5 ms·

Ask HN: Should I give away my book for free?

9 points by ushakov 5y ago

let's say i have a book and i totally want people to benefit from my work should i publish this book for free or ask for a little fee?

nonrandomstring 5y ago
Do both if you can. You can find my books for free if you do a bit of digging or ask me. Otherwise just publish a large percentage of the book as free, and sell full copies. And don't believe that people who have a free copy will never buy a formal edition. Two books I have right here on my shelf in physical form, which I also downloaded free versions of are Steven Smith's Guide to Signal Processing for Scientists and Engineers - awesome beginners DSP text I still recommend to first year students, and Ross Anderson's Security Engineering, most of which is downloadable from his website.
- ushakov 5y ago
  thanks for the tip! i'd consider that
- 2143 5y ago
  How about a really cheap Kindle version as well? (I don't know much about selling on Amazon so I don't even know if this is a viable suggestion). > And don't believe that people who have a free copy will never buy a formal edition Yep! Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces is an excellent book which the authors have made freely available online. After reading it for a while, I purchased a physical copy, both to support the authors for their excellent work, and also because I personally prefer physical books. Keep in mind that not everyone prefers physical books. I mean, I could've easily printed the book as my college offered free printing. But I didn't.
  - blondin 5y ago
    Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces is quite a horrible print. with my apologies to the authors. they did a great job and i enjoyed the read. but it was a painful experience on my eyes. the horrible courier sans or similar font. i would advise people to only buy the book to show support. not for reading. not only it's a poor print but the fourth piece (security) is missing entirely.
    - 2143 5y ago
      Really? I bought it back in 2018 from USA and back then all the pieces seemed to be there. The print quality is fine for my copy atleast though I understand if it isn't as much as what you paid for. But then again textbooks (and college in general though I don't want to get into that discussion as it has been discussed plenty in the past) in USA seem weirdly expensive. From what I understand, the security piece came later. I found this from their Book News [1] (effectively a changelog) website: >>> v1.01 07/06/20: Added new Security chapters by Peter Reiher (UCLA) to the main page. These are included only on the webpage and not in printed form or in the entire PDF at this point. So, they warn you about it. > i would advise people to only buy the book to show support. not for reading. In that case there's a donate button in their site [2]. In the same vein, apparently they also sell laptop stickers, mats, mugs, t-shirts etc. On the website it's right above the text about donating. [1] https://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~remzi/OSTEP/combined.html https://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~remzi/OSTEP/combined.html [2] https://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~remzi/OSTEP/#donate https://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~remzi/OSTEP/#donate
    - nonrandomstring 5y ago
      > is quite a horrible print... with my apologies to the authors. they did a great job and I enjoyed the read. but it was a painful experience on my eyes. the horrible courier sans or similar font. You raise a really interesting question I have talked about with my editors for some time now... why don't we release the source (as many on archivex do)? You can buy a print version, or an e-book, but if you want a free version just grab the LaTeX. Don't like the font? Change it yourself.
WheelsAtLarge 5y ago
People tend to want free but they also tend to dismiss it as less than great or dismiss it all together. If you are ok giving it away then I would give it a price , say $19.99 then I would run specials and sell the digital version for $0.99. I would also run contests where you give the book away. Being an author is hard work. You not only write the book but you will need to work hard to promote it so people are aware that it exists.
- ushakov 5y ago
  thanks for the comment! i'm first-time author and the book really is a collection of blog posts, so maybe i should publish it as such and also offer a PDF copy right now i don't know whether what i'm writing is even worth calling a book
  - GianFabien 5y ago
    How would a book form be more useful than reading your blog online? Some blogs have different ways of accessing the material, by category, thread, etc. I find such affordances make the content easier to navigate than referring to tables of contents or index. If your blog doesn't have such features, then perhaps implementing those would be a better return on invested effort than curating the content into a book. However, if your motivation is to be a published author then by all means go ahead and publish the book.
airbreather 5y ago
I think you need to give away enough that people who want the entire book know they are getting something worth paying for. I have been disappointed too many times buying a fully locked down book to discover it's not as useful as thought. Obviously there are some well known/recommended books that overcome this, but it's chicken and egg for a new book.
asicsp 5y ago
If you use platforms like Gumroad/Leanpub, you can use pay-what-you-want model. That is, give away the book for free but users can pay if they want. You could also have a free online version but charge for PDF/EPUB versions. I do a mix of both. Whenever I publish a new book, I give them away for free for a week or two, but I still get paid sales as well. Recently I started adding discounted prices for my earlier books along with new releases, so that's another option if you plan to write more books.
simne 5y ago
This is question of business strategy. Some businesses are one step, others two step, or many steps. Two (or more) steps, mean, that business strategy based on assumption, that very large share of clients (95% or more), will after 1st transaction return and buy something other, so first transaction could been subsided by second or by third, etc. Even more - in multistep businesses, on first transaction, business could pay client money for taking product or for using service, planning that on next step(s), client will return all money. Most known example, jet printers, which sold unprofitable, but profits on ink sale returns all investments. Similar business where Kodak (sell cheap cameras, profits on film and on services); Xerox (give copy machines basically for free, collect payments on each copy).

