8 ms·

Why my book can be downloaded for free

257 points by draegtun 12y ago

noelwelsh 12y ago
It is surprising to see a blog post like this published in 2014. Admittedly is refers to a 9 year old book, but the point it makes has been rendered moot by developments since. A publisher recently contacted me to explore the possibility of me writing a book for them. The terms, which I believe are fairly standard, are you make about $1 for every book sold, or about 5% of the total revenue. A technical author can expect to make about $10'000 if their book sells well. The publishing house makes about $200'000 on this, with the rest going to distribution and book stores. Now compare to people like Brennan Dunn who have made $100'000 or more from their books, by publishing online and capturing 90%+ of revenue. You don't need a publisher for distribution. You don't need a publisher for typesetting. If you need an editor or proof reader you can hire one for maybe $10K. In short, publishing houses serve no necessary function in modern technical publishing.
- jeremysmyth 12y ago
  In short, publishing houses serve no necessary function in modern technical publishing. ...aside from the economies of scale that they can apply to activities like editing, typesetting, graphical presentation, technical review, release scheduling, marketing, publicity, and cross-format distribution. There's also the risk mitigation that happens when you get an advance that you can't deal with yourself. There's a world of difference between "publishing on the Internet" and "publishing in the age of the Internet".
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - sly010 12y ago
    > ...aside from the economies of scale that they can apply to activities like editing, typesetting, graphical presentation, technical review, release scheduling, marketing, publicity, and cross-format distribution. Most of which you don't care about, unless you have to edit, typeset, review, market, format 100s of books. They are one time costs and with the internet they are becoming very cheap already. The important number is copies_sold * my_income_per_copy. Publishers might raise one of the number 2-5x but lower the other to 1/10. Cost of editing is a very small factor. edit: typo
    - jeremysmyth 12y ago
      Most of which you don't care about, unless you have to edit, typeset, review, market, format 100s of books. They are one time costs and with the internet they are becoming very cheap already. Maybe you didn't mean it the way it sounds, but I think any author cares about what their reader gets, and if I buy something I certainly care about its quality. I know for a fact that no matter how much effort I put into writing a book, there are always things that can be improved because I missed something I didn't know, or didn't know about a particular design or grammatical principle, or simply made a mistake. More eyeballs make a better product, and eyeballs cost money. Breaking it down: Let's say I write a 1200 page technical book. Roughly speaking, services charge on a pages-per-day rate. Sake of argument, let's guess 250 pages per day for proofreading, 100 per day for graphical layout and enhancement, 150 per day for technical review. That's roughly 20 days, for which we could elance out separately for $100 per day. That's $2000. Up front. ...which brings me to my next point. The important number is copies_sold X my_income_per_copy. Publishers might raise one of the number 2-5x but lower the other to 1/10. I'm guessing you're estimating with these values (which is OK, because I'm estimating too). However, a quick look at Amazon and other online bookstores shows that ebooks tend to sell for a fraction of the price of paper books. $1.21 seems to be a common price point, and even for more expensive books (for which there is already a large demand) the price point seems to be about half that of a paper book. Continuing our assumptions, let's say a published book sells 10,000 copies. Assuming the self-published book is 50% as popular as an equivalent published book (your most generous estimate) and therefore sells 5,000 copies, it still looks like 90% of a smaller price (let's say $1.21, so a total of $5,445 from 90% of 5000 * $1.21) works out at less than 10% of the larger value (assuming the parent post's assumption of $1 per copy, so 10,000 * $1). All handwavy values based on various people's assumptions of popularity, but useful for a starting point. Now, back to the one time costs: When compared to my $5,445, that $2,000 sounds really bad now, doesn't it?
      - sly010 12y ago
        From a quick search, Higher Order Perl actually costs more on kindle than on paperback. But you are right, I am sure we could tweak those numbers either way.
      - 12y ago
  - sjcsjc 12y ago
    Not vouching for him, but Aaron Shepard, a children's author, maintains you can self-publish efficiently and profitably these days. "In fact, by aiming at Amazon, I was able to sell close to 30% the number of copies sold by one of those nationally-distributed competitors including its bookstore sales. And because the profit from my publishing system is so high -- generally half or more of the cover price -- I was earning about twice as much in total as that author would make with a normal royalty."[0] He has a site on the subject[1], which looks like it was designed by me (it wasn't - I don't know him). [0] http://www.amazon.co.uk/Aiming-Amazon-Publishing-Marketing-Amazon-com/dp/093849743X/ref=pd_cp_b_0 http://www.amazon.co.uk/Aiming-Amazon-Publishing-Marketing-A... [1] http://www.newselfpublishing.com/ http://www.newselfpublishing.com/
    - louhike 12y ago
      The problem is that he is biased. He is selling books explaining how to self publish on Amazon. So it is better for him to say that you will earn more money doing so.
      - sjcsjc 12y ago
        Fair point. One more thing while I remember. He recommends a firm called Lightning Source[0]. I got the impression (when I read his book a few months ago) that they weren't too keen on dealing with small scale stuff, but just looking there now it seems they have another brand or a partner called Ingram Spark for dealing with independents. Might be useful for someone here, maybe. [0] http://www.lightningsource.com http://www.lightningsource.com
      - reboog711 12y ago
        Nathan Barry has the same problem with his Authority course.
    - dminor 12y ago
      This is pretty well known now in the publishing world. There are a large number of authors in genre fiction making a living self-publishing, and many more that do some mix of traditional and self-publishing. You don't really need this guy's book though, there's plenty of information out there on how to do it (KBoards' Writers Cafe is a good place to start).
  - munificent 12y ago
    > ...aside from the economies of scale that they can apply to activities like editing, typesetting, graphical presentation, technical review, release scheduling, marketing, publicity, and cross-format distribution. I don't think there is much economy of scale in many of those. Publishers that have "house styles" can reuse a lot of layout to speed that up, sure. But editing, type-setting, technical review, etc. is just page-by-page grunt work. I'm not sure having a full-time staff for those is much more efficient than freelancers.
  - DennisP 12y ago
    As someone who once tech-reviewed a Microsoft Press book, I don't see how there's any economy of scale there. They just hired me as a freelancer, after seeing a post I made on a forum.
