7 ms·

My self published book made $11,000 before I finished writing it

109 points by royosherove 13y ago

davegardner 13y ago
Interested to hear about his experience with traditional publishing. $12,000 was the advance paid on the book that I co-authored and published through Wrox back in 2008 (and again in 2010). I think it took around 12 months to earn out the advance and start receiving additional royalties.
- ivan_ah 13y ago
  Could you tell us, roughly, how the royalties work with Wrox publishing? How many copies did the book sell for $12,000 to come your way? From what I have heard about traditional publishers, the royalties to the author are on the order of 5%, 10% of list price, which is not very interesting.
  - CWuestefeld 13y ago
    From personal experience [1] I can tell you that's the range. I don't think that making lots of money is a very good reason to write a book - or if that is your reason, you're likely to be disappointed. A better reason is that it's great resume material: it can be a springboard to getting recognition and open doors that you probably wouldn't enjoy otherwise. [1] http://www.amazon.com/Inside-Isapi-Chris-Wuestefeld/dp/1562056506/ http://www.amazon.com/Inside-Isapi-Chris-Wuestefeld/dp/15620...
    - davegardner 13y ago
      I couldn't agree more. The effort involved means the hourly rate is fairly dismal. But right or wrong it immediately establishes you as an expert and certainly stands out on a resume.
    - 001sky 13y ago
      This is a great (=true) answer, but doesn't it basically argue that Copyright is a false premise? The evidence seems to be that (1) 90% of the money does not go to the author; and (2) In spite of (1) it still makes sense to do what it takes to publish. Logically, one infers that a copyright monopoly is fairly replaced by something with 10% of the social cost, provided that "springboard to getting recognition and open doors" effect is neutral. Is this lattr assumption only possible through copyright? What if there was something like an Award or &tc stamped your resume?
      - rhizome 13y ago
        It says nothing of the validity of copyright, but it says a lot about the importance of distribution and marketing.
      - peterarmstrong 13y ago
        On Leanpub, the author gets 90% royalties minus 50 cents per copy. So, on a $10 book, the author gets $8.50 (85%) royalty, and on a $20 book, the author gets $17.50 (87.5%). Just because publishers have historically paid 10% royalties does not mean it has to be that way in the future. So, questions of copyright should be a debate about what is fair based on a range of arrangements. Personally, I'm in favour of 14 year copyright, not the "author's death + 70 years" madness that exists now...
  - davegardner 13y ago
    Sorry I can't get my hands on the sales volumes easily anymore. For us the royalties ranged from 5% and 15% depending on various conditions. For example: - 12% from standard sales in the US and Canada, - 5% from standard sales elsewhere, - 5% from sales of the work at discounts of 56% or more, - 10% from sales in electronic form, - 15% from sales to book clubs, etc.
  - petercooper 13y ago
    If you're curious, I shared all the numbers I could on a book I wrote for Apress several years ago (Beginning Ruby): http://beginningruby.org/what-ive-earned-and-learned/ http://beginningruby.org/what-ive-earned-and-learned/
- HillRat 13y ago
  Interestingly, $12K is over twice the average advance in the publishing world, which says something about the health of the technical publishing ecosystem. If you don't mind my asking (customer discovery process here), what tools did you use to write the book?
- royosherove 13y ago
  I got around 6,000 advance on first edition as first time author, which covered first 6k copies sold. It was also split into three parts, each at every third of the book being done.
- peterarmstrong 13y ago
  [Leanpub cofounder here.] One great thing about this is that with Leanpub, the money you earn while your book is in-progress and selling is not an advance (i.e. a loan), it's earnings. You own your work, and you can sell it with a traditional publisher at any time. We've had traditional publishers pick up a few Leanpub books, and attempt to get more. If you look at our bestsellers list (https://leanpub.com/bestsellers_lifetime https://leanpub.com/bestsellers_lifetime) you can see why. Leanpub raises the BATNA to doing a deal with a traditional publisher. Since we pay 90% minus 50 cents per copy in royalties, you earn $17.50 from a $20 ebook. The types of books that HN readers would write would do well to be priced at this price point. Authors choose the minimum and suggested price. So, if you sell 1000 copies at that price, that's $17,500; if you sell 5000 copies at that price, that's $87,500. Because of this, lots of "niche" books that would sell fewer than 5000 copies (and not be worth it for a traditional publisher) are totally worth it to be done on Leanpub, just for the direct revenue. Plus if you consult, a book is a great business card...
andrewhyde 13y ago
Interesting that you did spec work for the cover. A very distasteful move.
- prezjordan 13y ago
  I'm curious why that's distasteful.
  - iends 13y ago
