8 ms·

"unless you’re a celebrity, publishers do nothing that you can’t do on your own just as well or better for a fraction of the cost." Man that is a powerful take

by aresant 14y ago

"unless you’re a celebrity, publishers do nothing that you can’t do on your own just as well or better for a fraction of the cost." Man that is a powerful takeaway for authors. I'll add a few points: (1) I learned you can buy your way onto the New York Times best seller list for $50 - 70k. (2) We saw Tim Ferris A/B test his title for the Four Hour Workweek with astonishing results. (3) A self-published title became the best selling book (in the UK) since they started measuring. (4) Amazon sells more digital books than paper books. Not sure what my point is, other than I am a student of marketing and am enjoying watching how the traditional value of publishers, having channel access, is being massively disrupted. Refs: 1 - http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2013/02/22/heres-how-you-buy-your-way-onto-the-new-york-times-bestsellers-list/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2013/02/22/heres-h... 2 - http://weijiblog.com/2010/10/64-the-4-hour-workweek-escape-9-5-live-anywhere-and-join-the-new-rich/ http://weijiblog.com/2010/10/64-the-4-hour-workweek-escape-9... 3 - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/booknews/9459779/50-Shades-of-Grey-is-best-selling-book-of-all-time.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/booknews/9459779/50... 4 - http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/20/technology/20amazon.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/20/technology/20amazon.html?_...

randall 14y ago
Complete aside, but as a student of marketing who reads HN, care to reach out to our company? I'm not a student of marketing, and I'm kind of bad at it but need to get good quickly. I'm curious about you as a person, and want to understand that world better so we can either acquire the right skills ourselves, or hire someone who can help us understand. Care to shoot me an email? Email is in my profile.
neves 14y ago
Yes, I've bought dozens of US0.00 books from Amazon!
- MarkMc 14y ago
  The linked article excludes free e-books when comparing sales of digital and paper books. And that article is now 2 years old - it would be interesting to know the current sales ratio between paper and digital books.
graeme 14y ago
A couple more interesting points: (1) You can also make much more profit per copy as a self-publisher. (2) As a self-publisher, you can afford to produce small niche books that a publisher wouldn't touch. The increased profit per copy makes it worth your while even at very low sales volumes.
- WalterBright 14y ago
  As a self-publisher (on Amazon) myself, there's another advantage. Your book never goes out of print. It's always there. So the sales of it remain fairly steady, month to month. While I haven't been doing this long term, I suspect the background level of sales should remain constant, rather than a huge blip tapering off to nothing.
  - graeme 14y ago
    Right, of course. I didn't even consider that, as I've only published as print-on-demand. But it's a huge advantage for lower sales books.
frogpelt 14y ago
It's more interesting to me that people are picking the books they want to read by looking at a list of what everyone else wants to read. With fiction, that makes some sense to me. (Although, if I hate vampire books why would I care that a million people bought them last month?) With nonfiction, it doesn't make sense at all. If you are interested in a topic, look for a book about it. If you aren't interested in the topic, why would you suddenly become interested just because some percentage of the general public is?
- seiji 14y ago
  why would you suddenly become interested just because some percentage of the general public is? Not feeling left out, conversational one-upsmanship (upspersonship?), being able to intelligently banter with strangers who are reading the same thing (since it's so popular), ...
  - jff 14y ago
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7VgNQbZdaw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7VgNQbZdaw
    - rasengan0 14y ago
      LMAO, thank you very much, made my day Didja watch?
- grey-area 14y ago
  With nonfiction, it doesn't make sense at all. If you are interested in a topic, look for a book about it. If you aren't interested in the topic, why would you suddenly become interested just because some percentage of the general public is? I think it makes more sense within a category/genre. Once you are looking for say books on programming language x, have a way to select the books which are most popular is definitely valuable, and even better if you can select the books which are most popular with a certain population that you respect or with particular people you respect in that area. Perhaps publishers will transition away from providing channel access to recommendation and search engines. I suppose with Amazon taking over you could say this transition has already started but it has a long way to go yet. I work with a lot of publishers and they're still frozen, looking at the headlights rapidly approaching, and unsure which way to jump. One thing is for sure though - paper media (ephemeral or books) is going to be massively disrupted over the next decade, and this disruption is only just beginning, everyone can see this but its hard to see exactly which way this is going. My personal bet is that the web will take over completely from all these paper products, and be served on all sorts of devices, but making money on that content is far from a sure thing.
stfu 14y ago
Now, are there any "new" publishers around, which work based on 1/2/3/4? Or let's say publishing-server providers? I just don't think many authors want to do A/B testing, find editors, illustrators and not to forget coordinate marketing, PR, book tour on their own. Working professionals usually have so many things on their table, that keeping some basic outreach on social media sites intact is demanding enough. This "you can do it on your own" is such an superficial argument. If I want to fly cross country, I don't want to assemble the plane myself - even if there are perfectly good options out there on different DIY aircrafts. Arguing, that there are now ready made components for DIY kit out there that some successful hobbyists have used with very much success, doesn't make it any easier.
- pnathan 14y ago
  I've got a book idea on the permanent back burner. One day I'd like to finish it (It's outlined but not written... lots of work left). I can guarantee you I am not particularly interested in the publishing process. I want to be an author, not a soup-to-nuts businessman about it. I want to write a very nice book and give a publishing house a cut in exchange for them handling the messy business. Maybe if the book is very popular (doubtful), I would be interested in doing it again, and maybe myself. Probabilities suggest that I'll wind up getting a small check every month, even if I did do the business part myself.
  - stfu 14y ago
    I'd love to see the numbers for "average" authors. Somehow I suspect, that there are very few non-fiction books that make actual money based on the amount of work that goes into them compared with a regular hourly rate for a subject-expert. Based on $50/h, a book with 100 pages and 2h/page(research, structure, writing, etc) we are at $10.000 just to break even - without considering any external fees/time invested in editing, layout, design - or promotion. Even based on a 100% earings rate, it seems save to assume that most "profitable" books are just a tool for personal promotion/expert positioning.
    - goldfeld 14y ago
znowi 14y ago
> unless you’re a celebrity Same as in music or movie industries. They squeeze all they can from the common folk. I hope more authors will go independent and help further disrupt the monstrous middle man.