- vladtaltos 12y ago
  Assuming writing a technical book will at least take 3 months of your time (probably 4-6 months more realistically for a good book), making ~$10K is outrageous. And this is in case the book sells well. Who'd accept any other job if someone comes to you and tells you 'look I'll give you a single shiny dollar for every twenty dollars you make for me'. This is slavery. Publishing houses need to be more realistic. long live the internet... authors everywhere - self publish!
  - bphogan 12y ago
    I've written for PragProg numerous times and will continue to do so. Full disclosure: I also edit books for them. The royalty rate is 50% of the profit. The other 50% goes to pay the editor for his or her time, and other production fees. It's incredibly fair, the help authors get is great, and I earn a lot more than $1 per book sold. I think self publishing is great but it's not for me. I am happy to give up 50% if I can focus on writing and delivering quality content while someone else spends the time making it look good, indexing it, helping me develop the content (development editor) and helping me fix mistakes (copy editing.) Just my .02.
    - jeremymcanally 12y ago
      The Prags' deal and commitment to actually, you know, helping their authors is unfortunately a beautiful unique snowflake amongst publishers. I've been involved with projects with all the major tech publishers in some form or another, and they're all horrible terms (usually 12-15% of proceeds [i.e., post-costs] or less). Even worse, they do almost no work for you these days. The editors they find are 99% completely non-technical and on contract, so they're just trying to squeeze hours out of reviewing something they know zilch about. The publisher will stick your book on a website and put it in bookstores, but outside of that, don't count on any marketing or sales help. PROTIP: They don't want big reputation authors because they're better writers. They want them so they can do minimal work and ride off the authors' social media and conference speaking coattails to sell copies with next to no investment. Then they'll sell your work to places like Safari for a pittance (on the order of the cost of about 100 print copies if I recall correctly) and give you as small of a piece of the pie as humanly possible. I understand they're a business trying to survive these days, but seriously, the whole thing needs to be re-evaluated. As GP or someone said, self-publishing is way more profitable if you can find a niche that's not being served. I've made about 10x more money off my self-published works as I have my "published" works, and that's a very sad statistic given how big the book industry really is. Not saying all publishers will end up with figures like that, but the industry as a whole is wrapped up in an author-hostile business model and a crappy, slow process.
- coliveira 12y ago
  The problem is that you assume that everyone wants to make a business from book writing. Most technical authors don't want the trouble of book production and sales because they already have a good paying job. They are just interested in having their names in the cover of a book. For this purpose, publishers do a reasonably good job -- certainly better than having to do all by yourself and end up with a low-quality, low-selling "book" in the Kindle store.
- bphogan 12y ago
  I think the point you make about an editor is incredibly important. I've gotten quite a few books from self-published authors - including some pretty big names in the programming world - who are adamant that they can do it all themselves, and the prose is a train wreck. It's not just about catching typos - it's the actual developmental editing that needs to happen. Ensuring things are in the right order. Ensuring there's a common voice in the book. Things like that. As an author, I've never actually asked for a refund for these terrible books, because I know how hard it is to write one. But I don't buy self-published books anymore unless I have incredibly strong recommendations from others.
  - thret 12y ago
    Even good - even great - writers need an editor. When you already know what you have written it can be easy to miss what is actually there.
- adrianhoward 12y ago
  "A publisher recently contacted me to explore the possibility of me writing a book for them. The terms, which I believe are fairly standard, are you make about $1 for every book sold, or about 5% of the total revenue. A technical author can expect to make about $10'000 if their book sells well. The publishing house makes about $200'000 on this, with the rest going to distribution and book stores." I'm not directly in the publishing industry, but I've been a technical reviewer on several books and have a fair number of friends who are authors/editors - mostly in the non-fiction market. From what I've experienced those publisher profit numbers don't make sense. Let's assume 5% author royalties (which, in my experience, is the low end 5-15% is the normal range, upper end for track record very successful folk — more for some publishers in some contexts), so that $10k = $200,000 total sales for the book. Typically the publisher will take around 45-55% of that $200k (including what they pass onto the author). The rest will go to distributers & retailers. Let's take the upper end of that. So 55% of $200l = $110000 to the publisher. - the author royalties = $100k - 10% printing costs = $90k - 15%ish for pre-production = $75k So absolute best case it's more like $10k vs $75k. Then there's marketing, the fact that most authors don't earn out their advance, the shenanigans over book discount, etc. So the profit to publishers coming out of that is often significantly lower. See http://journal.bookfinder.com/2009/03/breakdown-of-book-costs.html http://journal.bookfinder.com/2009/03/breakdown-of-book-cost... and http://ireaderreview.com/2009/05/03/book-cost-analysis-cost-of-physical-book-publishing/ http://ireaderreview.com/2009/05/03/book-cost-analysis-cost-... for some examples of real world publisher cost breakdowns. (The slice taken by marketing in the first example above seems high from what others have told me. Its also a somewhat simplistic breakdown since it ignores some of the long-term costs from publishers that aren't related to "books" directly. e.g. the advances to authors who never get published, etc. - so the potential publisher profits aren't quite as large as they appear here - there's other overhead outside the printing/distributing/selling books bit) It's also something Charlie Stross has posted about a fair bit see this collection of posts http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/04/common-misconceptions-about-pu-1.html http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/04/common-m... "Now compare to people like Brennan Dunn who have made $100'000 or more from their books, by publishing online and capturing 90%+ of revenue. You don't need a publisher for distribution. You don't need a publisher for typesetting. If you need an editor or proof reader you can hire one for maybe $10K." That's the best-case success case. Which is nice. But not common. Almost everybody I know who has gone the self-publishing route has ended up with the high-hundreds and single-digit-thousands. They'd have got more from a publisher advance. They'd have also learned a lot more about how to write a good book from the publishers — since they're in the business of helping their authors be profitable. Is a traditional publisher the right route for everybody. No. But neither are they the rapacious idiots who are exploiting authors that some folk portray them as. Almost everybody I know who went the traditional publisher route felt they got value out of it. Many of them are more than technically literate enough to go the self publishing route if they had wanted to (and some of them have for other kinds of product/market).