    He's probably one of those anti-spec work people. See http://www.nospec.com/faq http://www.nospec.com/faq Good design is being commoditized and the marketplace has shifted. Some designers are fearful of change, but as a customer I feel I get a better end product because of the competition. If you're a designer and don't like spec-work, don't do it. I don't write mobile apps for a similar reason.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - raganwald 13y ago
    Distasteful is exactly the right word. It means it's not in "good taste." It doesn't mean wrong, or strategically poor, just a violation of subjective standards of behaviour. Quote often, such subjective standards exist to erect a barrier to entry for people outside of a social caste. For example, it was considered "In poor taste" for lawyers and doctors to advertise their services. Of course, if you can't advertise, you lead to a situation where the lawyers with the best word-of-mouth and the best rolodexes take nearly all the profit from the business, and it's very hard for a newcomer to break into the business. When I read the word "distasteful" or the phrase "in poor taste" or perhaps the word "unprofessional," I always ask myself, "Who benefits from discouraging this behaviour?"
    - lem72 13y ago
      If this is the same Andrew Hyde, then Andrew is actually a pretty respected dude having worked for Techstars, starting startup weekend, Ignite, TedX boulder etc... I think he even worked on a startup that focused on linking people to design companies. I think in a way though you have hit on a great point that while Spec Work haters may have some good points (Less thought, analytics, design principles go into the designs you get from things like 99designs) however, I think a lot of it is just fear.. "These people are willing to make a logo or book cover that I would normally charge $2000 for, for $350). I think there is room for both parties and find it funny that someone so focused on innovation would be worried about the innovation in the design area. The people willing to pay $350 for a logo probably aren't the type of customers a design firm would want.
zrail 13y ago
Whoa, nice work! I did something similar with my book[1] and made about $3000 prior to final release (whole story here[2]) I'll be interested to hear how your Facebook ads pan out since I'm looking for more ways to drive traffic. [1]: https://www.petekeen.net/mastering-modern-payments https://www.petekeen.net/mastering-modern-payments [2]: https://www.petekeen.net/adventures-in-self-publishing https://www.petekeen.net/adventures-in-self-publishing
- TBInman 13y ago
  Yes, I'd be interested to hear about this too - my suspicion is that ppc ads will have a pretty woeful ROI for books (would love to be proved wrong).
mahranch 13y ago
Wow, that's fantastic. I recently published my own book last month and had a similar experience. Not quite the same profits (heh), but overall it was a great little adventure. I don't really do any marketing or promoting, I'm currently just getting by with a simple link on my website. I tried to bill it as a bathroom reader for the scientifically curious. http://www.amazon.com/Zidbits-Learn-something-today-Volume/dp/1492225614/ref=tmm_pap_title_0 http://www.amazon.com/Zidbits-Learn-something-today-Volume/d... One thing I found is that if you're going to write a book yourself, get someone (preferably multiple people) to check it for errors. Better yet, pay a professional. You may think you can find all the mistakes or grammar errors, but I guarantee that you won't. I learned the hard way. I don't know if others had a similar experience, but writing an ebook version for the Kindle (through Amazon's KDP) was more difficult than writing an actual paperback. Createspace's paperback publishing seems to be more forgiving. The nice thing about Amazon's publishing services is that they allow you to update and/or change your books if necessary.
DanielBMarkham 13y ago
"...That means about 8,000 RSS blog readers and 10,000+ twitter followers that knew about my book while I was writing it..." I always find these articles interesting. Usually the real story is more like "I know how to market stuff and made a lot of money" but the article titles are something along the lines of "How I made 40K by picking my nose online in one weekend!" So the reader gets this great story of some guy picking his nose. All kinds of details about how he did it, why he did it, what tools he used, what kind of nose he has, and so on. All kinds of little details here and there to get lost in. Maybe some graphs of his nose, or a bunch of charts showing traffic to his site hour by hour and a discussion of how using a bold font increased conversion by .2%. In short, nerd candy. Once again, the important story here is marketing, in-depth interaction with a target audience, but this is always downplayed or ignored by the author, a specialist in getting your attention and engaging you. LeanPub is not the story, although it has a role. E-books are not the story, although they also have a role. Having a huge blogging audience and Twitter following, and leading them into a meaningful conversation about value? That's the story. "...I