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I sold 640 copies of my book in one year
- h2odragon 4y agoSounds like a great success. Back when (long before ebooks) I helped with their self publishing. A minimum press run of the book-length projects would often be 500 or 1,000 copies. I'd tell authors to expect to sell half the run or less and to be generous with "review copies" and so on.
- blenderdt 4y agoNowadays there are also print on order services which helps a lot to start selling books.
- farmin 4y agoIt looks really useful to me. I am someone that deploys projects to $10 VPS using digital ocean guides for some minimum security setups. Never had a problem. I'd probably buy this if and when it is offered as paper. I don't really like to read on a screen.
- strzibny 4y agoThanks, I might do it for a revision in the future.
- do_anh_tu 4y agoMakebook of levels.io was made the same way. Sell the book first, then write it later.
- mkesper 4y ago2.5+ years in, I finally started to sell the alpha version of the book.
- quickthrower2 4y agoGood success. The $24k is misleading, in that there is more 'untapped value' now this has been done once. If he makes a video series based on the same thing for example, it should be easier to make the next $24k using all that is set up for marketing.
- strzibny 4y agoThat's true. I am also exhausted :D
- osel 4y agoAs one of your 640 customers - thank you! Having a lightweight reference for simple things that I only do occasionally is a godsend and a massive time saving. I can dive into Deployment from Scratch and tweak something that needs updating, or even deploy a new system in less time than it takes me to lookup and parse/refresh my knowledge from the actual documentation on most topics. And even if I do need to refer to the docs for something not in the book, it is much much quicker as I have the context already.
- strzibny 4y agoThanks a lot for supporting my work. I am happy you like it. Would you consider making a testimonial? In a way what you just wrote here, reads like one. Send me an email or Twitter DM at @strzibnyj with a name and personal/company link and title if you up to it. It would make me very happy.
- lkrubner 4y agoMy own experience convinces me there are many extra benefits to having written a book. My first book has been out for 4.5 years now. I know many people on Hacker News have read it and I'm grateful to all of you.I've enjoyed getting emails about it. Especially regarding "badly managed startups" and "abusive bosses" many of you have reached out to share similar stories. Maybe at some point I'll do a blog post that collects some of those email stories. Some people thought I was destroying my career by revealing the dark side of startups, but some entrepreneurs appreciate my realism and practicality, so I've gotten three very lucrative consulting jobs, thanks to that first book. And, surprisingly, the book has gotten more and more popular. It sold more this last year than it sold during its first two years. I assume that at some point the book will seem dated and obsolete, but at least for now it still strikes people as current, so the benefits of writing that book continue to pay dividends.
- lloydatkinson 4y agoWhich book is this?
- strzibny 4y agoThanks for sharing. It's great that you are still able to sell after such a long time.
- codeDruid 4y agoThis is exactly the resource I was currently looking for! I've recently started a pet project as a way to learn deployment and CI. I work in a big company, where the devops parts are worked on by different teams, are mighty complex and are pretty much black boxes for other teams. I've already submitted my request for the book. Best of luck for the author and thank you!
- strzibny 4y agoThanks a lot! Hope you like it, and if anything, I am just an email away (and on Twitter as @strzibnyj too).
- nonrandomstring 4y agoWell done. That's a respectable number of sales for your first year! The economics of self publishing is interesting. When I think back on my first book I count at least 5 years research that enabled me to be able to write it, 3 years writing it and then many years selling the thing around industry. By a pessimistic account I was about £500k down :) Like you, the first year I sold about 500. Unlike online fulfilment today, I spent that time stuffing envelopes, staring at a slowly shrinking pile of boxes in the corner of my study, printing labels, with occasional trips to the post-office. It was actually work, and many times I thought 'this is crazy'. It doubled for two more years until dealing with the orders actually became too much (while doing a "real job"). On the other hand, it got me a string of well paying jobs, established me as the go-to consultant in a niche, invitations to talk and teach all around the world, and basically transformed my career. So putting a "net profit" number to it seems unfathomable. Each book you write, if researched from scratch, is kinda equivalent to a PhD. What happened next is that I sold the title, from my own publishing company to a large publisher (MIT). Publishers don't take many risks these days, but they will buy a book that already has reasonable number of sales as a going concern. The advantage is that all mechanics and business is suddenly off your hands. Without an advance to pay back you then have a modest income stream and time to write the next book. Another effect of being a semi-professional writer, as a side gig, is that other people want to pay you to edit, typeset, and review works. Learning LaTeX and various markups and text processing tools has been a huge gift. That can be quite fun if you're in a vibrant field that genuinely interests you. And you don't have to be associated with academia or a big-name institution for that to work. In fact I'd say that academics these days never have time for writing and that most other successful authors I know are independent. I hope your book takes off even more, but right now I think you can count 600 sales in the first year as a definite success!
- smilespray 4y agoI just bought your sound design book. Looks very interesting!