- deleted 12y ago
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peteretep 12y ago
It's an excellent book, too, even if you don't know Perl.
jeremysmyth 12y ago
Cory Doctorow has a strong argument in the same direction, but with slightly different expression: http://craphound.com/littlebrother/about/#freedownload http://craphound.com/littlebrother/about/#freedownload
- ceronman 12y ago
  One more story that appeared here in HN a few days ago: Bob Nystrom writes about the process of self publishing a book which is also available for free. http://journal.stuffwithstuff.com/2014/11/20/how-my-book-launch-went/ http://journal.stuffwithstuff.com/2014/11/20/how-my-book-lau...
- gvozd 12y ago
  Cory Doctorow also put together a well-written account of his views in the recently published "Information Doesn't Want to Be Free: Laws for the Internet Age." He covers DRM, copyright, publishing, the music industry, etc. The book's target is aspiring artists, but the general audience will find it valuable as well.
sly010 12y ago
Of course the case would be very different if you wanted to publish your book as audio, which is probably much more expensive to produce.
- sampo 12y ago
  > if you wanted to publish your book as audio Higher-Order Perl as an audiobook would be quite an experience!
  - Alpi 12y ago
    Can't wait to see screen version!
  - mcguire 12y ago
    Can you imagine the syntax highlighting? It's a brilliant idea!
  - crpatino 12y ago
    If play a simple "99 bottles of beer" backwards three times, it will awaken Cthulhu.
ilamont 12y ago
Part of this is that it's an unusually good book. But I think the longevity is partly because it is available as a free download. Imagine that person A asks a question on an Internet forum, and person B says that HOP has a section that could help with the question. If B wants to follow up, they now must find a copy of HOP. If the book is out of print, this can be difficult. It may not be in the library; it almost certainly isn't in the bookstore. Used copies may be available, but you have to order them and have them shipped, and if you don't like it once it arrives, you are stuck with it. Small publisher here. I believe other factors have contributed to its longevity. I just did a quick lookup of the book on Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/Higher-Order-Perl-Transforming-Programs/dp/1558607013 http://www.amazon.com/Higher-Order-Perl-Transforming-Program...) and it has a couple of things going for it that help contribute to long-tail sales: * Availability of new copies of the book, which signals the content is probably still relevant/not obsolete and may also indicate it’s a classic/foundation title considering how long it’s been in print. * A relatively high number of professional reviews and reviews from experts in the field * A moderate number of great reader reviews, including many “Verified Purchases” from the past year The current sales rank (579,897) indicates it's probably selling 1-3 copies per month on Amazon U.S. The fact that there are so many used copies available, not to mention the free PDF, no doubt reduces sales of the new book, but there are still enough people out there who want a new copy of the print edition for their bookshelves to keep the trickle of new sales. Regarding the convenience issue: These days, it’s possible to buy a new book online and return it or resell it later (as 63 other owners are doing right now on the Amazon U.S. site). It’s a pain to list it and handle the packing, but so is driving to a bookstore to bring back a return. A note about free book downloads: Free titles are indeed very convenient for those who are unable/unwilling to purchase the print edition, but they are less likely to be read. I currently have a title available for on Amazon and it’s been downloaded thousands of times, but through various mechanisms (including reviews, follow-on sales of the 2nd volume, clicks to the website from the ebook edition, etc.) I have determined it’s seldom read -- I'm guessing less than 5% of the people who have downloaded the Kindle edition have actually read any part of it. I think many free ebooks and PDFs end up on people’s devices and don’t end up being read because of a lack of time and all of the other free content that’s available out there.
- mjd 12y ago
SwellJoe 12y ago
"Unusually good book" may be too humble to be correct. It is a truly excellent book. Many higher order concepts eluded me for years (SICP was a good introduction, but this goes much further, as an intermediate level book), but this was very enlightening. I recommend it for anyone working in just about any language. I was able to apply the concepts in Perl and JavaScript quite readily. And, there are translation s of the examples to other languages on the web these days.
- vram22 12y ago
  >there are translation s of the examples to other languages on the web these days. Do you mean to other programming languages? (I already did see that there are translations of the book to other human languages).
  - SwellJoe 12y ago
    Yes, the examples (which are in Perl in the book) are available in other programming languages.
- SwellJoe 12y ago
  Some of those other languages with translated examples: JavaScript: http://interglacial.com/hoj/hoj.html http://interglacial.com/hoj/hoj.html Ruby: http://graysoftinc.com/higher-order-ruby http://graysoftinc.com/higher-order-ruby Python: http://dustbunnylair.blogspot.com/2009/01/higher-order-perl-python-style-toc.html http://dustbunnylair.blogspot.com/2009/01/higher-order-perl-... Go: http://higherordergo.blogspot.com/ http://higherordergo.blogspot.com/
marijn 12y ago
This has worked very well for Eloquent JavaScript as well -- I suspect it'd have remained obscure if it hadn't been available online (as a proper, web-friendly HTML page). As it is now, it's being read by a lot of people online, and though I suspect less people read it on paper than online, it is also being recommended and bought enough to financially compensate the time that went into it.
- jholman 12y ago
  Thank you so much for Eloquent JavaScript, Marijn! It's a really great book, and it has given me a lot of value.
jmnicolas 12y ago
Maybe his book is still relevant today because Perl didn't evolve much during these past years ? (no troll, I just read a few articles about Perl, I have no "insider" knowledge about the language situation except they're all waiting for Perl 6). Imagine a book about web development from 10 years ago, I guess nothing would be usable without a lot of modifications and side researches.
- marijn 12y ago
  Eloquent JavaScript's 1st edition is 7 years old today, and still selling well. It is showing its age, and I am bringing out a 2nd edition, but if you stick to the fundamentals and don't run with temporary hypes too much, it is possible to write a relatively longevous book even on web development.
- perlgeek 12y ago