by aresant 14y ago

randall 14y ago

Complete aside, but as a student of marketing who reads HN, care to reach out to our company? I'm not a student of marketing, and I'm kind of bad at it but need to get good quickly. I'm curious about you as a person, and want to understand that world better so we can either acquire the right skills ourselves, or hire someone who can help us understand. Care to shoot me an email? Email is in my profile.

neves 14y ago

Yes, I've bought dozens of US0.00 books from Amazon!

MarkMc 14y ago
The linked article excludes free e-books when comparing sales of digital and paper books. And that article is now 2 years old - it would be interesting to know the current sales ratio between paper and digital books.

graeme 14y ago

A couple more interesting points: (1) You can also make much more profit per copy as a self-publisher. (2) As a self-publisher, you can afford to produce small niche books that a publisher wouldn't touch. The increased profit per copy makes it worth your while even at very low sales volumes.

WalterBright 14y ago
As a self-publisher (on Amazon) myself, there's another advantage. Your book never goes out of print. It's always there. So the sales of it remain fairly steady, month to month. While I haven't been doing this long term, I suspect the background level of sales should remain constant, rather than a huge blip tapering off to nothing.
- graeme 14y ago
  Right, of course. I didn't even consider that, as I've only published as print-on-demand. But it's a huge advantage for lower sales books.

frogpelt 14y ago

It's more interesting to me that people are picking the books they want to read by looking at a list of what everyone else wants to read. With fiction, that makes some sense to me. (Although, if I hate vampire books why would I care that a million people bought them last month?) With nonfiction, it doesn't make sense at all. If you are interested in a topic, look for a book about it. If you aren't interested in the topic, why would you suddenly become interested just because some percentage of the general public is?

seiji 14y ago
why would you suddenly become interested just because some percentage of the general public is? Not feeling left out, conversational one-upsmanship (upspersonship?), being able to intelligently banter with strangers who are reading the same thing (since it's so popular), ...
- jff 14y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7VgNQbZdaw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7VgNQbZdaw
  - rasengan0 14y ago
    LMAO, thank you very much, made my day Didja watch?
grey-area 14y ago
With nonfiction, it doesn't make sense at all. If you are interested in a topic, look for a book about it. If you aren't interested in the topic, why would you suddenly become interested just because some percentage of the general public is? I think it makes more sense within a category/genre. Once you are looking for say books on programming language x, have a way to select the books which are most popular is definitely valuable, and even better if you can select the books which are most popular with a certain population that you respect or with particular people you respect in that area. Perhaps publishers will transition away from providing channel access to recommendation and search engines. I suppose with Amazon taking over you could say this transition has already started but it has a long way to go yet. I work with a lot of publishers and they're still frozen, looking at the headlights rapidly approaching, and unsure which way to jump. One thing is for sure though - paper media (ephemeral or books) is going to be massively disrupted over the next decade, and this disruption is only just beginning, everyone can see this but its hard to see exactly which way this is going. My personal bet is that the web will take over completely from all these paper products, and be served on all sorts of devices, but making money on that content is far from a sure thing.

stfu 14y ago

Now, are there any "new" publishers around, which work based on 1/2/3/4? Or let's say publishing-server providers? I just don't think many authors want to do A/B testing, find editors, illustrators and not to forget coordinate marketing, PR, book tour on their own. Working professionals usually have so many things on their table, that keeping some basic outreach on social media sites intact is demanding enough. This "you can do it on your own" is such an superficial argument. If I want to fly cross country, I don't want to assemble the plane myself - even if there are perfectly good options out there on different DIY aircrafts. Arguing, that there are now ready made components for DIY kit out there that some successful hobbyists have used with very much success, doesn't make it any easier.

pnathan 14y ago
I've got a book idea on the permanent back burner. One day I'd like to finish it (It's outlined but not written... lots of work left). I can guarantee you I am not particularly interested in the publishing process. I want to be an author, not a soup-to-nuts businessman about it. I want to write a very nice book and give a publishing house a cut in exchange for them handling the messy business. Maybe if the book is very popular (doubtful), I would be interested in doing it again, and maybe myself. Probabilities suggest that I'll wind up getting a small check every month, even if I did do the business part myself.
- stfu 14y ago
  I'd love to see the numbers for "average" authors. Somehow I suspect, that there are very few non-fiction books that make actual money based on the amount of work that goes into them compared with a regular hourly rate for a subject-expert. Based on $50/h, a book with 100 pages and 2h/page(research, structure, writing, etc) we are at $10.000 just to break even - without considering any external fees/time invested in editing, layout, design - or promotion. Even based on a 100% earings rate, it seems save to assume that most "profitable" books are just a tool for personal promotion/expert positioning.
  - goldfeld 14y ago

znowi 14y ago

> unless you’re a celebrity Same as in music or movie industries. They squeeze all they can from the common folk. I hope more authors will go independent and help further disrupt the monstrous middle man.