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- reitzensteinm 4y ago
- markwisde 4y agoI sold around 300 in my first year (which ended recently), which is much less than the other book I wrote via my publisher. Yet, even though it is sold at a lesser price, my self-published book made almost more money. This is essentially because the percentage I make on every sales with my publisher is really low (10%). So for my next book, I'll self publish as well. (the book btw https://securityhandbook.io/ https://securityhandbook.io/)
- nonrandomstring 4y agoAwesome, a really pithy and down to earth workaday style that complements the exhaustive tomes like Ross Anderson's. What I've found so important is knowing your keywords and making sure your work is associated with the right BIC/BIS Subject Category Codes [1] "Security Engineering" (a much better term imho) has a lesser impact in academic sales than "Ethical Hacking" and "Cybersecurity" because of how courses are named, and therefore how graduates and recruiters think of the skill namespace. Make sure you get coverage on all the terms adjacent to yours. [1] I hear they are being replaced by a new international standard in 2023, so it's a dynamic area for authors to be aware of - kinda SEO for writers.
- ivansavz 4y agoRE [1]: very interesting. Thx for the heads-up about this. I found this related anncoucement, https://www.bic.org.uk/files/pdfs/Press%20Releases/Press%20Release_BIC%20Codes%20obsolete%202024_FINAL%20v.1.1.pdf https://www.bic.org.uk/files/pdfs/Press%20Releases/Press%20R... which says the replacement will be the Thema scheme: https://ns.editeur.org/thema/en https://ns.editeur.org/thema/en
- mhaberl 4y agoI like the landing page for the book (is that the right name for it?) except one detail and I wonder if it done so purposely - I don't see any any info about the book (file) format. I assume it is only available as an e-book.
- ghaff 4y agoThe main tradeoff for me is that--rightly or not--going through a major publisher confers some prestige and Good Housekeeping seal of approval in the minds of a lot of people. So, if you're doing a book for reputational purposes rather than cash, that can be a consideration. I've done it both ways. But if I do more, at this point in my career, they'll probably just be relatively short ebooks.
- pkrumins 4y agoThat’s pretty great! I sold 1000 on the first day (http://catonmat.net/awk-book http://catonmat.net/awk-book).
- nonrandomstring 4y ago> I sold 1000 on the first day Please tell us about your marketing and strategy. I'm amazed awk can shift so many. I'm also finding (with "Digital Vegan") that independent ebooks are much better cash creators than paper sales. Brexit is killing me - I can't sell paper outside the UK any more.
- bencollier49 4y ago> I can't sell paper outside the UK any more. What is this down to? Export regulations? Could you use print on demand or something instead?
- nonrandomstring 4y agoShipping and tax mainly. What I hope to put into readers' hands for about $15 ends up costing them $30-$40. Physical distribution still seems a mess for small publishers who are in that gap between full POD/Lulu type thing and working with a major brand. For example, many distributors won't take on business with publishers with less than 5 or 10 titles. Mine has 3, so is considered a "vanity press". Coordinating POD internationally is a PITA. So I use a smallish UK POD (Great British Bookshop) of my current project, and hold a few dozen myself mainly for mailing out to reviewers and press. Also, lots of distributors still operate on "store and forward", which means holding litho-printed stock (runs of 500+). I just can't be doing with that in 2022! I also recorded an audio [1] version, which has had precisely zero sales AFAICT, mainly because I have no idea how to break that market. Any podcasters here wanna give it a listen? shoot me a message, cheers. [1] https://digitalvegan.net https://digitalvegan.net
- mprovost 4y agoHave you looked into Ingram Spark? They do on-demand global distribution. I'm considering it for my book once I finish the ebook and get around to printing paper copies.
- larsrc 4y ago640 copies ought to be enough for anyone:) Congratulations, anyway.
- nicoburns 4y agoHopefully it wasn't one person who bought all 640 ;)
- czernobog 4y agoCongratulations!
- sliestguy 4y agoI think it is a very solid number for your first book and first year. The topic is unique too. You are doing good!
- strzibny 4y agoThank you! And yes, I tried to be a bit unique to differentiate.
- mavhc 4y agoThere's a graph with 3 items per time period and no legend. And nothing about profit vs revenue really, how much did each book cost vs profit? Apart from that, very informative.
- strzibny 4y agoThe net profit is dependent on me paying taxes, social security, and insurance. Since I also program it's hard to say exactly how much net it is. Gumroad fees are explained on their site[0]. There were no ad costs. If I should pay my time as a business, it would be a loss. [0] https://gumroad.com/pricing https://gumroad.com/pricing
- mprovost 4y agoI deliberately haven't been tracking my time spent writing my book because it would be super depressing to see an hourly rate less than minimum wage. But without knowing that number it's still super exciting to get an email saying I sold a copy, and to see a payment arrive every month. It's like free money!
- mavhc 4y agoThanks, so about 10%. You're selling ebooks, not p(aper)books, right? Costs a lot of time to become famous enough to make money I suppose
- mprovost 4y agoThis is really impressive! I recently hit $1000 in sales on mine and celebrated with a glass of something nice. You're right about how much time marketing takes - I don't spend nearly enough time on it but I'm trying to get myself into a pace where I alternate iterating on the book itself and then doing some marketing (reddit, twitter, website).