  Not really; the techniques are still relevant in Perl 6 (which you can try out today, no need for waiting), even though the syntax changed slightly. In fact they are pretty much relevant in all dynamic programming languages that have a convenient closure mechanism/syntax. There's also a "Higher Order Javascript" page somewhere, which translates the Perl examples to javascript. (EDIT: link: http://interglacial.com/hoj/hoj.html http://interglacial.com/hoj/hoj.html)
- dagw 12y ago
  "Web development" isn't a programming language. I'd imagine most decent books on reasonably mature languages from 10 years ago would be pretty usable today.
- eCa 12y ago
  Perl 5 has evolved quite nicely lately, and I don't wait for Perl 6 (the biggest problem with Perl 6 is that "6" is bigger than "5"). While I haven't read this book (only skimmed parts), this book is not affected by the language evolution. Of course, it doesn't follow 'modern Perl' practices, but mostly it wouldn't need to. It is more concerned about concepts that can be applied regardless of language.
- mcguire 12y ago
kakakiki 12y ago
Your book may be the reason I decide to take Perl seriously :) Thank you for the share.
Alex3917 12y ago
I have yet to go wrong taking advice from Philip Greenspun. The whole idea that YC has been espousing recently about domain-specific knowledge often being more valuable than pure technical ability, which was brought up in the context of the female founder interviews, is something that Philip has been talking about for 10+ years.
KedarMhaswade 12y ago
This is a very good thought! It's important for an author to break the barrier to entry for the potential readers of his/her work. It's not always easy or practical. Another way of doing this is publishing something in book form what you have already published elsewhere, e.g. your blog. After all, what a reader of free books, user of free and open source software is spending is the often neglected non-renewable source of energy -- her/his time! Sometimes however, authors consider their book(s) as their 'life's work'. It's hard to imagine giving it away for free. Psychologically speaking, though best things in life are often free, some people think that something that is 'expensive' is 'good' -- they somewhat erroneously believe that 'cheapness and quality don't go together'. A related point that I have always wondered about is deciding the price of your creation. For stable businesses it is perhaps a straightforward thing to name the price of a creation, but I imagine it would be hard for an author to come up with the price of her book. By making it free on the website and leaving it up to the publisher to do the hard work seems like a reasonable way to get around this problem.
- jonnathanson 12y ago
  All of this is well said. This bears mentioning, though: "For stable businesses it is perhaps a straightforward thing to name the price of a creation, but I imagine it would be hard for an author to come up with the price of her book." Pricing is an extraordinarily difficult problem in any business endeavor, be it publishing, software, semiconductors, or lightbulbs. Obviously it's easier in long-standing industries, or in quasi-monopolistic markets. But it's never straightforward or easy. Pricing is even harder in content businesses. First, because at least in the big-business side, so many parties have a finger in the pie, and need to be accounted for in the margin. Second, because there is no generally accepted consumer "spectrum" of price/length, price/format, price/category, price/perceived-value, etc. The guessing process is 50% science (SQL, Excel, R, benchmarks, etc.) and 50% art ("WTF will Segment A consider a decent price for Version X? Or Segment B for Version Y?") Of course, the other big constraint is rigidity. You can't really test, adjust, or offer promotional pricing on most publishing platforms or book markets. (And to whatever extent you can, you risk consumer backlash and confusion.) So whatever you decide right out of the gate, you're usually stuck with for awhile. A promising practice -- as the author of this blog post alludes to -- is to offer different prices (and sometimes, slightly different versions) to different audiences, who might come across the book at different touchpoints. One size does not fit all, and I suspect we'll see a lot more recognition of that fact in the book market in the coming years.
pasbesoin 12y ago
I've been out of touch for many years, now, but the Perl community was one of the most generous I encountered. And they were relatively early to this, setting many an example that has been carried forward by other communities. (There were earlier communities, of course, but the Perl community seemed to be ascendent around the time that "programming" became "mainstream". + CPAN + YAPC -- a progenitor of the "just cover expenses", do it yourself un-conference + Frequent, and sometimes surprising, contact with the luminaries. I remember the ongoing bait and switch BS at a few Microsoft events I attended. I don't know... I was always on the margins, not in the midst. But Perl, as a community, was always willing to show you how, and to lend a hand and a few resources as appropriate/helpful. Very generous.
- mjd 12y ago
  It's always been a good community. I think a lot of that comes from Larry.
  - alxndr 12y ago
    LIGASWAG?
lsiebert 12y ago
One of the main problems for books, and particularly technical books, is breaking out and getting word of mouth, not avoiding piracy. There are a lot of technical books out there, and a limited amount of time to find the good ones. Free content is a great advertisement.
chetanahuja 12y ago
"But I think the longevity is partly because it is available as a free download. " I'm not sure that's the correct conclusion to be drawn. I suspect the longevity of the book is more due to the fact that it's a perl (or rather, perl5) book. And perl5, as we all know, is now officially an eternal language, never to be supplanted with a newer version. perl6, that mythical beast, is now officially a separate language not really meant to supplant perl5. more details for the curious here : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perl http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perl )
ksearsbooks 12y ago
To add some data around the self-publishing space overall, the best source by far is Authorearnings.com which is run by Hugh Howey (who is most famous for having become a success by giving away his book "Wool"). According to his data, the small press, indie authors and alternative press options are dominating the Amazon top 100 lists compared to prior years where traditional publishers owned 90% of the market (genre fiction doing the best overall). On the other hand, to self-publish non-technical books, assuming you use quality service providers, you are probably looking at about $10K before factoring in marketing (according to people like Guy Kawasaki). Juxtapose that against the fact that 400k self-pubbed ISBN's were issued last year, and the true indie success story seems like the proverbial unicorn. * Although clearly in deep technical knowledge, there will be less competition for the quality material (short supply and all that). Of course to further muddy the issue, what market share will go to the subscription services as they become more popular? According to Authorearnings, early data shows they are grabbing a lot of eyeballs from those top-tier super-users.
pronoiac 12y ago
Is the PDF title mangled in anyone else's ebook reader?

