathematic... or (though it doesn't matter for this lecture) https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/papers/cs1193.pdf#page=68 https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/papers/cs1193.pdf... Takeaways (as of 1987): - “it takes around a thousand hours of labour to write a book […] All in all, our talented specialist or so-so generalist can expect to net maybe $8000 over his book’s lifetime of perhaps five years.” - “you need to aim for ten thousand domestic sales; say two thousand a year for five years. That’s 5–10% of the entire market in a topic like compilers or operating systems. There’s nothing off-the-wall about this, provided you find the right niche: Let yours be the hardest book on the subject, or the easiest.” - If you drive a hard bargain with your publisher, increase your royalties, and sales: “your efforts can net you as much as […] say $100 per hour”. (I imagine some of these numbers will no longer be accurate as of 2021, and even the nature of the publishing industry has changed in perhaps substantial ways…)
waynesonfire 6y ago
this chart is missing the benefits of being labelled as as subject matter expert in the industry.
impostervt 6y ago
I publish non-fiction books on Amazon KDP, a way to self-publish paperback & kindle books without a traditional publisher. When a customer orders a book, you make 60% of the profit, minus the cost to print the book. The cost to print the book varies. My books run 30-40k words and cost between $3-4 to print. I sell the books between $11 and $14, so I make a few bucks from each book. It isn't a lot if you consider the price of the book, but it's better than traditional publishers by a LOT, and I don't have to print any books ahead of time. My upfront costs are just getting the books written and the covers made. Then I pay for ads on Amazon as a continuing cost. And I get complete insight into how well my books are selling on a day-by-day basis. I miss out on things a traditional publisher can do, like marketing and real in depth book design, but from what I understand they don't do much marketing unless you're someone famous anyway. I also don't get an advance. I do keyword research before creating a book, and I've looked at technical books, and he's right, they just don't sell very well. Maybe they used to, before stack overflow, but they're just not worth the investment. If you're thinking of writing one, do it only as a resume builder, or to build a community around something you love.
- munificent 6y ago
  > I miss out on things a traditional publisher can do, like marketing and real in depth book design, but from what I understand they don't do much marketing unless you're someone famous anyway. I've heard the same about marketing and that was my impression when I was interacting with O'Reilly and Apress several years ago. For technical books today, they expect the author to bring the audience. > I also don't get an advance. Sure, but that's just a small loan. If you're in the economic bracket of a typical HN reader, you don't need this.
  - genghisjahn 6y ago
    Is there a survey with data about what the economic bracket for the typical HN is?
    - munificent 6y ago
      Not that I know of, but I'm assuming a disproportionate number of software engineers at top-tier companies working in West Coast US metro areas.
darkpicnic 6y ago
I wish more blog posts were like this. Just really useful, real-world information packaged as a set of bullet points. Bravo.

75 points by max_ 6y ago

dang 6y ago

Discussed at the time (a bit): Programming Book Profits - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=101483 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=101483 - Jan 2008 (4 comments)

jesperlang 6y ago

Interesting quote! > No one buys eBooks. You’d have to be pretty… special… in order to not be able to find a free ebook of Pro JavaScript Techniques. Funny how things changed, today I would prefer the ebook version over physical for reading on an eink display. Actually, these days I hardly do any kind of reading on a regular light emitting display (only coding and video). It's just so much more comfortable to read e-ink despite its short comings. Does wonder with focus as well. I even started reading short form articles on my e-reader after first saving them on Pocket.

UtahDave 6y ago
Which e-reader do you use?
- jesperlang 6y ago
  Kobo Clara HD, has Pocket support!
gmiller123456 6y ago
I've only had bad experiences trying e-readers for programming/math related content. The text is great, but the Kindle does not do a tolerable job mixing in math, images, or programming content. Generally any math equation was displayed as an image, and the Kindle had no concept of how to keep the letters in the image related to the size of the text. Literally some books would have just the letter X take up the whole screen, while others it was literally invisible.

matthewfelgate 6y ago

I feel bad that writers of quality programming books don't get paid more for their efforts. Yet I too am guilty of finding ebooks for free, maybe I'm a hypocrite. The problem with paying for books is its like £30+ up front before you find out if the book is any good or not. And lots of programming books are very badly written. You might make more money by making a series of Youtube videos than writing a book?

gmiller123456 6y ago
I too have downloaded a lot of e-books, but really have a hard time with managing them. Several years ago I decided to subscribe to Packt's e-book service, at $10/mo it's a pretty safe investment to try out. I honestly found the fact that it manages the book for you (favorites, folders, keeps the right page amongst multiple devices, history, etc) was pretty much worth the price. After the first year I upgraded to SafariBooksOnline, which is quite a bit pricier, but has all of the Packt, Orieley, and more books. There are still a lot of books that suck, or aren't what you're looking for, but you do get to look at the whole thing before investing any more money or time into it.
cosmodisk 6y ago
I've been pirating all I can since the first time I got my hands on a computer: from Windows to AutoCAD,etc. Fast forward some years, and I'm the one in the company who decides that we need more and more from Microsoft,so the bills just keep going up. I often download an ebook, read a few pages,if it's any good,I buy it from Amazon. I can't recall really reading any pirated book for more than a few pages, as I either delete it or just get a hard copy.

