
The economics of a web-based book, year two - samsolomon
http://practicaltypography.com/effluents-influence-affluence.html
======
dkarapetyan
I really like how quotable this post is

> It’s per­haps fit­ting that down the road from Ap­ple, we have bot­tom-
> feed­ing be­he­moths like Face­book and Google. These com­pa­nies are the
> sewage-treat­ment plants of the in­for­ma­tion age: shov­el­ing the worst
> qual­ity of hu­man at­ten­tion into piles, sea­son­ing it with
> sur­veil­lance data, and pack­ag­ing it into re­sal­able chunks. But it’s an
> open ques­tion whether their skill is ex­tract­ing hid­den value from the
> web, or merely or­ga­niz­ing its disappointments.

As I've progressed through the various stages of being a programmer and a
denizen of the internet I've become more and more willing to pay for curated
content, not algorithmically curated content but actual human curated content
like ebooks. That quote hits the nail on the head for why I've started to
think about information that way. An actual community and network of humans is
more valuable to me than "streams" and "firehoses" but actual humans can not
be seasoned with surveillance data and packaged into resalable chunks so
Google and Facebook work with the closest proxy that they can control (the
click stream) and optimize their entire operation around that.

The more I think about things like this the more I'm convinced that the
current way of doing things is not sustainable. The race to the bottom for
eyeballs is also the race to the bottom for relevant information content and
that is obviously not a sustainable long-term strategy. Somewhere in that post
he also makes the analogy with sub-prime mortgage instruments and unlike
financial institutions that could be propped up by tax payers I don't think
the sub-prime information economy has the analog of the U.S. government to
keep it afloat.

~~~
yodon
Also

> Ap­ple is of­ten cred­ited with prov­ing that de­sign ex­cel­lence leads to
> mar­ket suc­cess. Not re­ally. Ap­ple’s resur­gence is only in­ci­den­tally
> about de­sign. Mostly, it’s about care­fully se­lect­ing a ter­ri­tory of
> valu­able cus­tomers—in Ap­ple’s case, sta­tus-con­scious peo­ple with
> co­pi­ous dis­pos­able in­come—and de­fend­ing that ter­ri­tory tooth and
> nail. Ap­ple does not sell great de­sign. It sells de­sign that flat­ters
> its owner.

------
nthnclrk
I think the author could have made significantly more revenue if he invested
in copywriting that demonstrated some empathy.

He is clearly intelligent, articulate and well versed in the subject-matter.
Unfortunately his observations about traffic sources (ie. the intention of
HN's existence) showed a rather pronounced lack of EQ.

Copy that connects always considers the reader.

Additionally, the placement of payment options with just dollar amounts hidden
in a passage of text is far too obscure. I suspect from what he has written
and the choices he has made to encourage purchases, that he believes there
isn't a way to be more overt without being nagging, annoying, over-dramatic or
using dark patterns.

If this is the case, then that's a shame. Well placed, well-intentioned buying
options executed with the kind care and skills that he has are actually a good
thing for the reader, respect the audience _and_ would increase conversion.

~~~
Numberwang
Re. the traffic source observations, they were clearly written this way to be
controversial and thus generate more comments and more views from mentioned
sources. Very clever I'd say.

~~~
rtpg
Sure but page views don't equal dollars.

It's very frustrating, because this is being called an experiment in web
publishing, but this post shows that he's either not trying to do the footwork
in the "publishing" part of web publishing, or maybe he just lacks the
knowledge to do so.

Go to the "how to pay"[1] page and count how long it takes for you to figure
out how to give the guy $5. _Then_ try to go through the checkout process
(which asks me for a shipping address!). The ultimate irony is that that post
says my time is expensive, yet does not make it take 10 seconds (Stripe
Checkout form) to give him money.

These 1:1000 numbers are being presented as if it's indicative of the state of
the web publishing universe, but my guess is these numbers would be much
better by spending some time on the "publishing" part of the job. And, unlike
what the writer seems to imply with his whole mailing list digression, those
changes can make the user experience better as well!

I hope this doesn't become a reference point for people.

[1][http://practicaltypography.com/how-to-pay-for-this-
book.html](http://practicaltypography.com/how-to-pay-for-this-book.html)

------
lancewiggs
I really struggled, even now, to understand exactly what the author is selling
(looks like the overall website) and how to buy.

There are a lot of options and he seems to delight in making it difficult to
understand what to buy and how to pay. I'd recommend a re-read of Krug's
"Don't Make Me Think", if only for the title.

Perhaps provide just one purchase option, not buried in the text and available
in more places than an obscure chapter. I'd also like to see a buy-now button
that delivers a crafted PDF. That's a tangible asset, and could command a
decent (fixed) price from readers.

