3 ms·
> it’s a prime example of an article or blog post that gets turned into a book by adding a bunch of things that don’t really provide more useful information, bu
by seanwilson 5y ago
> it’s a prime example of an article or blog post that gets turned into a book by adding a bunch of things that don’t really provide more useful information, but seem to serve as filler to make it book-length.
I've seen solo technical authors trying to sell concise ~100 page books and you often see comments like "that's too expensive, you can read it in a few hours and ebooks don't cost anything to produce!", ignoring the value of the information and how it's much more effort to be concise over verbose. I can see why there's a pressure to stretch text out to make it monitisable.
Are there good examples of authors making money from very short books or articles? I'm amazed there still isn't a web microtransactions solution yet so e.g. blog readers can tip a small amount with no effort so concise + valuable information can be monitised and encouraged.
- zrail 5y agoDepends on what you mean by "money". My book Mastering Modern Payments made ~$80k in its useful lifetime and it was about 100 pages.
- seanwilson 5y agoThat's awesome, can I ask what did you do for marketing before launch and after? So I know Refactoring UI did ridiculously well (https://twitter.com/adamwathan/status/1289702466754211842 https://twitter.com/adamwathan/status/1289702466754211842) for example while being concise.
- totoglazer 5y agoMarie Kondo and the magic of tidying up. It’s padded, but even with padding basically magazine article length.
- WalterBright 5y agoHave you ever noticed that most books seem to be the same size? Book publishers manage this by: 1. adjusting the paper thickness 2. adjusting the font size 3. adjusting the line spacing 4. adjusting the margins 5. adding blank pages The actual amount of text in a book varies dramatically.