do very little marketing, and it is mostly on my blog and twitter, in the form of sidebar links from my various websites..." Right now somewhere around 100K HN readers are reading this story, thinking about team leadership, making money online, agile, and so forth. Some significant percentage are going to sign up for the RSS feed, perhaps buy the book. They are going to begin a process of discussion around what's important to them and what they're willing to pay for. Dude. If that isn't marketing, I don't know what is. Great job. (ADD: This looks like a great book, btw. I don't mean to impugn the author or make it out like he's purposely trying to trick anybody. HN is traditionally a startup forum. Just trying to take a fresh look at material like this from the viewpoint of somebody who might want to do it themselves one day. What I learned from this piece is that my current Agile Team Tune-Up email list of around 200 (http://bit.ly/15sz0Pl http://bit.ly/15sz0Pl) needs to expand by about 40-fold before it would be worthwhile to start a conversation about books. Perhaps more than that depending on my engagement skills. This is really good stuff to know.)
- royosherove 13y ago
  slow clap Daniel, I think you are absolutely right. Having a real conversation is the point. KNowing what touches people is part of that too. But tools like leanpub didn't exist until a year ago. They enable a conversation while something is being done (like kickstarter a bit).
DanielKehoe 13y ago
Great analysis. One thing he missed: Kickstarter. Two weeks ago I launched "Learn Ruby on Rails" with a Kickstarter campaign: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/909377477/learn-ruby-on-rails http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/909377477/learn-ruby-on-... (You can read more about the book here: http://learn-rails.com/learn-ruby-on-rails.html http://learn-rails.com/learn-ruby-on-rails.html if you want to help with a new book for Rails beginners). In less than two weeks I've raised over $4000. Significantly, nearly a third of revenue is from people who found out about the book on Kickstarter. So, Leanpub is great, but first, do a Kickstarter campaign. You get advance sales, a significant market channel, sales of a book at multiple price points (customers choose different pledge levels), and the additional boost of time-limited, event-driven marketing. Publishing is not dead; it's booming thanks to new market channels like Leanpub and Kickstarter. And yes, you have to build a following first.
- royosherove 13y ago
  Good points!
- throwmeaway2525 13y ago
  Disappointed to read, among other exclusions: - "No self-help material (books, videos, etc). This includes projects that offer (or produce materials that offer) business, emotional, financial, health, medical, sex/seduction, or other self-help advice." - "Kickstarter cannot be used to fund websites or apps focused on e-commerce, business, and social networking."
  - wtracy 13y ago
    IndieGoGo doesn't seem to have such a limitation. You can double-check me: http://www.indiegogo.com/about/terms http://www.indiegogo.com/about/terms
    - throwmeaway2525 13y ago
      Pretty sure you're right, based on some other articles I read. But one consideration: https://medium.com/p/2a48bc6ffd57 https://medium.com/p/2a48bc6ffd57 I'm kind of surprised that Kickstarter gets as much discussion in some circles as they do, because they seem to thumb their noses a bit at "us," or at least the "us" in software (hardware and other creative projects are in the clear, of course).
cloudhead 13y ago
I don't get it. A good book is an enormous amount of work.. probably several months full-time, at the very least, and a bigger risk than contracting for example. If it's about the money (which happens to be the title of the post), it doesn't look like a success to me. What am I missing?
- hi-there 13y ago
  Publishing a book often lets you double your contracting rate.
- yitchelle 13y ago
  This a metric point that isn't talked about much. I would really like to see a metric for $/hr measured from the start of writing the book to book launch, or to when first sale occurred. Like some of the other comments indicated, it will be quite low, but the payoff is in other areas such as recognition and profile elevation.
- kalid 13y ago
  If you are keeping a blog anyway (like the author did), then the marginal effort to edit/repackage your best work into a book is not that great. (Another data point: I have a math blog, and did the same ebook repackaging for 12 of my favorite topics; it's an Amazon as a Kindle ebook/paperback & PDF on my site, makes low 4-figures monthly). If you write on an evergreen topic (management philosophy, math, etc.), the effort can definitely be worth it. Of course, having an established audience helps (So start the blog today! In 12-18 months of not-too-much writing effort, the book may emerge.)
TBInman 13y ago
Great to see 99designs in there. I am of the opinion that digital marketplaces will be the future of self-publishing services, by providing writers with the opportunity to connect with providers with 'in-house' experience. Can make a massive difference (as Roy's endeavours will attest to...).

