
How My Book Launch Went - munificent
http://journal.stuffwithstuff.com/2014/11/20/how-my-book-launch-went/
======
ilamont
Small publisher of how-to books here. Congratulations on the launch -- you
really hit one out of the park! I like approach that you took to producing
this title, which clearly is a labor of love.

Looking at the data you shared, the 8,000-strong email list clearly made a
major impact on the launch. How long did it take to go from 0 to 8k, and what
sort of signup form or CTA did you use?

One other question: How have direct sales been on Smashwords? I don't use
Smashwords (until recently, they required the title page to give special
credit to Smashwords, which rubbed me the wrong way) but since they removed
that requirement I have been thinking of adding it as a standalone channel for
_In 30 Minutes_ guides. I distribute directly through Amazon, Createspace,
Lightning Source, iTunes/iBooks, B&N, Kobo, and a few other obscure sites
(txtr and Libiro). PDFs are sold through Gumroad.

One suggestion I have for HNers who have read the book is to leave honest
reviews wherever you bought it -- this can really help the long tail of sales.
Amazon marks reader reviews from customers with "Verified Purchase," which
gives those comments more weight in the eyes of prospective customers.

~~~
munificent
> Looking at the data you shared, the 8,000-strong email list clearly made a
> major impact on the launch.

Yeah, I think so, though I'm not savvy with analytics enough to tell where
readers are actually coming from.

> How long did it take to go from 0 to 8k,

I added the mailing list blurb to the site around 2013-08. Over the next eight
months, I wrote ten chapters where each one got the site a bump of traffic and
drew a bunch of sign-ups.

> and what sort of signup form or CTA did you use?

I don't know what a CTA is, but I used mailchimp and tweaked the sign-up form
myself. It's a little different now that the book is done, but you can see
what it used to look like here:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20141018101559/http://gameprogra...](https://web.archive.org/web/20141018101559/http://gameprogrammingpatterns.com/)

> One other question: How have direct sales been on Smashwords?

OK, but not great. While I totally get people who don't like walled gardens
and just want to buy a _file_ , the reality seems to be that most shoppers go
through managed eBook stores like Kindle, iBooks, etc.

I mainly used Smashwords because they seemed like an easier path to get the
book into iBooks and a bunch of smaller marketplaces I couldn't be bothered to
manage manually.

> PDFs are sold through Gumroad.

Huh. In my brief research for where to sell the PDF, that didn't turn up. I'm
using payhip, which seems nice so far.

> One suggestion I have for HNers who have read the book is to leave honest
> reviews wherever you bought it -- this can really help the long tail of
> sales.

YES YES YES. Buying one copy is nice. Writing a review is like buying N
copies.

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sbarre
I bought this book and I'm thoroughly enjoying it and learning quite a bit
(caveat: I am not a game programmer specifically but I wanted to learn more
about the patterns and strategies in game design so I don't have much of a
frame of comparison but I still find the book very well written and
informative).

~~~
munificent
> caveat: I am not a game programmer specifically but I wanted to learn more
> about the patterns and strategies in game design

No-so-secret secret: Most of the patterns in the book are equally useful
outside of games too. I just (1) thought game examples were a lot more fun to
write and read about and (2) thought game developers wouldn't take it as
seriously unless it was directly targeted towards them.

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aidos
I, like quite a few others around here it seems, read the web version when it
was posted to HN a while back. It was so good that I actually ditched my daily
cycle commute for a couple of weeks so I had the chance read little snatches
on the train.

For those that haven't read it, have a look - I'm sure you'll be hooked. The
content (in terms of the patterns) is really nice and very clearly explained.
Beyond that though, the style and humour is absolutely spot on. It doesn't
feel like a technical read - it's more like an adventure.

I'm going to buy a copy out of support, and honestly, I'll probably read it
again.

~~~
munificent
Wow, thank you for this!

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wsc981
I bought the book and I have to say I really like it. It's very nicely
written. Hopefully I'll be able to post some game on HN myself in a few
months, using this book.

~~~
munificent
Thank you!

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chaghalibaghali
Another great writeup - I'm only one data point, but I've been waiting to ask
someone for a copy for Christmas, so you might hopefully see another spike
around then.

~~~
munificent
Yeah, I was wondering if Christmas would give me a bump. I did try hard to get
the book done before the end of this year just in case.

~~~
dmix
One marketing tip I've learned:

Now that you've launched, you should no longer approach marketing as a
singular or continual event. I think this is a mistake many startups make. Do
campaigns. Think of a multi-pronged approach (coupons, promotions, blog posts,
etc) each towards a singular splashy event. Then keep repeating this a few
times on a 2 month basis, or how ever long you can invest.

