7 ms·

Self-published Ansible book – 87k copies, 300k revenue, 41 revisions

165 points by lwhsiao 3y ago

glaucon 3y ago
I was very surprised to read that even avoiding traditional publishers he's only receiving 30% of retail in, at least, one case.
- bombcar 3y ago
  I have done a tiny amount of self publishing via Amazon and I've found that if you want to keep your prices "sane" across all countries; you end up having a few that get you much less than others. And if you enable "wide distribution" you get much less for those.
  - geerlingguy 3y ago
    Yeah it goes from like 60% (after 'fees' for printing for the paperback) to like 40%. So selling my book for $19.99 nets me about $3 or $4 per sale. If I did 'wide distribution', that would be maybe $1-2.
- BarryMilo 3y ago
  It's strange because that's a normal publisher's take home, from which you also subtract a given amount for printing. But the author's take is usually around 10%, which should add up to 40%.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
1473-bytes 3y ago
The insight into publisher royalties is interesting for sure. Though I will say regarding ansible, I just can't like it. I rather use a python library like netmiko for configuration of vm's.
thevagrant 3y ago
The revisions are key. It makes the book worth buying. Many technical books are out of date within a few months of publishing and get no revisions
john-tells-all 3y ago
I bought this! Got immediate value in that I found simpler ways to accomplish my business goals. Thanks!
madmod 3y ago
I bought this and it was very helpful!
0xbadcafebee 3y ago
I have mad respect for Jeff. I really, really, HATE Ansible. There is a special place in hell where all the worst of humanity go. It's a room where you must build either Ansible or Jenkins infrastructure, for eternity. Since Jeff is a professional, I am assuming his book does not detail the myriad ways in which Ansible is just fucking horrifically designed and a nightmare to use. Where the docs are usually missing or incomprehensible. Where important features seem to just not exist. Where barely anything works - but when it does, it works in a totally asinine way, that you will spend hours figuring out. Even if you've done it before. Or the nightmare that is trying to debug it, or use it with modern cloud infra and best practices. Sometimes - rarely - Ansible is an OK solution. It's more lightweight than its competition in the configuration management space, and it can be portable, if you add all the portability yourself. Well-maintained Galaxy stuff is quite useful and can save you weeks of time and years of therapy. But for the most part, it and its Configuration Management brethren are better left for systems where someone is manually monkeying with them and breaking them, and you need something automated that also has some dependency-tracking to fix complex things for you. The Cloud is still, sadly, mostly not immutable. So we still need shitty "orchestration" (Configuration Management) tools to maintain it. But I really hope they go away. I have never seen a Configuration Management tool that I have liked, because their very concept is automated duct tape. (my bona fides: 20 years operating large-scale systems, including a reimplementation of DynamoDB, which was powered by OpenStack and AWS infra scaled dynamically by Ansible playbooks. I. Still. Have. Scars.)
- undefuser 3y ago
  What would be a better alternative to Ansible?
- apple4ever 3y ago
  I'm not sure what you are doing but I have never had these frustrations with Ansible. I absolutely love it. I think it's great for systems you never ssh into and monkey around and just as great for ones you do. Source: been using Ansible for 8 years and SysEng'ing for 15.
- postpawl 3y ago
  Agreed - Ansible was for a time when people were SSH’ing into boxes and installing stuff and it’s great at that. Jeff still does a lot of that with all his self hosted projects on his home network. Deploying containers and using declarative tools like terraform is much more suitable for keeping cloud infrastructure in sync with your desired state.
oofnik 3y ago
I bought a copy. Thanks, Jeff, for being interminably helpful.
ramijames 3y ago
The fact that the majority of his revenue goes to health insurance is abhorrent
- geerlingguy 3y ago
  Agreed.
- bluedino 3y ago
  Doctors make too much money. Pharmaceutical companies make too much money. Everything in the healthcare system charges too much. A 5 minute, yearly "wellness visit" costs my insurance company $200 (or so they say) and that's not even including any bloodwork.
vidarh 3y ago
It'd be a huge success to achieve this even for a traditionally published book with a publisher pushing. For a self-published one it's extremely impressive.