109 points by royosherove 13y ago

Interested to hear about his experience with traditional publishing. $12,000 was the advance paid on the book that I co-authored and published through Wrox back in 2008 (and again in 2010). I think it took around 12 months to earn out the advance and start receiving additional royalties.

ivan_ah 13y ago
Could you tell us, roughly, how the royalties work with Wrox publishing? How many copies did the book sell for $12,000 to come your way? From what I have heard about traditional publishers, the royalties to the author are on the order of 5%, 10% of list price, which is not very interesting.
- CWuestefeld 13y ago
  From personal experience [1] I can tell you that's the range. I don't think that making lots of money is a very good reason to write a book - or if that is your reason, you're likely to be disappointed. A better reason is that it's great resume material: it can be a springboard to getting recognition and open doors that you probably wouldn't enjoy otherwise. [1] http://www.amazon.com/Inside-Isapi-Chris-Wuestefeld/dp/1562056506/ http://www.amazon.com/Inside-Isapi-Chris-Wuestefeld/dp/15620...
  - davegardner 13y ago
    I couldn't agree more. The effort involved means the hourly rate is fairly dismal. But right or wrong it immediately establishes you as an expert and certainly stands out on a resume.
  - 001sky 13y ago
    This is a great (=true) answer, but doesn't it basically argue that Copyright is a false premise? The evidence seems to be that (1) 90% of the money does not go to the author; and (2) In spite of (1) it still makes sense to do what it takes to publish. Logically, one infers that a copyright monopoly is fairly replaced by something with 10% of the social cost, provided that "springboard to getting recognition and open doors" effect is neutral. Is this lattr assumption only possible through copyright? What if there was something like an Award or &tc stamped your resume?
    - rhizome 13y ago
      It says nothing of the validity of copyright, but it says a lot about the importance of distribution and marketing.
    - peterarmstrong 13y ago
      On Leanpub, the author gets 90% royalties minus 50 cents per copy. So, on a $10 book, the author gets $8.50 (85%) royalty, and on a $20 book, the author gets $17.50 (87.5%). Just because publishers have historically paid 10% royalties does not mean it has to be that way in the future. So, questions of copyright should be a debate about what is fair based on a range of arrangements. Personally, I'm in favour of 14 year copyright, not the "author's death + 70 years" madness that exists now...
- davegardner 13y ago
  Sorry I can't get my hands on the sales volumes easily anymore. For us the royalties ranged from 5% and 15% depending on various conditions. For example: - 12% from standard sales in the US and Canada, - 5% from standard sales elsewhere, - 5% from sales of the work at discounts of 56% or more, - 10% from sales in electronic form, - 15% from sales to book clubs, etc.
- petercooper 13y ago
  If you're curious, I shared all the numbers I could on a book I wrote for Apress several years ago (Beginning Ruby): http://beginningruby.org/what-ive-earned-and-learned/ http://beginningruby.org/what-ive-earned-and-learned/
HillRat 13y ago
Interestingly, $12K is over twice the average advance in the publishing world, which says something about the health of the technical publishing ecosystem. If you don't mind my asking (customer discovery process here), what tools did you use to write the book?
royosherove 13y ago
I got around 6,000 advance on first edition as first time author, which covered first 6k copies sold. It was also split into three parts, each at every third of the book being done.
peterarmstrong 13y ago
[Leanpub cofounder here.] One great thing about this is that with Leanpub, the money you earn while your book is in-progress and selling is not an advance (i.e. a loan), it's earnings. You own your work, and you can sell it with a traditional publisher at any time. We've had traditional publishers pick up a few Leanpub books, and attempt to get more. If you look at our bestsellers list (https://leanpub.com/bestsellers_lifetime https://leanpub.com/bestsellers_lifetime) you can see why. Leanpub raises the BATNA to doing a deal with a traditional publisher. Since we pay 90% minus 50 cents per copy in royalties, you earn $17.50 from a $20 ebook. The types of books that HN readers would write would do well to be priced at this price point. Authors choose the minimum and suggested price. So, if you sell 1000 copies at that price, that's $17,500; if you sell 5000 copies at that price, that's $87,500. Because of this, lots of "niche" books that would sell fewer than 5000 copies (and not be worth it for a traditional publisher) are totally worth it to be done on Leanpub, just for the direct revenue. Plus if you consult, a book is a great business card...