257 points by draegtun 12y ago

It is surprising to see a blog post like this published in 2014. Admittedly is refers to a 9 year old book, but the point it makes has been rendered moot by developments since. A publisher recently contacted me to explore the possibility of me writing a book for them. The terms, which I believe are fairly standard, are you make about $1 for every book sold, or about 5% of the total revenue. A technical author can expect to make about $10'000 if their book sells well. The publishing house makes about $200'000 on this, with the rest going to distribution and book stores. Now compare to people like Brennan Dunn who have made $100'000 or more from their books, by publishing online and capturing 90%+ of revenue. You don't need a publisher for distribution. You don't need a publisher for typesetting. If you need an editor or proof reader you can hire one for maybe $10K. In short, publishing houses serve no necessary function in modern technical publishing.

jeremysmyth 12y ago
In short, publishing houses serve no necessary function in modern technical publishing. ...aside from the economies of scale that they can apply to activities like editing, typesetting, graphical presentation, technical review, release scheduling, marketing, publicity, and cross-format distribution. There's also the risk mitigation that happens when you get an advance that you can't deal with yourself. There's a world of difference between "publishing on the Internet" and "publishing in the age of the Internet".
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- sly010 12y ago
  > ...aside from the economies of scale that they can apply to activities like editing, typesetting, graphical presentation, technical review, release scheduling, marketing, publicity, and cross-format distribution. Most of which you don't care about, unless you have to edit, typeset, review, market, format 100s of books. They are one time costs and with the internet they are becoming very cheap already. The important number is copies_sold * my_income_per_copy. Publishers might raise one of the number 2-5x but lower the other to 1/10. Cost of editing is a very small factor. edit: typo
  - jeremysmyth 12y ago
    Most of which you don't care about, unless you have to edit, typeset, review, market, format 100s of books. They are one time costs and with the internet they are becoming very cheap already. Maybe you didn't mean it the way it sounds, but I think any author cares about what their reader gets, and if I buy something I certainly care about its quality. I know for a fact that no matter how much effort I put into writing a book, there are always things that can be improved because I missed something I didn't know, or didn't know about a particular design or grammatical principle, or simply made a mistake. More eyeballs make a better product, and eyeballs cost money. Breaking it down: Let's say I write a 1200 page technical book. Roughly speaking, services charge on a pages-per-day rate. Sake of argument, let's guess 250 pages per day for proofreading, 100 per day for graphical layout and enhancement, 150 per day for technical review. That's roughly 20 days, for which we could elance out separately for $100 per day. That's $2000. Up front. ...which brings me to my next point. The important number is copies_sold X my_income_per_copy. Publishers might raise one of the number 2-5x but lower the other to 1/10. I'm guessing you're estimating with these values (which is OK, because I'm estimating too). However, a quick look at Amazon and other online bookstores shows that ebooks tend to sell for a fraction of the price of paper books. $1.21 seems to be a common price point, and even for more expensive books (for which there is already a large demand) the price point seems to be about half that of a paper book. Continuing our assumptions, let's say a published book sells 10,000 copies. Assuming the self-published book is 50% as popular as an equivalent published book (your most generous estimate) and therefore sells 5,000 copies, it still looks like 90% of a smaller price (let's say $1.21, so a total of $5,445 from 90% of 5000 * $1.21) works out at less than 10% of the larger value (assuming the parent post's assumption of $1 per copy, so 10,000 * $1). All handwavy values based on various people's assumptions of popularity, but useful for a starting point. Now, back to the one time costs: When compared to my $5,445, that $2,000 sounds really bad now, doesn't it?
    - sly010 12y ago
      From a quick search, Higher Order Perl actually costs more on kindle than on paperback. But you are right, I am sure we could tweak those numbers either way.
    - 12y ago
- sjcsjc 12y ago
  Not vouching for him, but Aaron Shepard, a children's author, maintains you can self-publish efficiently and profitably these days. "In fact, by aiming at Amazon, I was able to sell close to 30% the number of copies sold by one of those nationally-distributed competitors including its bookstore sales. And because the profit from my publishing system is so high -- generally half or more of the cover price -- I was earning about twice as much in total as that author would make with a normal royalty."[0] He has a site on the subject[1], which looks like it was designed by me (it wasn't - I don't know him). [0] http://www.amazon.co.uk/Aiming-Amazon-Publishing-Marketing-Amazon-com/dp/093849743X/ref=pd_cp_b_0 http://www.amazon.co.uk/Aiming-Amazon-Publishing-Marketing-A... [1] http://www.newselfpublishing.com/ http://www.newselfpublishing.com/
  - louhike 12y ago
    The problem is that he is biased. He is selling books explaining how to self publish on Amazon. So it is better for him to say that you will earn more money doing so.
    - sjcsjc 12y ago
      Fair point. One more thing while I remember. He recommends a firm called Lightning Source[0]. I got the impression (when I read his book a few months ago) that they weren't too keen on dealing with small scale stuff, but just looking there now it seems they have another brand or a partner called Ingram Spark for dealing with independents. Might be useful for someone here, maybe. [0] http://www.lightningsource.com http://www.lightningsource.com
    - reboog711 12y ago
      Nathan Barry has the same problem with his Authority course.
  - dminor 12y ago
    This is pretty well known now in the publishing world. There are a large number of authors in genre fiction making a living self-publishing, and many more that do some mix of traditional and self-publishing. You don't really need this guy's book though, there's plenty of information out there on how to do it (KBoards' Writers Cafe is a good place to start).
- munificent 12y ago
  > ...aside from the economies of scale that they can apply to activities like editing, typesetting, graphical presentation, technical review, release scheduling, marketing, publicity, and cross-format distribution. I don't think there is much economy of scale in many of those. Publishers that have "house styles" can reuse a lot of layout to speed that up, sure. But editing, type-setting, technical review, etc. is just page-by-page grunt work. I'm not sure having a full-time staff for those is much more efficient than freelancers.
- DennisP 12y ago
  As someone who once tech-reviewed a Microsoft Press book, I don't see how there's any economy of scale there. They just hired me as a freelancer, after seeing a post I made on a forum.
vladtaltos 12y ago