~~~
lucaspiller
I think the author doesn't want to scare people away, but on the other hand if
nobody knows how to buy... A book with a similar business model Game
Programming Patterns [1] also does this poorly, I think a simple "Like this?
Buy our print edition and support the author" link at the end of each chapter
would be fine.

[1] [http://gameprogrammingpatterns.com/architecture-
performance-...](http://gameprogrammingpatterns.com/architecture-performance-
and-games.html)

~~~
lobo_tuerto
I don't think it is the same case, have a look at this:

[http://gameprogrammingpatterns.com/](http://gameprogrammingpatterns.com/)

------
jmduke
If the goal of listing out the worst-converting referrers was, at least
partially, in order to shame the users of those sites into throwing Matt some
money then it, uh, worked. I tossed him $10 -- not exactly a significant sum,
but still > 0.

Paying for content is weird. I don't have any ideological issue with it -- I
spend a lot on eBooks, I shell out the monthly fee for Spotify, Hulu+, HBO Go,
and a bunch of other things I'm probably forgetting.

And yet -- while I'm confident I'm watching more TV + film, listening to more
new music, and reading more books than I ever have before, I'm still paying
less. Is that the way it should be, given that it's also a way better
experience than it's ever been? I dunno.

I think my tendency is to go with whatever is the easiest and of least fuss
[^1] -- very rarely, this involves actually paying a specific dollar amount
for a specific product.

I hope things like Patreon and Contributor
([https://www.google.com/contributor/welcome/](https://www.google.com/contributor/welcome/))
continue to grow. I want a world where great content like Practical Typography
can be supported with pure revenue, but that's never going to happen until
both the UX and number of those revenue streams meet or exceed the convenience
and ubiquity of advertisements.

In the meantime, I encourage more great content creators to "guilt" me into
giving them money. Given that I've grown comfortable with paying $12 for a
cocktail [^2], I think I can grow comfortable with shelling out some cash for
internet authors as well.

\--

[^1]: I suspect this is a habit shared by most HN'ers.

[^2]: I mean, only _so_ comfortable. But Canon is so good.

~~~
tedunangst
I don't think the intention was to point out the worst converting referrers.
They were the top referrers, which also happened to be poor, though I suspect
there were some less popular even worse referrers.

Popular referrers not converting well may simply be a truism.

------
soneca
I clicked solely because of the subject given by the title (i will help a
friend of mine publish a web-based book). Don't care at all about typography,
but ended up impressed by the author's opinion about the web. I respect and am
grateful for his inteligence, even though I think his suffering a little bit
from analysis paralysis on the monetization. He could be testing strategies
aligned with his terms. And not spending a whole month on this

~~~
anon3_
The thing is someone's running a typography blog, but they're trying to act
like a pundit at the same time.

If you haven't noticed, being a talkshow pundit it kind of a fad. Kind of like
The Young Turks, David Pakman, etc.

If you like politics and being a critic so much, I think the author should
keep it on a separate blog.

I think he's probably a good person, but him putting divisive politics into
the mix really distracted me.

~~~
eric-hu
I'm glad you feel the same way I do. I find his opinions witty and incisive,
but detracting from the meat of his content.

I feel this way about his payment page too. It's involved to figure out the
payment options and decide what to do. I count 10 options among his suggested
5 methods. Compare this to when I'm curious about a movie on Amazon. I see one
price with one call to action.

~~~
Tomte
I'm seeing at least two prices on Amazon for every movie: new and used.

And that's only if I have already searched for a specific format.

So in reality there are at least four prices: DVD and Blu-Ray, both new and
used.

And most of the time I'm also seeing Amazon Instant Video. Buy or rent.

That makes at least four prices in the usual case, most of the time six
prices.

~~~
eric-hu
This is true. Despite the number of choices, what Amazon has going for it is
that I'm a repeat visitor and their pricing plan is consistent for movies.
I've long ago decided what I want. That might change as I, say, upgrade from
DVD to Blu-Ray or downsize my possessions to go digital, but in general it'll
stay the same for months or years. Further, those are mostly commodity
formats, so I'm used to deciding if it's worthwhile to spend my money by
comparing to other vendors' pricing.