andrewhyde 13y ago

Interesting that you did spec work for the cover. A very distasteful move.

prezjordan 13y ago
I'm curious why that's distasteful.
- iends 13y ago
  He's probably one of those anti-spec work people. See http://www.nospec.com/faq http://www.nospec.com/faq Good design is being commoditized and the marketplace has shifted. Some designers are fearful of change, but as a customer I feel I get a better end product because of the competition. If you're a designer and don't like spec-work, don't do it. I don't write mobile apps for a similar reason.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- raganwald 13y ago
  Distasteful is exactly the right word. It means it's not in "good taste." It doesn't mean wrong, or strategically poor, just a violation of subjective standards of behaviour. Quote often, such subjective standards exist to erect a barrier to entry for people outside of a social caste. For example, it was considered "In poor taste" for lawyers and doctors to advertise their services. Of course, if you can't advertise, you lead to a situation where the lawyers with the best word-of-mouth and the best rolodexes take nearly all the profit from the business, and it's very hard for a newcomer to break into the business. When I read the word "distasteful" or the phrase "in poor taste" or perhaps the word "unprofessional," I always ask myself, "Who benefits from discouraging this behaviour?"
  - lem72 13y ago
    If this is the same Andrew Hyde, then Andrew is actually a pretty respected dude having worked for Techstars, starting startup weekend, Ignite, TedX boulder etc... I think he even worked on a startup that focused on linking people to design companies. I think in a way though you have hit on a great point that while Spec Work haters may have some good points (Less thought, analytics, design principles go into the designs you get from things like 99designs) however, I think a lot of it is just fear.. "These people are willing to make a logo or book cover that I would normally charge $2000 for, for $350). I think there is room for both parties and find it funny that someone so focused on innovation would be worried about the innovation in the design area. The people willing to pay $350 for a logo probably aren't the type of customers a design firm would want.

zrail 13y ago

Whoa, nice work! I did something similar with my book[1] and made about $3000 prior to final release (whole story here[2]) I'll be interested to hear how your Facebook ads pan out since I'm looking for more ways to drive traffic. [1]: https://www.petekeen.net/mastering-modern-payments https://www.petekeen.net/mastering-modern-payments [2]: https://www.petekeen.net/adventures-in-self-publishing https://www.petekeen.net/adventures-in-self-publishing

TBInman 13y ago
Yes, I'd be interested to hear about this too - my suspicion is that ppc ads will have a pretty woeful ROI for books (would love to be proved wrong).

mahranch 13y ago

Wow, that's fantastic. I recently published my own book last month and had a similar experience. Not quite the same profits (heh), but overall it was a great little adventure. I don't really do any marketing or promoting, I'm currently just getting by with a simple link on my website. I tried to bill it as a bathroom reader for the scientifically curious. http://www.amazon.com/Zidbits-Learn-something-today-Volume/dp/1492225614/ref=tmm_pap_title_0 http://www.amazon.com/Zidbits-Learn-something-today-Volume/d... One thing I found is that if you're going to write a book yourself, get someone (preferably multiple people) to check it for errors. Better yet, pay a professional. You may think you can find all the mistakes or grammar errors, but I guarantee that you won't. I learned the hard way. I don't know if others had a similar experience, but writing an ebook version for the Kindle (through Amazon's KDP) was more difficult than writing an actual paperback. Createspace's paperback publishing seems to be more forgiving. The nice thing about Amazon's publishing services is that they allow you to update and/or change your books if necessary.

