
How Sacha Greif and Nathan Barry sold $39k worth of eBooks - sgdesign
http://sachagreif.com/how-nathan-barry-and-i-sold-39k-worth-of-ebooks/
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barry-cotter
Very interesting. I can't speak to the podcast but I highly recommend the
transcript.

My takeaways:

(1) If you are an expert in something and are disciplined enough to set up a
consistent routine for writing you can probably write an ebook. (2) At least
for designers you probably don't need to sell in any format but pdf. (3) If
you want to maximise your reach or the growth in your personal brand it may be
best to sell something at impulse buy levels. (4) To maximise the cash you
earn directly, in sales, you should offer different packages at different
price points. (5) Both of these authors spent significant time and money
(works out very similarly) on layout, look and feel, different formats.

Personal commentary

Ebooks do not need to be that long, at least technical ones. Sometimes books
can be dense or have content that is valuable not because it's hard to
understand but because rediscovering it yourself takes valuable time. I don't
think either author put in more than 200 hours work; I don't believe either
put in more than 150.

You should offer at least three packages if you're price segmenting. This has
two purposes, the middle package looks totally reasonable compared to the
premium one but if you only have more or less impulse buy and middle people
will go impulse. The bigger reason is that most of your money will come from
people buying the complete package for whom real actionable advice saves them
their time and money, or people with corporate credit cards for whom the
difference between $50 and $150 is non-existent.

I doubt if having more than five packages helps because that's about the limit
of gradations people can hold in their heads intuitively rather than as
abstractions. The reasoning for three packages is given above, anchoring.
Probably a good idea to a/b test it.

~~~
Mikushi
Regarding the eBook size, that's the approach I'm taking with a serie I'm
working on at the moment.

I set myself a limit of 50 pages per volume, the eBook is highly focused on
one subject and does it well (hopefully). I found two main advantages with
this approach :

\- The first one is that I have a short attention span and it allows me to
write a page here and there, as the focus is on one subject it's much easier
to just drop a draft, come back later, format it and add it to the overall. I
do that very often, mainly in my morning commute in the tube.

\- The second one is that it doesn't require me to invest 6 months (or even
more) of my time on a huge overtake (I started like that, but after 6months of
work and being barely half way, I changed the approach and split the work in
smaller pieces), the first ebook took me a bit more than a month to write and
format, as I had quite a few things to figure out, now I'm two weeks in the
second ebook, and I'm almost done.

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nathanbarry
Hey everyone, I'm happy to answer any questions about writing, marketing, and
selling technical ebooks. I'm sure Sacha would be happy to answer questions as
well.

The books being discussed are here:

<http://nathanbarry.com/app-design-handbook>

<http://sachagreif.com/ebook>

~~~
jorkos
Thanks Nathan, can you point us to a few of the apps you've worked on as a
starting point. Thanks

~~~
nathanbarry
Here are the two big ones that I did for myself. I have a bunch more for
clients:

<http://thinklegend.com/commit> <http://onevoiceapp.com>

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eiji
Very smart, to drive even more sales of both books with a podcast "series"
starring both authors. Which one of you came up with that genius idea? Will
you cover the podcast in the podcast?

~~~
sgdesign
I can't tell if you're being serious or sarcastic… I guess you have a point
both ways: it's true this is a way to promote both our eBooks. But we are also
sharing valuable information and addressing real questions that people have
asked us.

If you didn't find any value in the podcast then I guess only the self-
promotion angle would remain, and I can see how that would be annoying.

~~~
boothead
I just read this on the train and you absolutely ticked the valuable
information and real questions boxes for me!

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sgdesign
Happy to answer questions as well!

~~~
dools
Hey, excuse me if this is covered in the podcast, but I can't watch it right
away and so I thought I'd take the opportunity while you're sticking around
here to ask the question:

Did either of you follow the route of doing an intro/TOC/first chapter before
you did the entire book then start marketing it to test out the response and
do some lead gen?

If not, do you have any thoughts on that approach? (including potentially
doing pre-sales of the book before you've actually gone ahead and written it?)

I'm working on a couple of eBook concepts right now and these are some
concepts I've been thinking about, would be very interested in your point(s)
of view.

Congrats on the publishing success!

~~~
sgdesign
I didn't do that myself but I think it's a very valid strategy. The only
problem I can see is that it might hurt your momentum: sometimes you just need
to go ahead and write without having to wait for feedback or A/B test results
for every chapter.

Same with presales, it's a great strategy as long as you don't spend so much
time promoting the pre-sale that you forget to write the book!

It might sound like I'm exaggerating but there is so much you can do to market
eBooks that the book itself can sometimes become almost an afterthought…

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wittekm
I was very surprised to see that you weren't publishing on iBooks or Kindle,
but truly self publishing through your websites. How the heck do you get
yourself out there to the point that you're raking in 10k a month? (Besides
HN.) And do you think that'll drop off once your main readership has bought
the book?

~~~
sgdesign
Speaking for myself (Sacha), I raked in 10k a month _the first month_. That
initial boost came mainly from HN. Sales dropped off dramatically since, and
now it's probably more around $1-200/month, if that.

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bartsitekcom
Nathan, you should probably think of removing part of the description from
your Gumroad page, as just about anyone can easily grab the zip file without
paying for it.

view-source:<https://gumroad.com/l/AppDesignComplete>

~~~
nathanbarry
Nice. That's awesome. Had no idea Gumroad displayed the receipt in plain HTML.
Oops! Foxed now, thanks for pointing it out.

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TheAmazingIdiot
1\. Do you guys focus mainly on iDevices? What's your take on the UI of
Android?

2\. Have you had any exposure to copyright infringement? If so, was it for the
positive or negative?

Thank you both for showing up here.

~~~
sgdesign
1\. As a designer I don't have a specific focus, I work on web apps as much as
iOS apps. Haven't worked on an Android app yet, though.

2\. I haven't had anybody pirate by book as fas as I know. Maybe it's because
of the low price point? That being said I wouldn't really care even if it did
happen. I do not believe it would take away from sales much, probably just
expose my book to people who would never have bought it anyway.

So in a way, piracy is a form of market segmentation that enables you to reach
even the cheapest customers!