Assuming writing a technical book will at least take 3 months of your time (probably 4-6 months more realistically for a good book), making ~$10K is outrageous. And this is in case the book sells well. Who'd accept any other job if someone comes to you and tells you 'look I'll give you a single shiny dollar for every twenty dollars you make for me'. This is slavery. Publishing houses need to be more realistic. long live the internet... authors everywhere - self publish!
- bphogan 12y ago
  I've written for PragProg numerous times and will continue to do so. Full disclosure: I also edit books for them. The royalty rate is 50% of the profit. The other 50% goes to pay the editor for his or her time, and other production fees. It's incredibly fair, the help authors get is great, and I earn a lot more than $1 per book sold. I think self publishing is great but it's not for me. I am happy to give up 50% if I can focus on writing and delivering quality content while someone else spends the time making it look good, indexing it, helping me develop the content (development editor) and helping me fix mistakes (copy editing.) Just my .02.
  - jeremymcanally 12y ago
    The Prags' deal and commitment to actually, you know, helping their authors is unfortunately a beautiful unique snowflake amongst publishers. I've been involved with projects with all the major tech publishers in some form or another, and they're all horrible terms (usually 12-15% of proceeds [i.e., post-costs] or less). Even worse, they do almost no work for you these days. The editors they find are 99% completely non-technical and on contract, so they're just trying to squeeze hours out of reviewing something they know zilch about. The publisher will stick your book on a website and put it in bookstores, but outside of that, don't count on any marketing or sales help. PROTIP: They don't want big reputation authors because they're better writers. They want them so they can do minimal work and ride off the authors' social media and conference speaking coattails to sell copies with next to no investment. Then they'll sell your work to places like Safari for a pittance (on the order of the cost of about 100 print copies if I recall correctly) and give you as small of a piece of the pie as humanly possible. I understand they're a business trying to survive these days, but seriously, the whole thing needs to be re-evaluated. As GP or someone said, self-publishing is way more profitable if you can find a niche that's not being served. I've made about 10x more money off my self-published works as I have my "published" works, and that's a very sad statistic given how big the book industry really is. Not saying all publishers will end up with figures like that, but the industry as a whole is wrapped up in an author-hostile business model and a crappy, slow process.
coliveira 12y ago
The problem is that you assume that everyone wants to make a business from book writing. Most technical authors don't want the trouble of book production and sales because they already have a good paying job. They are just interested in having their names in the cover of a book. For this purpose, publishers do a reasonably good job -- certainly better than having to do all by yourself and end up with a low-quality, low-selling "book" in the Kindle store.
bphogan 12y ago
I think the point you make about an editor is incredibly important. I've gotten quite a few books from self-published authors - including some pretty big names in the programming world - who are adamant that they can do it all themselves, and the prose is a train wreck. It's not just about catching typos - it's the actual developmental editing that needs to happen. Ensuring things are in the right order. Ensuring there's a common voice in the book. Things like that. As an author, I've never actually asked for a refund for these terrible books, because I know how hard it is to write one. But I don't buy self-published books anymore unless I have incredibly strong recommendations from others.
- thret 12y ago
  Even good - even great - writers need an editor. When you already know what you have written it can be easy to miss what is actually there.
adrianhoward 12y ago
"A publisher recently contacted me to explore the possibility of me writing a book for them. The terms, which I believe are fairly standard, are you make about $1 for every book sold, or about 5% of the total revenue. A technical author can expect to make about $10'000 if their book sells well. The publishing house makes about $200'000 on this, with the rest going to distribution and book stores." I'm not directly in the publishing industry, but I've been a technical reviewer on several books and have a fair number of friends who are authors/editors - mostly in the non-fiction market. From what I've experienced those publisher profit numbers don't make sense. Let's assume 5% author royalties (which, in my experience, is the low end 5-15% is the normal range, upper end for track record very successful folk — more for some publishers in some contexts), so that $10k = $200,000 total sales for the book. Typically the publisher will take around 45-55% of that $200k (including what they pass onto the author). The rest will go to distributers & retailers. Let's take the upper end of that. So 55% of $200l = $110000 to the publisher. - the author royalties = $100k - 10% printing costs = $90k - 15%ish for pre-production = $75k So absolute best case it's more like $10k vs $75k. Then there's marketing, the fact that most authors don't earn out their advance, the shenanigans over book discount, etc. So the profit to publishers coming out of that is often significantly lower. See http://journal.bookfinder.com/2009/03/breakdown-of-book-costs.html http://journal.bookfinder.com/2009/03/breakdown-of-book-cost... and http://ireaderreview.com/2009/05/03/book-cost-analysis-cost-of-physical-book-publishing/ http://ireaderreview.com/2009/05/03/book-cost-analysis-cost-... for some examples of real world publisher cost breakdowns. (The slice taken by marketing in the first example above seems high from what others have told me. Its also a somewhat simplistic breakdown since it ignores some of the long-term costs from publishers that aren't related to "books" directly. e.g. the advances to authors who never get published, etc. - so the potential publisher profits aren't quite as large as they appear here - there's other overhead outside the printing/distributing/selling books bit) It's also something Charlie Stross has posted about a fair bit see this collection of posts http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/04/common-misconceptions-about-pu-1.html http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/04/common-m... "Now compare to people like Brennan Dunn who have made $100'000 or more from their books, by publishing online and capturing 90%+ of revenue. You don't need a publisher for distribution. You don't need a publisher for typesetting. If you need an editor or proof reader you can hire one for maybe $10K." That's the best-case success case. Which is nice. But not common. Almost everybody I know who has gone the self-publishing route has ended up with the high-hundreds and single-digit-thousands. They'd have got more from a publisher advance. They'd have also learned a lot more about how to write a good book from the publishers — since they're in the business of helping their authors be profitable. Is a traditional publisher the right route for everybody. No. But neither are they the rapacious idiots who are exploiting authors that some folk portray them as. Almost everybody I know who went the traditional publisher route felt they got value out of it. Many of them are more than technically literate enough to go the self publishing route if they had wanted to (and some of them have for other kinds of product/market).
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