dd82 6y ago

https://martin.kleppmann.com/2020/09/29/is-book-writing-worth-it.html https://martin.kleppmann.com/2020/09/29/is-book-writing-wort... Martin Kleppmann, the author behind Designing Data Intensive Applications, wrote about his experience as well, and it shows an interesting contrast with Resig's experience with digital publishing. As you can see in Martin's graph, ebook sales starting Sept 2014 were a _major_ part of his royalties due to it being available as "early release", and integration with the O'Reilly platform increased his exposure, and therefore royalties. Its hard to guage accurately, but it seems O'Reilly + ebook sales contributed to about 2/3rds of his overall royalty returns, which is a pretty darn good result! Of course, Kleppmann and Resig are writing about very different eras in terms of publishing, but I can't help but wonder if Resig would have a different experience if he was able to publish an equally relevant work in 2015 vs 2008.

schwinn140 6y ago
I knew this in loose terms but it's insane to see the revenue sharing percentages going to the creator vs. the publisher. "My contract with the publisher specifies that I get 25% of publisher revenue from ebooks, online access, and licensing, 10% of revenue from print sales, and 5% of revenue from translations." Imagine a world where the creators actually are the primary financial beneficiaries and the pipes/infrastructure (aka Publishers) are compensated appropriately for their value. Without creators, Publishers cannot exist.
- benrbray 6y ago
  I can think of at least one bearded individual from Germany who would likely agree with you. :)
- wishinghand 6y ago
  I haven't made a book with them, but Newline splits 50% on profit.
- jonsen 6y ago
  The publisher is gambling. I don’t know much about non-fiction, but regarding fiction they actually loose on most books and win big on a few. Would you think it’s better if publishers only published if they were really sure it would sell?

CalChris 6y ago

Donald Knuth wrote the criminally under-appreciated Mathematical Writing [1] [2] which was the collected lectures from a class at Stanford. One of the guest lectures was Jeffrey Ullman On Getting Rich. In it, he discusses the economics of book writing and compares its pay with that of other 'professions'. [1] https://jmlr.csail.mit.edu/reviewing-papers/knuth_mathematical_writing.pdf https://jmlr.csail.mit.edu/reviewing-papers/knuth_mathematic... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydsutR72lsg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydsutR72lsg

svat 6y ago
Direct link to specifically Ullman's lecture, in context of the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmnQoDjsWDA&list=PLOdeqCXq1tXihn5KmyB2YTOqgxaUkcNYG&index=21 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmnQoDjsWDA&list=PLOdeqCXq1t... Direct links (if your browser/workflow supports it) to the transcript of that lecture: https://jmlr.csail.mit.edu/reviewing-papers/knuth_mathematical_writing.pdf#page=68 https://jmlr.csail.mit.edu/reviewing-papers/knuth_mathematic... or (though it doesn't matter for this lecture) https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/papers/cs1193.pdf#page=68 https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/papers/cs1193.pdf... Takeaways (as of 1987): - “it takes around a thousand hours of labour to write a book […] All in all, our talented specialist or so-so generalist can expect to net maybe $8000 over his book’s lifetime of perhaps five years.” - “you need to aim for ten thousand domestic sales; say two thousand a year for five years. That’s 5–10% of the entire market in a topic like compilers or operating systems. There’s nothing off-the-wall about this, provided you find the right niche: Let yours be the hardest book on the subject, or the easiest.” - If you drive a hard bargain with your publisher, increase your royalties, and sales: “your efforts can net you as much as […] say $100 per hour”. (I imagine some of these numbers will no longer be accurate as of 2021, and even the nature of the publishing industry has changed in perhaps substantial ways…)

waynesonfire 6y ago

this chart is missing the benefits of being labelled as as subject matter expert in the industry.

impostervt 6y ago

I publish non-fiction books on Amazon KDP, a way to self-publish paperback & kindle books without a traditional publisher. When a customer orders a book, you make 60% of the profit, minus the cost to print the book. The cost to print the book varies. My books run 30-40k words and cost between $3-4 to print. I sell the books between $11 and $14, so I make a few bucks from each book. It isn't a lot if you consider the price of the book, but it's better than traditional publishers by a LOT, and I don't have to print any books ahead of time. My upfront costs are just getting the books written and the covers made. Then I pay for ads on Amazon as a continuing cost. And I get complete insight into how well my books are selling on a day-by-day basis. I miss out on things a traditional publisher can do, like marketing and real in depth book design, but from what I understand they don't do much marketing unless you're someone famous anyway. I also don't get an advance. I do keyword research before creating a book, and I've looked at technical books, and he's right, they just don't sell very well. Maybe they used to, before stack overflow, but they're just not worth the investment. If you're thinking of writing one, do it only as a resume builder, or to build a community around something you love.

munificent 6y ago
> I miss out on things a traditional publisher can do, like marketing and real in depth book design, but from what I understand they don't do much marketing unless you're someone famous anyway. I've heard the same about marketing and that was my impression when I was interacting with O'Reilly and Apress several years ago. For technical books today, they expect the author to bring the audience. > I also don't get an advance. Sure, but that's just a small loan. If you're in the economic bracket of a typical HN reader, you don't need this.
- genghisjahn 6y ago
  Is there a survey with data about what the economic bracket for the typical HN is?
  - munificent 6y ago
    Not that I know of, but I'm assuming a disproportionate number of software engineers at top-tier companies working in West Coast US metro areas.

darkpicnic 6y ago

I wish more blog posts were like this. Just really useful, real-world information packaged as a set of bullet points. Bravo.