- aitoehigie 4y agoI will never forget the first day I made a $15 sale of my first book. A moment to be forever treasured
- strzibny 4y agoI agree. It just feels different to $job money, doesn't it?
- rwieruch 4y agoCongrats! I never counted my sales for different periods of time, because I always felt the feedback is what counts the most to have a long tail of sales. If the feedback is positive, the sales will go on. So I rather focused on this aspect, but it seems to go well for you from the feedback side as well :) I too released my first self-published book The Road to React on HN (initial in wrong English "The Road to learn React" haha) a few years ago and the community helped tremendously to get this project off the ground. Thanks to all of you! And I wish your success continues too :)
- dSebastien 4y agoCongratulations! Cool achievement :) As others have noted, beyond the revenue of the book itself, having published one creates opportunities. My TypeScript book helped me grow my audience, meet cool people and land some consulting gigs.
- kylegalbraith 4y agoWell done and thanks for sharing your experience. Having written my own book a few years ago I can truly say job well done and congrats on a huge milestone. It's no small feat. As you hint in the blog post, writing a book is a full time job to get it done and also requires working a second full time job to pump up the marketing around it. Then, once it's out in the world, comes the job of maintaining it and keeping the momentum high. A slog to say the least and often times very demotivating. So, from one author and self publisher to another, congratulations! You should be proud of your success.
- strzibny 4y agoThanks a lot man!
- jonnycomputer 4y agoGet to the front page of HN isn't going to hurt either. Congratulations; putting a book together is a challen hard enough all on its own. Actually selling copies is another.
- thenerdhead 4y agoAmazing! Niche tech books definitely have a market in them. I wrote a generic "teach yourself to program" self-help book and sold ~100 copies my first year. Started with 0 audience, 0 idea of how to write a book and ended up turning it into a fairly sizable newsletter (1k+) and made a couple grand for my month or two of time spent. I wish I knew much more about self-publishing when I published it, but for my second book, I'm very prepared this time around and have strategies to help it perform better that I got from a book called "Published". https://www.amazon.com/Published-Proven-Blank-Published-Author/dp/1539412334 https://www.amazon.com/Published-Proven-Blank-Published-Auth... I think the real challenge of self-publishing is advertising, marketing, and simply getting your name out there. The writing part is fairly easy!
- philipkiely 4y agoI always love transparency like this from authors, thanks for sharing! This line resonated way too much with me: "Initially, I thought five months might be enough for me to write it, but the scope quickly grew, and the progress was slow." Somehow, even though I've been writing for years now, I consistently underestimate the scope and time commitment of every writing project, even after attempting to adjust for my tendency to underestimate.
- munificent 4y agoMy first book took me four years. That was too long, so with my second book, I aimed to get it done in two years. It took me six, instead. Estimation is hard.
- strzibny 4y agoOh, no. I guess that's how it is in the end :)
- Surgeus 4y ago[dead]
- amayne 4y agoBefore I got into writing novels I had a small publishing business centered around books for magicians. I started this when James Randi off-hand mentioned to me that every magic book sold at least 300 copies because there were that many diehard collectors out there who bought everything. I figured that if my break even was at or below 300 units I could put out two or so titles a year and not worry about going into debt. At the time a $40 book earned about $16 wholesale. Cost of printing was ~$3. I’d usually sell 200 copies directly ($7,400) and another 500 to wholesalers ($6,500.) It averaged out to about $15,000 per book a year….but then the books kept selling year after year. Some made me over $250,000 in a ten year period. I hadn’t factored in for the long tail - which made it even more lucrative. There are much better opportunities than publishing, but there’s some money to be made if you understand the actual addressable audience and have a passion for it.
- fellellor 4y agoI bought your book. I am just starting out as a backend developer. Titles like these are badly needed. But your book needs a lot more polish. There were typos in a lot of places. Also it would have been great if you could cover Ubuntu. It's a lot of effort to map fedora commands to that. Finally, compared to what you are charging for your book, The Unix and Linux System Administrator's Handbook costs 60 USD, covers way more, in better detail, and has much better presentation. The advantage your product should have is much more focus on backend deployments but it falls short in the quality of coverage and by extension, ease of use (for newbs).
- strzibny 4y agoThank you for your feedback. I don't want to compare myself to a 1232 pages-long book. I am sorry you found some typos, the book will certainly get more polish and updates (I include lifetime updates in the price). My price is $50 because it's not just book. There are demonstrations that you can run and that can save you way more money than $50. I am considering a PDF-only offer for less. If you have some specific suggestions for me I welcome your feedback. You can write me an email or DM me at @strzibnyj on Twitter.
- fellellor 4y agoMy intention for bringing that book wasn't to say there are more pages. In fact I like that your book has less pages and more focused. I was comparing the typesetting, nicer fonts and such. Some pictures are always nice. Thanks for writing the book, and I hope you would keep improving it.
- jameshush 4y agoHave you considered pursing public speaking? Having a book helps a lot to get your foot in the door for conferences. I'm acquaintances with a few authors and the bulk of their income is from speaking.
- strzibny 4y agoI only ever did 2 conference speaks (not related to the book). I might prepare a talk that's relevant and promote the book this way. It's certainly something that crossed my mind.