DanielBMarkham 13y ago

"...That means about 8,000 RSS blog readers and 10,000+ twitter followers that knew about my book while I was writing it..." I always find these articles interesting. Usually the real story is more like "I know how to market stuff and made a lot of money" but the article titles are something along the lines of "How I made 40K by picking my nose online in one weekend!" So the reader gets this great story of some guy picking his nose. All kinds of details about how he did it, why he did it, what tools he used, what kind of nose he has, and so on. All kinds of little details here and there to get lost in. Maybe some graphs of his nose, or a bunch of charts showing traffic to his site hour by hour and a discussion of how using a bold font increased conversion by .2%. In short, nerd candy. Once again, the important story here is marketing, in-depth interaction with a target audience, but this is always downplayed or ignored by the author, a specialist in getting your attention and engaging you. LeanPub is not the story, although it has a role. E-books are not the story, although they also have a role. Having a huge blogging audience and Twitter following, and leading them into a meaningful conversation about value? That's the story. "...I do very little marketing, and it is mostly on my blog and twitter, in the form of sidebar links from my various websites..." Right now somewhere around 100K HN readers are reading this story, thinking about team leadership, making money online, agile, and so forth. Some significant percentage are going to sign up for the RSS feed, perhaps buy the book. They are going to begin a process of discussion around what's important to them and what they're willing to pay for. Dude. If that isn't marketing, I don't know what is. Great job. (ADD: This looks like a great book, btw. I don't mean to impugn the author or make it out like he's purposely trying to trick anybody. HN is traditionally a startup forum. Just trying to take a fresh look at material like this from the viewpoint of somebody who might want to do it themselves one day. What I learned from this piece is that my current Agile Team Tune-Up email list of around 200 (http://bit.ly/15sz0Pl http://bit.ly/15sz0Pl) needs to expand by about 40-fold before it would be worthwhile to start a conversation about books. Perhaps more than that depending on my engagement skills. This is really good stuff to know.)

royosherove 13y ago
slow clap Daniel, I think you are absolutely right. Having a real conversation is the point. KNowing what touches people is part of that too. But tools like leanpub didn't exist until a year ago. They enable a conversation while something is being done (like kickstarter a bit).

DanielKehoe 13y ago

Great analysis. One thing he missed: Kickstarter. Two weeks ago I launched "Learn Ruby on Rails" with a Kickstarter campaign: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/909377477/learn-ruby-on-rails http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/909377477/learn-ruby-on-... (You can read more about the book here: http://learn-rails.com/learn-ruby-on-rails.html http://learn-rails.com/learn-ruby-on-rails.html if you want to help with a new book for Rails beginners). In less than two weeks I've raised over $4000. Significantly, nearly a third of revenue is from people who found out about the book on Kickstarter. So, Leanpub is great, but first, do a Kickstarter campaign. You get advance sales, a significant market channel, sales of a book at multiple price points (customers choose different pledge levels), and the additional boost of time-limited, event-driven marketing. Publishing is not dead; it's booming thanks to new market channels like Leanpub and Kickstarter. And yes, you have to build a following first.

royosherove 13y ago
Good points!
throwmeaway2525 13y ago
Disappointed to read, among other exclusions: - "No self-help material (books, videos, etc). This includes projects that offer (or produce materials that offer) business, emotional, financial, health, medical, sex/seduction, or other self-help advice." - "Kickstarter cannot be used to fund websites or apps focused on e-commerce, business, and social networking."
- wtracy 13y ago
  IndieGoGo doesn't seem to have such a limitation. You can double-check me: http://www.indiegogo.com/about/terms http://www.indiegogo.com/about/terms
  - throwmeaway2525 13y ago
    Pretty sure you're right, based on some other articles I read. But one consideration: https://medium.com/p/2a48bc6ffd57 https://medium.com/p/2a48bc6ffd57 I'm kind of surprised that Kickstarter gets as much discussion in some circles as they do, because they seem to thumb their noses a bit at "us," or at least the "us" in software (hardware and other creative projects are in the clear, of course).

cloudhead 13y ago

I don't get it. A good book is an enormous amount of work.. probably several months full-time, at the very least, and a bigger risk than contracting for example. If it's about the money (which happens to be the title of the post), it doesn't look like a success to me. What am I missing?

hi-there 13y ago
Publishing a book often lets you double your contracting rate.
yitchelle 13y ago
This a metric point that isn't talked about much. I would really like to see a metric for $/hr measured from the start of writing the book to book launch, or to when first sale occurred. Like some of the other comments indicated, it will be quite low, but the payoff is in other areas such as recognition and profile elevation.
kalid 13y ago
If you are keeping a blog anyway (like the author did), then the marginal effort to edit/repackage your best work into a book is not that great. (Another data point: I have a math blog, and did the same ebook repackaging for 12 of my favorite topics; it's an Amazon as a Kindle ebook/paperback & PDF on my site, makes low 4-figures monthly). If you write on an evergreen topic (management philosophy, math, etc.), the effort can definitely be worth it. Of course, having an established audience helps (So start the blog today! In 12-18 months of not-too-much writing effort, the book may emerge.)

TBInman 13y ago

Great to see 99designs in there. I am of the opinion that digital marketplaces will be the future of self-publishing services, by providing writers with the opportunity to connect with providers with 'in-house' experience. Can make a massive difference (as Roy's endeavours will attest to...).