peteretep 12y ago

It's an excellent book, too, even if you don't know Perl.

jeremysmyth 12y ago

Cory Doctorow has a strong argument in the same direction, but with slightly different expression: http://craphound.com/littlebrother/about/#freedownload http://craphound.com/littlebrother/about/#freedownload

ceronman 12y ago
One more story that appeared here in HN a few days ago: Bob Nystrom writes about the process of self publishing a book which is also available for free. http://journal.stuffwithstuff.com/2014/11/20/how-my-book-launch-went/ http://journal.stuffwithstuff.com/2014/11/20/how-my-book-lau...
gvozd 12y ago
Cory Doctorow also put together a well-written account of his views in the recently published "Information Doesn't Want to Be Free: Laws for the Internet Age." He covers DRM, copyright, publishing, the music industry, etc. The book's target is aspiring artists, but the general audience will find it valuable as well.

sly010 12y ago

Of course the case would be very different if you wanted to publish your book as audio, which is probably much more expensive to produce.

sampo 12y ago
> if you wanted to publish your book as audio Higher-Order Perl as an audiobook would be quite an experience!
- Alpi 12y ago
  Can't wait to see screen version!
- mcguire 12y ago
  Can you imagine the syntax highlighting? It's a brilliant idea!
- crpatino 12y ago
  If play a simple "99 bottles of beer" backwards three times, it will awaken Cthulhu.

ilamont 12y ago

Part of this is that it's an unusually good book. But I think the longevity is partly because it is available as a free download. Imagine that person A asks a question on an Internet forum, and person B says that HOP has a section that could help with the question. If B wants to follow up, they now must find a copy of HOP. If the book is out of print, this can be difficult. It may not be in the library; it almost certainly isn't in the bookstore. Used copies may be available, but you have to order them and have them shipped, and if you don't like it once it arrives, you are stuck with it. Small publisher here. I believe other factors have contributed to its longevity. I just did a quick lookup of the book on Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/Higher-Order-Perl-Transforming-Programs/dp/1558607013 http://www.amazon.com/Higher-Order-Perl-Transforming-Program...) and it has a couple of things going for it that help contribute to long-tail sales: * Availability of new copies of the book, which signals the content is probably still relevant/not obsolete and may also indicate it’s a classic/foundation title considering how long it’s been in print. * A relatively high number of professional reviews and reviews from experts in the field * A moderate number of great reader reviews, including many “Verified Purchases” from the past year The current sales rank (579,897) indicates it's probably selling 1-3 copies per month on Amazon U.S. The fact that there are so many used copies available, not to mention the free PDF, no doubt reduces sales of the new book, but there are still enough people out there who want a new copy of the print edition for their bookshelves to keep the trickle of new sales. Regarding the convenience issue: These days, it’s possible to buy a new book online and return it or resell it later (as 63 other owners are doing right now on the Amazon U.S. site). It’s a pain to list it and handle the packing, but so is driving to a bookstore to bring back a return. A note about free book downloads: Free titles are indeed very convenient for those who are unable/unwilling to purchase the print edition, but they are less likely to be read. I currently have a title available for on Amazon and it’s been downloaded thousands of times, but through various mechanisms (including reviews, follow-on sales of the 2nd volume, clicks to the website from the ebook edition, etc.) I have determined it’s seldom read -- I'm guessing less than 5% of the people who have downloaded the Kindle edition have actually read any part of it. I think many free ebooks and PDFs end up on people’s devices and don’t end up being read because of a lack of time and all of the other free content that’s available out there.

mjd 12y ago

SwellJoe 12y ago

"Unusually good book" may be too humble to be correct. It is a truly excellent book. Many higher order concepts eluded me for years (SICP was a good introduction, but this goes much further, as an intermediate level book), but this was very enlightening. I recommend it for anyone working in just about any language. I was able to apply the concepts in Perl and JavaScript quite readily. And, there are translation s of the examples to other languages on the web these days.

vram22 12y ago
>there are translation s of the examples to other languages on the web these days. Do you mean to other programming languages? (I already did see that there are translations of the book to other human languages).
- SwellJoe 12y ago
  Yes, the examples (which are in Perl in the book) are available in other programming languages.
SwellJoe 12y ago
Some of those other languages with translated examples: JavaScript: http://interglacial.com/hoj/hoj.html http://interglacial.com/hoj/hoj.html Ruby: http://graysoftinc.com/higher-order-ruby http://graysoftinc.com/higher-order-ruby Python: http://dustbunnylair.blogspot.com/2009/01/higher-order-perl-python-style-toc.html http://dustbunnylair.blogspot.com/2009/01/higher-order-perl-... Go: http://higherordergo.blogspot.com/ http://higherordergo.blogspot.com/

marijn 12y ago

This has worked very well for Eloquent JavaScript as well -- I suspect it'd have remained obscure if it hadn't been available online (as a proper, web-friendly HTML page). As it is now, it's being read by a lot of people online, and though I suspect less people read it on paper than online, it is also being recommended and bought enough to financially compensate the time that went into it.

jholman 12y ago
Thank you so much for Eloquent JavaScript, Marijn! It's a really great book, and it has given me a lot of value.

jmnicolas 12y ago

Maybe his book is still relevant today because Perl didn't evolve much during these past years ? (no troll, I just read a few articles about Perl, I have no "insider" knowledge about the language situation except they're all waiting for Perl 6). Imagine a book about web development from 10 years ago, I guess nothing would be usable without a lot of modifications and side researches.

