5 ms·

Let's talk about the price of the e-book, $36. For a standard nonfiction e-book, that price is fairly high, but when it comes to software/programming books, yo

by jawns 12y ago

Let's talk about the price of the e-book, $36. For a standard nonfiction e-book, that price is fairly high, but when it comes to software/programming books, you expect it to be a bit higher than average. I took a look at some O'Reilly titles around the same price point, and specifically at books that are similar to this, where you're really learning about how to make use of a particular software program's features, rather than how to write in a particular programming language or understand a particular abstract concept or niche in software development. "Textmate: Power Editing for the Mac" is 200 pages, $30 for a print edition. "Practical Vim: Edit Text at the Speed of Thought" is 346 pages, $30 for a print edition. "Learning GNU Emacs: A Guide to Unix Text Processing" is 536 pages, $36 for an e-book. It seems to be generally the case, and these examples bear it out, that e-books are priced lower than physical copies, and shorter books are priced lower than longer books. I would add that niche books (where the information is hard to find elsewhere) also command a premium. Based on that, I would suggest that this Sublime Text book should probably be priced a bit lower. It's an e-book, it's only 220 pages, and though it's nice to have all of the information conveniently packaged in one place, it seems like the majority of the book talks about stuff you can easily Google about (and typically find a high-quality answer, precisely because the Sublime Text community is so large and active). Edit: I don't usually complain about downvotes, but it's pretty evident that people are downvoting this because they disagree, not because they think it doesn't add anything substantive to the discussion. I'm an author myself, so I know how much work goes into producing (and marketing) a book, and I'm totally supportive of the author trying to make the project worth his time. I'm merely pointing out that if you look at the market, its list price should probably be closer to the "with coupon" price.

deleted 12y ago
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enknamel 12y ago
On the pricing, The Pragmatic Programmer is about the same price and gives you a ton of tips related to writing code and more.
- deleted 12y ago
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wesbos 12y ago
Use the coupon code LAUNCHDAY to make it $26 or $35 with the videos :)
- AtTheLast 12y ago
  Thanks for the coupon. I've been wanting to learn how to take advantage of all the cool features sublime offers but I didn't know where to look. The original price was to much for me, but the coupon dropped the price enough for me to buy the book and videos.
robertlf 12y ago
I totally agree! I know that books are difficult to write and the author deserves his or her due. But these are paper prices for electronic content and I just won't pay this much, particularly when most (if not all the information) is available online with just a little effort.
elwell 12y ago
Of course the Emacs book is the largest.
nathanbarry 12y ago
Pricing an ebook based on number of pages is silly. Would you pay 20% more if he added an equivalent number of pages? I think the author should charge more for a shorter book, since it respects the readers time.
- jawns 12y ago
  It's true that number of pages doesn't say anything directly about a book's breadth or value ... although for technical books, and particularly user-manual type books, it's generally a decent proxy, because these types of books, by and large, have similar information densities. That's not to say that there isn't any variation at all. This book may, in fact, be more information-dense than similar books in its category. But I was observing that publishers' prices and book length do tend to be correlated, warranted or not, and so to be competitive, it may be beneficial to price accordingly. Edit: I just read through the sample chapter, and I didn't find it much more information-dense than other similar books. Which doesn't really surprise me, because you can only write so tersely when you're doing things like feature set walkthroughs. So I think I'm going to stand by my statement that for books of this particular type (a user guide for a piece of software), the length of the book is probably a pretty good proxy for breadth and a not-bad proxy for value.
mbesto 12y ago
> I don't usually complain about downvotes, but it's pretty evident that people are downvoting this because they disagree I think you're getting downvoted because people disagree with your advice to the author. In other words, you aren't adding value to the discussion about what value the book can bring because your premise is rooted in a totally obsolete measuring stick (i.e. # of pages). The value of information/education is immeasurable. Let the market decide.
- chdir 12y ago
  > The value of information/education is immeasurable Doesn't the parent comment address that with : it seems like the majority of the book talks about stuff you can easily Google about (and typically find a high-quality answer, precisely because the Sublime Text community is so large and active)
pwenzel 12y ago
Price assumptions based on page count? Some people are willing to pay for brevity.
moogleii 12y ago
In addition to the page count people are mentioning, I don't think the Google factor is fair either. Almost anything can be googled, short of bleeding edge, very technical work. It's all about presentation/wording and how easy the author makes it for the reader to understand/consume. I've seen plenty of terrible, terrible guides/tutorials online, but hey, they're free.
Walkman 12y ago
Nice reasoning, but I have to agree with others: A shorter, more concise book might be much harder to write and might even take longer! A quote from Pascal: "Je n'ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n'ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte." (I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.)
petercooper 12y ago
it's pretty evident that people are downvoting this because they disagree Yes, that's why people downvote a lot of things. There's no policy or even guidance against using downvoting for that reason, to the best of my knowledge. (And this is what I was told when I raised similar annoyance a few years ago ;-))
jordanpg 12y ago
The only scenario where the number of pages has any meaning is when the book is meant to be read cover to cover. Otherwise, as is typically the case with dev books, it's really meant as a reference. It seems to me that the page count is irrelevant is in this case. We should be talking about something like the "useful topics count".