You can see Patio11 does this with his business and holidays are a big part of
his (original) business.

You can also combine this with business dev/partnerships as well. Do you know
events that are coming up? Work together with them to help cross-promote. Do a
special landing page and coupon for attendees. Maybe do a talk.

This creates a repeatable process to boost sales, where you can refine your
techniques and measure your time vs ROI for a particular campaign. Then you
can compare which campaigns worked the best.

It's also much more fun than simply A/B testing headlines.

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intruder
I love your book, I got it when you it was up for free. That being said, I
mostly consult the webpage version. Thanks so much for creating this. I feel
guilty now.

~~~
munificent
> That being said, I mostly consult the webpage version.

That's absolutely, totally fine. Buying a copy is something to opt into for
people who specifically want those formats or want to reward me for writing,
not an obligation you karmically incur for reading the web site.

I get real personal value just by having readers and having felt like I
reached a broader audience and made more of a human connection. Cash is nice
too, but it's not the only incentive.

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califield
As the founder of a "game engine startup", I found this post extremely useful.
I'll be purchasing your book if only to support your marketing research.

~~~
munificent
Awesome, thanks!

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untothebreach
Congrats on the great launch Bob! Somehow I missed the entire thing, so I am
buying the book now :)

~~~
munificent
\o/

------
papaver
"design patterns are spoonfeed material for brainless programmers incapable of
independent thought, who will be resolved to producing code as mediocre as the
design patterns they use to create it." \- christer ericson

hah, congrats bob, awesome to see your book released. how random running into
this on hacker news, been almost a decade. glad your enjoying google! will
never forget the days of ZOD!!

~~~
munificent
"A new version of ZOD has been released and is ready for you to kneel before
it."

(For those confused, I was the lead on the level editor for Superman Returns:
The Videogame. We named it ZOD, naturally.)

------
RoundCube
[http://gameprogrammingpatterns.com/contents.html](http://gameprogrammingpatterns.com/contents.html)

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meva
I am curious about your experience. Would you name any games that you worked
on?

~~~
munificent
I worked at EA Tiburon for eight years. I worked directly on Madden PC 2002,
Superman Returns: The Videogame, and Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling
Adventure. I also (like most of the studio) got sucked into Madden X360 2006,
the first third-generation (X360/PS3) version of Madden and also helped out on
Madden 2008.

Much of my remaining time was spent on internal tools and tech. I worked on
our UI authoring tool for a while, then on some Flash rendering stuff and
other random shenanigans.

Hatsworth was, by far, the most fun project I was on. If you're curious, I
wrote a document about the level editor I created for it here:

[http://imgur.com/a/PIFUk](http://imgur.com/a/PIFUk)

(It's funny looking at it now and realizing how much the formatting of that
document looks like the book!)

~~~
meva
Thank you very much for answering and for sharing the document. I am currently
working on my first platformer so I am eager to read everything I can find
about making good platformers.

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leoplct
What did you have used to make the content on your ebook readable online? CMS?

~~~
wsc981
I think the content was initially written for the site using Markdown and
later converted into a book. The author mentions in the book somewhere that it
was written with Markdown.

~~~
munificent
Exactly right. I slapped together a little crude Python script that converts
the markdown to HTML and wraps it in some boilerplate HTML.

[https://github.com/munificent/game-programming-
patterns/blob...](https://github.com/munificent/game-programming-
patterns/blob/master/script/format.py)

------
browep
why give away the web version?

~~~
munificent
Why not? Hosting is cheap and my goal isn't to maximize revenue, it's to
maximize personal gratification. I get the latter from free readers as well as
paid ones.

Maybe the free version cannibalizes sales, but I'm certain the book is much
higher profile and reached a much larger number of potential customers because
I gave (and continue to give) the web version away for free.

~~~
djloche
I would argue that providing the book content for free as a website will sell
more books vs only having the for-sale version.

Especially with a niche like this, until you're an established author that
people will just buy because it was written by you, people will require some
sort of evidence that you know what you're talking about. Is the book worth
it? Reviews are good. Better? being able to skim or read the book before
buying.

Due to how temporary websites are - I think the physical copies and the ebooks
are a sound purchase for people that will want to be refer to this book at
some point in the future.

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daktanis
bookmarking for checking out later this evening.

------
cryowaffle
No offense but every comment in this thread reads like a shill.