marijn 12y ago
Eloquent JavaScript's 1st edition is 7 years old today, and still selling well. It is showing its age, and I am bringing out a 2nd edition, but if you stick to the fundamentals and don't run with temporary hypes too much, it is possible to write a relatively longevous book even on web development.
perlgeek 12y ago
Not really; the techniques are still relevant in Perl 6 (which you can try out today, no need for waiting), even though the syntax changed slightly. In fact they are pretty much relevant in all dynamic programming languages that have a convenient closure mechanism/syntax. There's also a "Higher Order Javascript" page somewhere, which translates the Perl examples to javascript. (EDIT: link: http://interglacial.com/hoj/hoj.html http://interglacial.com/hoj/hoj.html)
dagw 12y ago
"Web development" isn't a programming language. I'd imagine most decent books on reasonably mature languages from 10 years ago would be pretty usable today.
eCa 12y ago
Perl 5 has evolved quite nicely lately, and I don't wait for Perl 6 (the biggest problem with Perl 6 is that "6" is bigger than "5"). While I haven't read this book (only skimmed parts), this book is not affected by the language evolution. Of course, it doesn't follow 'modern Perl' practices, but mostly it wouldn't need to. It is more concerned about concepts that can be applied regardless of language.
mcguire 12y ago

kakakiki 12y ago

Your book may be the reason I decide to take Perl seriously :) Thank you for the share.

Alex3917 12y ago

I have yet to go wrong taking advice from Philip Greenspun. The whole idea that YC has been espousing recently about domain-specific knowledge often being more valuable than pure technical ability, which was brought up in the context of the female founder interviews, is something that Philip has been talking about for 10+ years.

KedarMhaswade 12y ago

This is a very good thought! It's important for an author to break the barrier to entry for the potential readers of his/her work. It's not always easy or practical. Another way of doing this is publishing something in book form what you have already published elsewhere, e.g. your blog. After all, what a reader of free books, user of free and open source software is spending is the often neglected non-renewable source of energy -- her/his time! Sometimes however, authors consider their book(s) as their 'life's work'. It's hard to imagine giving it away for free. Psychologically speaking, though best things in life are often free, some people think that something that is 'expensive' is 'good' -- they somewhat erroneously believe that 'cheapness and quality don't go together'. A related point that I have always wondered about is deciding the price of your creation. For stable businesses it is perhaps a straightforward thing to name the price of a creation, but I imagine it would be hard for an author to come up with the price of her book. By making it free on the website and leaving it up to the publisher to do the hard work seems like a reasonable way to get around this problem.

jonnathanson 12y ago
All of this is well said. This bears mentioning, though: "For stable businesses it is perhaps a straightforward thing to name the price of a creation, but I imagine it would be hard for an author to come up with the price of her book." Pricing is an extraordinarily difficult problem in any business endeavor, be it publishing, software, semiconductors, or lightbulbs. Obviously it's easier in long-standing industries, or in quasi-monopolistic markets. But it's never straightforward or easy. Pricing is even harder in content businesses. First, because at least in the big-business side, so many parties have a finger in the pie, and need to be accounted for in the margin. Second, because there is no generally accepted consumer "spectrum" of price/length, price/format, price/category, price/perceived-value, etc. The guessing process is 50% science (SQL, Excel, R, benchmarks, etc.) and 50% art ("WTF will Segment A consider a decent price for Version X? Or Segment B for Version Y?") Of course, the other big constraint is rigidity. You can't really test, adjust, or offer promotional pricing on most publishing platforms or book markets. (And to whatever extent you can, you risk consumer backlash and confusion.) So whatever you decide right out of the gate, you're usually stuck with for awhile. A promising practice -- as the author of this blog post alludes to -- is to offer different prices (and sometimes, slightly different versions) to different audiences, who might come across the book at different touchpoints. One size does not fit all, and I suspect we'll see a lot more recognition of that fact in the book market in the coming years.

pasbesoin 12y ago

I've been out of touch for many years, now, but the Perl community was one of the most generous I encountered. And they were relatively early to this, setting many an example that has been carried forward by other communities. (There were earlier communities, of course, but the Perl community seemed to be ascendent around the time that "programming" became "mainstream". + CPAN + YAPC -- a progenitor of the "just cover expenses", do it yourself un-conference + Frequent, and sometimes surprising, contact with the luminaries. I remember the ongoing bait and switch BS at a few Microsoft events I attended. I don't know... I was always on the margins, not in the midst. But Perl, as a community, was always willing to show you how, and to lend a hand and a few resources as appropriate/helpful. Very generous.

mjd 12y ago
It's always been a good community. I think a lot of that comes from Larry.
- alxndr 12y ago
  LIGASWAG?

lsiebert 12y ago

One of the main problems for books, and particularly technical books, is breaking out and getting word of mouth, not avoiding piracy. There are a lot of technical books out there, and a limited amount of time to find the good ones. Free content is a great advertisement.

chetanahuja 12y ago

"But I think the longevity is partly because it is available as a free download. " I'm not sure that's the correct conclusion to be drawn. I suspect the longevity of the book is more due to the fact that it's a perl (or rather, perl5) book. And perl5, as we all know, is now officially an eternal language, never to be supplanted with a newer version. perl6, that mythical beast, is now officially a separate language not really meant to supplant perl5. more details for the curious here : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perl http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perl )

ksearsbooks 12y ago

To add some data around the self-publishing space overall, the best source by far is Authorearnings.com which is run by Hugh Howey (who is most famous for having become a success by giving away his book "Wool"). According to his data, the small press, indie authors and alternative press options are dominating the Amazon top 100 lists compared to prior years where traditional publishers owned 90% of the market (genre fiction doing the best overall). On the other hand, to self-publish non-technical books, assuming you use quality service providers, you are probably looking at about $10K before factoring in marketing (according to people like Guy Kawasaki). Juxtapose that against the fact that 400k self-pubbed ISBN's were issued last year, and the true indie success story seems like the proverbial unicorn. * Although clearly in deep technical knowledge, there will be less competition for the quality material (short supply and all that). Of course to further muddy the issue, what market share will go to the subscription services as they become more popular? According to Authorearnings, early data shows they are grabbing a lot of eyeballs from those top-tier super-users.

pronoiac 12y ago

Is the PDF title mangled in anyone else's ebook reader?