9 points by ushakov 5y ago

let's say i have a book and i totally want people to benefit from my work should i publish this book for free or ask for a little fee?

nonrandomstring 5y ago

Do both if you can. You can find my books for free if you do a bit of digging or ask me. Otherwise just publish a large percentage of the book as free, and sell full copies. And don't believe that people who have a free copy will never buy a formal edition. Two books I have right here on my shelf in physical form, which I also downloaded free versions of are Steven Smith's Guide to Signal Processing for Scientists and Engineers - awesome beginners DSP text I still recommend to first year students, and Ross Anderson's Security Engineering, most of which is downloadable from his website.

ushakov 5y ago
thanks for the tip! i'd consider that
2143 5y ago
How about a really cheap Kindle version as well? (I don't know much about selling on Amazon so I don't even know if this is a viable suggestion). > And don't believe that people who have a free copy will never buy a formal edition Yep! Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces is an excellent book which the authors have made freely available online. After reading it for a while, I purchased a physical copy, both to support the authors for their excellent work, and also because I personally prefer physical books. Keep in mind that not everyone prefers physical books. I mean, I could've easily printed the book as my college offered free printing. But I didn't.
- blondin 5y ago
  Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces is quite a horrible print. with my apologies to the authors. they did a great job and i enjoyed the read. but it was a painful experience on my eyes. the horrible courier sans or similar font. i would advise people to only buy the book to show support. not for reading. not only it's a poor print but the fourth piece (security) is missing entirely.
  - 2143 5y ago
    Really? I bought it back in 2018 from USA and back then all the pieces seemed to be there. The print quality is fine for my copy atleast though I understand if it isn't as much as what you paid for. But then again textbooks (and college in general though I don't want to get into that discussion as it has been discussed plenty in the past) in USA seem weirdly expensive. From what I understand, the security piece came later. I found this from their Book News [1] (effectively a changelog) website: >>> v1.01 07/06/20: Added new Security chapters by Peter Reiher (UCLA) to the main page. These are included only on the webpage and not in printed form or in the entire PDF at this point. So, they warn you about it. > i would advise people to only buy the book to show support. not for reading. In that case there's a donate button in their site [2]. In the same vein, apparently they also sell laptop stickers, mats, mugs, t-shirts etc. On the website it's right above the text about donating. [1] https://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~remzi/OSTEP/combined.html https://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~remzi/OSTEP/combined.html [2] https://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~remzi/OSTEP/#donate https://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~remzi/OSTEP/#donate
  - nonrandomstring 5y ago
    > is quite a horrible print... with my apologies to the authors. they did a great job and I enjoyed the read. but it was a painful experience on my eyes. the horrible courier sans or similar font. You raise a really interesting question I have talked about with my editors for some time now... why don't we release the source (as many on archivex do)? You can buy a print version, or an e-book, but if you want a free version just grab the LaTeX. Don't like the font? Change it yourself.

WheelsAtLarge 5y ago

People tend to want free but they also tend to dismiss it as less than great or dismiss it all together. If you are ok giving it away then I would give it a price , say $19.99 then I would run specials and sell the digital version for $0.99. I would also run contests where you give the book away. Being an author is hard work. You not only write the book but you will need to work hard to promote it so people are aware that it exists.

ushakov 5y ago
thanks for the comment! i'm first-time author and the book really is a collection of blog posts, so maybe i should publish it as such and also offer a PDF copy right now i don't know whether what i'm writing is even worth calling a book
- GianFabien 5y ago
  How would a book form be more useful than reading your blog online? Some blogs have different ways of accessing the material, by category, thread, etc. I find such affordances make the content easier to navigate than referring to tables of contents or index. If your blog doesn't have such features, then perhaps implementing those would be a better return on invested effort than curating the content into a book. However, if your motivation is to be a published author then by all means go ahead and publish the book.

airbreather 5y ago

I think you need to give away enough that people who want the entire book know they are getting something worth paying for. I have been disappointed too many times buying a fully locked down book to discover it's not as useful as thought. Obviously there are some well known/recommended books that overcome this, but it's chicken and egg for a new book.

asicsp 5y ago

If you use platforms like Gumroad/Leanpub, you can use pay-what-you-want model. That is, give away the book for free but users can pay if they want. You could also have a free online version but charge for PDF/EPUB versions. I do a mix of both. Whenever I publish a new book, I give them away for free for a week or two, but I still get paid sales as well. Recently I started adding discounted prices for my earlier books along with new releases, so that's another option if you plan to write more books.

simne 5y ago

This is question of business strategy. Some businesses are one step, others two step, or many steps. Two (or more) steps, mean, that business strategy based on assumption, that very large share of clients (95% or more), will after 1st transaction return and buy something other, so first transaction could been subsided by second or by third, etc. Even more - in multistep businesses, on first transaction, business could pay client money for taking product or for using service, planning that on next step(s), client will return all money. Most known example, jet printers, which sold unprofitable, but profits on ink sale returns all investments. Similar business where Kodak (sell cheap cameras, profits on film and on services); Xerox (give copy machines basically for free, collect payments on each copy).