by jawns 12y ago

deleted 12y ago

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enknamel 12y ago

On the pricing, The Pragmatic Programmer is about the same price and gives you a ton of tips related to writing code and more.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

wesbos 12y ago

Use the coupon code LAUNCHDAY to make it $26 or $35 with the videos :)

AtTheLast 12y ago
Thanks for the coupon. I've been wanting to learn how to take advantage of all the cool features sublime offers but I didn't know where to look. The original price was to much for me, but the coupon dropped the price enough for me to buy the book and videos.

robertlf 12y ago

I totally agree! I know that books are difficult to write and the author deserves his or her due. But these are paper prices for electronic content and I just won't pay this much, particularly when most (if not all the information) is available online with just a little effort.

elwell 12y ago

Of course the Emacs book is the largest.

nathanbarry 12y ago

Pricing an ebook based on number of pages is silly. Would you pay 20% more if he added an equivalent number of pages? I think the author should charge more for a shorter book, since it respects the readers time.

jawns 12y ago
It's true that number of pages doesn't say anything directly about a book's breadth or value ... although for technical books, and particularly user-manual type books, it's generally a decent proxy, because these types of books, by and large, have similar information densities. That's not to say that there isn't any variation at all. This book may, in fact, be more information-dense than similar books in its category. But I was observing that publishers' prices and book length do tend to be correlated, warranted or not, and so to be competitive, it may be beneficial to price accordingly. Edit: I just read through the sample chapter, and I didn't find it much more information-dense than other similar books. Which doesn't really surprise me, because you can only write so tersely when you're doing things like feature set walkthroughs. So I think I'm going to stand by my statement that for books of this particular type (a user guide for a piece of software), the length of the book is probably a pretty good proxy for breadth and a not-bad proxy for value.

mbesto 12y ago

> I don't usually complain about downvotes, but it's pretty evident that people are downvoting this because they disagree I think you're getting downvoted because people disagree with your advice to the author. In other words, you aren't adding value to the discussion about what value the book can bring because your premise is rooted in a totally obsolete measuring stick (i.e. # of pages). The value of information/education is immeasurable. Let the market decide.

chdir 12y ago
> The value of information/education is immeasurable Doesn't the parent comment address that with : it seems like the majority of the book talks about stuff you can easily Google about (and typically find a high-quality answer, precisely because the Sublime Text community is so large and active)

pwenzel 12y ago

Price assumptions based on page count? Some people are willing to pay for brevity.

moogleii 12y ago

In addition to the page count people are mentioning, I don't think the Google factor is fair either. Almost anything can be googled, short of bleeding edge, very technical work. It's all about presentation/wording and how easy the author makes it for the reader to understand/consume. I've seen plenty of terrible, terrible guides/tutorials online, but hey, they're free.

Walkman 12y ago

Nice reasoning, but I have to agree with others: A shorter, more concise book might be much harder to write and might even take longer! A quote from Pascal: "Je n'ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n'ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte." (I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.)

petercooper 12y ago

it's pretty evident that people are downvoting this because they disagree Yes, that's why people downvote a lot of things. There's no policy or even guidance against using downvoting for that reason, to the best of my knowledge. (And this is what I was told when I raised similar annoyance a few years ago ;-))

jordanpg 12y ago

The only scenario where the number of pages has any meaning is when the book is meant to be read cover to cover. Otherwise, as is typically the case with dev books, it's really meant as a reference. It seems to me that the page count is irrelevant is in this case. We should be talking about something like the "useful topics count".