In the author's case, his product and business model are unique. There may be
other "pay as you wish" eBooks elsewhere, but none with quite the same mix of
fonts, donations and eBooks. Consciously or not, I think the author has made
it more difficult for me to consider if and how I'd want to pay him compared
with Amazon (or O'Reilly for a closer product).

------
geargrinder
For anyone looking to monetize a project like this, and avoid all the crass
and imposing advertisements the OP rightfully complains about, I highly
recommend reading The Art of Asking by Amanda Palmer.

------
jws
Wherein, amongst much else, the author identifies Hacker News and four other
sites as huge source of non-paying visitors. He speculates about the effect of
just banning referrals from these sites.

It surprises me and my observer bias. I visited, read the book, and bought the
fonts long ago. Used them as my go to web fonts quite a lot. Also a very nice
book.

~~~
kenrikm
_Hacker News. I can’t say I un­der­stand the pur­pose of this site, founded by
ven­ture cap­i­tal­ist Paul Gra­ham. I have two guesses. One is that it’s like
Red­dit for pro­gram­mers, but they can claim that us­ing it is work, not
goof­ing off. My other guess, since it has no ads, is that it acts as Mr.
Graham’s panop­ti­con into his com­mu­nity of in­ter­est, as Cere­bro does for
Prof. Xavier. Any­how, what­ever bored pro­gram­mers are spending their money
on, it’s def­i­nitely not me._

lol That sounds about 90% right. In my experience most people don't even blink
if they see a programmer with HN open.

~~~
davidgerard
I have managerial endorsement to read HN at work for the explicit purpose of
keeping up with whatever trendy framework-of-the-week the devs are next likely
to ask ops for.

------
jedanbik
Oh wow, I didn't realize there was a new Butterick book. I bought Typography
for Lawyers a few years ago and learned more than I expected to learn about
en/em dashes and quote usage; information that probably ought to be part of
any middle school keyboarding class curriculum.

------
e12e
Does seem a little absurd that there's no "buy book" link in the header,
footer or side-bar -- and that the typography choosen for hyperlinks are so
broken that I had to read a few paragraphs to realize which section(s) of the
black, non-underlined text was clickable.

Not wanting to nag I can understand, eschewing practical UX/UI and refusing to
inform the reader that there is a way to pay... not so much.

------
fencepost
I'll do some reading on it at some point in the future and may pay something,
but it seems like I should make a point of going back to it from this article
rather than a simple saved bookmark.

------
xgMz
Getting redirected to:
[http://practicaltypography.com/blacklist.html](http://practicaltypography.com/blacklist.html)

=/

Luckily found here:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20150810014540/http://practicalt...](https://web.archive.org/web/20150810014540/http://practicaltypography.com/effluents-
influence-affluence.html)

------
morgante
> Open­ness has ben­e­fits. It also has costs.

What costs? Seriously. The bandwidth costs of a traffic spike on HN are
negligible, so what exactly is the downside of letting in the "hordes?"

Having come across this book the other day, I'm currently working my way
through it and was planning to pay once I finished.

Now I won't. Insulting your customers is no way to do business.

~~~
probably_wrong
I don't think he means "costs" in the economic sense (i.e., more money
regarding hosting costs), but a more general idea of cost. A guess: He claims
that Apple's business is based on selling expensive stuff to a wealthy
audience with lots of disposable income. By making its products more exclusive
(that is, less open) Apple can get more money out of them. Selling cheap
iWatches, in contrast, would be more open but would "cheapen" the brand,
meaning they would lose status (and eventually money) in the long run.

As the "insulting your customers" bit, I'm not sure someone would qualify as
such before actually paying for the product. If anything, the actual customers
(those that paid for the book) come out of this post proud of themselves,
which I find pretty clever.

~~~
morgante
But the conflation with Apple is fundamentally flawed. Yes, Apple sells high-
end products (and he makes a "high-end" website). But Apple doesn't ban you
from coming to the Apple store just because you don't match their
"standards"—that's elitist and rude.

As for insulting your customers, people are customers before they necessarily
buy something. If you greeted everyone who walked into your store with a slap
on the face, I doubt you'd get much business even if they aren't technically
"customers" yet.