165 points by lwhsiao 3y ago

I was very surprised to read that even avoiding traditional publishers he's only receiving 30% of retail in, at least, one case.

bombcar 3y ago
I have done a tiny amount of self publishing via Amazon and I've found that if you want to keep your prices "sane" across all countries; you end up having a few that get you much less than others. And if you enable "wide distribution" you get much less for those.
- geerlingguy 3y ago
  Yeah it goes from like 60% (after 'fees' for printing for the paperback) to like 40%. So selling my book for $19.99 nets me about $3 or $4 per sale. If I did 'wide distribution', that would be maybe $1-2.
BarryMilo 3y ago
It's strange because that's a normal publisher's take home, from which you also subtract a given amount for printing. But the author's take is usually around 10%, which should add up to 40%.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

1473-bytes 3y ago

The insight into publisher royalties is interesting for sure. Though I will say regarding ansible, I just can't like it. I rather use a python library like netmiko for configuration of vm's.

thevagrant 3y ago

The revisions are key. It makes the book worth buying. Many technical books are out of date within a few months of publishing and get no revisions

john-tells-all 3y ago

I bought this! Got immediate value in that I found simpler ways to accomplish my business goals. Thanks!

madmod 3y ago

I bought this and it was very helpful!

0xbadcafebee 3y ago

I have mad respect for Jeff. I really, really, HATE Ansible. There is a special place in hell where all the worst of humanity go. It's a room where you must build either Ansible or Jenkins infrastructure, for eternity. Since Jeff is a professional, I am assuming his book does not detail the myriad ways in which Ansible is just fucking horrifically designed and a nightmare to use. Where the docs are usually missing or incomprehensible. Where important features seem to just not exist. Where barely anything works - but when it does, it works in a totally asinine way, that you will spend hours figuring out. Even if you've done it before. Or the nightmare that is trying to debug it, or use it with modern cloud infra and best practices. Sometimes - rarely - Ansible is an OK solution. It's more lightweight than its competition in the configuration management space, and it can be portable, if you add all the portability yourself. Well-maintained Galaxy stuff is quite useful and can save you weeks of time and years of therapy. But for the most part, it and its Configuration Management brethren are better left for systems where someone is manually monkeying with them and breaking them, and you need something automated that also has some dependency-tracking to fix complex things for you. The Cloud is still, sadly, mostly not immutable. So we still need shitty "orchestration" (Configuration Management) tools to maintain it. But I really hope they go away. I have never seen a Configuration Management tool that I have liked, because their very concept is automated duct tape. (my bona fides: 20 years operating large-scale systems, including a reimplementation of DynamoDB, which was powered by OpenStack and AWS infra scaled dynamically by Ansible playbooks. I. Still. Have. Scars.)

undefuser 3y ago
What would be a better alternative to Ansible?
apple4ever 3y ago
I'm not sure what you are doing but I have never had these frustrations with Ansible. I absolutely love it. I think it's great for systems you never ssh into and monkey around and just as great for ones you do. Source: been using Ansible for 8 years and SysEng'ing for 15.
postpawl 3y ago
Agreed - Ansible was for a time when people were SSH’ing into boxes and installing stuff and it’s great at that. Jeff still does a lot of that with all his self hosted projects on his home network. Deploying containers and using declarative tools like terraform is much more suitable for keeping cloud infrastructure in sync with your desired state.

oofnik 3y ago

I bought a copy. Thanks, Jeff, for being interminably helpful.

ramijames 3y ago

The fact that the majority of his revenue goes to health insurance is abhorrent

geerlingguy 3y ago
Agreed.
bluedino 3y ago
Doctors make too much money. Pharmaceutical companies make too much money. Everything in the healthcare system charges too much. A 5 minute, yearly "wellness visit" costs my insurance company $200 (or so they say) and that's not even including any bloodwork.

vidarh 3y ago

It'd be a huge success to achieve this even for a traditionally published book with a publisher pushing. For a self-published one it's extremely impressive.