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.
- "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."
"...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) 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.)
It is worth noting that people who do not have 8,000 blog subscribers or 10k twitter followers have used essentially the same playbook and made significant amounts of money doing so. Take Nathan Barry or Brennan Dunn, for example. I think some HNers know who they are these days, but a year ago, "nobody" knew them, and they both have published stats in the mid five figures for their first books.
Also, if you're savvy about things, the "$ per audience member" has enough dynamic range in it such that it makes up for a smaller audience size. "Revenue divided by Twitter followers" strikes me as a pretty silly metric, but if we accept it as a rough test of the proposition "Being Internet famous means you make mad bank, conversely, there is no profit without Internet fame", I have personal knowledge of enough data points to say that that metric has greater than X to 100X dynamic range.
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).
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.
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) 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...
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...).
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?
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.)
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.
[+] [-] DanielKehoe|12 years ago|reply
Two weeks ago I launched "Learn Ruby on Rails" with a Kickstarter campaign: 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
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.
[+] [-] throwmeaway2525|12 years ago|reply
- "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."
[+] [-] royosherove|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DanielBMarkham|12 years ago|reply
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) 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.)
[+] [-] patio11|12 years ago|reply
Also, if you're savvy about things, the "$ per audience member" has enough dynamic range in it such that it makes up for a smaller audience size. "Revenue divided by Twitter followers" strikes me as a pretty silly metric, but if we accept it as a rough test of the proposition "Being Internet famous means you make mad bank, conversely, there is no profit without Internet fame", I have personal knowledge of enough data points to say that that metric has greater than X to 100X dynamic range.
[+] [-] royosherove|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] babuskov|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zrail|12 years ago|reply
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
[2]: https://www.petekeen.net/adventures-in-self-publishing
[+] [-] TBInman|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] davegardner|12 years ago|reply
$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.
[+] [-] peterarmstrong|12 years ago|reply
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) 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...
[+] [-] HillRat|12 years ago|reply
If you don't mind my asking (customer discovery process here), what tools did you use to write the book?
[+] [-] ivansavz|12 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] royosherove|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mahranch|12 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] TBInman|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cloudhead|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kalid|12 years ago|reply
(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.)
[+] [-] yitchelle|12 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] hi-there|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andrewhyde|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] prezjordan|12 years ago|reply