
My self published book made $11,000 before I finished writing it - royosherove
http://osherove.com/blog/2013/10/18/11000.html
======
DanielKehoe
Great analysis. One thing he missed: Kickstarter.

Two weeks ago I launched "Learn Ruby on Rails" with a Kickstarter campaign:
[http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/909377477/learn-ruby-
on-...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/909377477/learn-ruby-on-rails)

(You can read more about the book here:

[http://learn-rails.com/learn-ruby-on-rails.html](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
Disappointed to read, among other exclusions:

\- "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."

~~~
wtracy
IndieGoGo doesn't seem to have such a limitation. You can double-check me:
[http://www.indiegogo.com/about/terms](http://www.indiegogo.com/about/terms)

~~~
throwmeaway2525
Pretty sure you're right, based on some other articles I read. But one
consideration:

[https://medium.com/p/2a48bc6ffd57](https://medium.com/p/2a48bc6ffd57)

I'm kind of surprised that Kickstarter gets as much discussion in some circles
as they do, because they seem to thumb their noses a bit at "us," or at least
the "us" in software (hardware and other creative projects are in the clear,
of course).

------
DanielBMarkham
_"...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](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
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.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
It's also worth noting that 1) HN is it's own market now, with people who sell
into the crowd, and 2) "I'm an expert on X" is becoming a cottage industry,
with folks claiming to know all sorts of interesting things that may or may
not be true.

Not trying to be cynical. Once again, my goal here is to separate the things
we consume on HN from the actual business models in the background. Yep, it's
certainly not as simple as $ per Twitter followers. There's also a Heisenberg
Effect here, where the closer the HN audience looks at a thing, the more
distorted the results we get are.

I'm a big fan of Brennan and Nathan's. I've also spent quite a bit of money on
things the HN crowd thought was cool for startups which didn't amount to a
hill of beans. It's very difficult having a discussion with 100K of your best
buds about ways to find your own way in the X arena. Too many slightly diverse
interests all playing out at the same time in the same forum :)

Geesh. I could start a list of high quality services offered by great HNers
for startups. Things that, if you need them, could easily pay for themselves.
Some of your stuff would be at the top of that list. It would not be a short
list.

~~~
thenomad
That would actually be an extremely useful list, if you fancied creating it...

------
zrail
Whoa, nice work! I did something similar with my book[1] and made about $3000
prior to final release (whole story here[2])

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](https://www.petekeen.net/mastering-modern-payments)

[2]: [https://www.petekeen.net/adventures-in-self-
publishing](https://www.petekeen.net/adventures-in-self-publishing)

~~~
TBInman
Yes, I'd be interested to hear about this too - my suspicion is that ppc ads
will have a pretty woeful ROI for books (would love to be proved wrong).

------
davegardner
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.

~~~
ivan_ah
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.

~~~
CWuestefeld
From personal experience [1] I can tell you that's the range.

I don't think that making lots of money is a very good reason to write a book
- or if that is your reason, you're likely to be disappointed.

A better reason is that it's great resume material: it can be a springboard to
getting recognition and open doors that you probably wouldn't enjoy otherwise.

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/Inside-Isapi-Chris-
Wuestefeld/dp/15620...](http://www.amazon.com/Inside-Isapi-Chris-
Wuestefeld/dp/1562056506/)

~~~
001sky
This is a great (=true) answer, but doesn't it basically argue that Copyright
is a false premise? The evidence seems to be that (1) 90% of the money does
not go to the author; and (2) In spite of (1) it still makes sense to do what
it takes to publish. Logically, one infers that a copyright monopoly is fairly
replaced by something with 10% of the social cost, provided that "springboard
to getting recognition and open doors" effect is neutral. Is this lattr
assumption only possible through copyright? What if there was something like
an Award or &tc stamped your resume?

~~~
peterarmstrong
On Leanpub, the author gets 90% royalties minus 50 cents per copy. So, on a
$10 book, the author gets $8.50 (85%) royalty, and on a $20 book, the author
gets $17.50 (87.5%).

Just because publishers have historically paid 10% royalties does not mean it
has to be that way in the future.

So, questions of copyright should be a debate about what is fair based on a
range of arrangements. Personally, I'm in favour of 14 year copyright, not the
"author's death + 70 years" madness that exists now...

------
mahranch
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.

[http://www.amazon.com/Zidbits-Learn-something-today-
Volume/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Zidbits-Learn-something-today-
Volume/dp/1492225614/ref=tmm_pap_title_0)

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
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...).

------
cloudhead
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?

~~~
kalid
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.)

------
andrewhyde
Interesting that you did spec work for the cover. A very distasteful move.

~~~
prezjordan
I'm curious why that's distasteful.

~~~
raganwald
Distasteful is exactly the right word. It means it's not in "good taste." It
doesn't mean wrong, or strategically poor, just a violation of subjective
standards of behaviour.

Quote often, such subjective standards exist to erect a barrier to entry for
people outside of a social caste. For example, it was considered "In poor
taste" for lawyers and doctors to advertise their services.

Of course, if you can't advertise, you lead to a situation where the lawyers
with the best word-of-mouth and the best rolodexes take nearly all the profit
from the business, and it's very hard for a newcomer to break into the
business.

When I read the word "distasteful" or the phrase "in poor taste" or perhaps
the word "unprofessional," I always ask myself, "Who benefits from
discouraging this behaviour?"

~~~
lem72
If this is the same Andrew Hyde, then Andrew is actually a pretty respected
dude having worked for Techstars, starting startup weekend, Ignite, TedX
boulder etc... I think he even worked on a startup that focused on linking
people to design companies.

I think in a way though you have hit on a great point that while Spec Work
haters may have some good points (Less thought, analytics, design principles
go into the designs you get from things like 99designs) however, I think a lot
of it is just fear.. "These people are willing to make a logo or book cover
that I would normally charge $2000 for, for $350).

I think there is room for both parties and find it funny that someone so
focused on innovation would be worried about the innovation in the design
area. The people willing to pay $350 for a logo probably aren't the type of
customers a design firm would want.

~~~
royosherove
Same situation exists in tech shops today, I feel. In my mind, outsourcing
jobs to india and other places is the equiv. of contests on 99designs. you
have many options, if you take the time you might find good quality, but it
will never be as good as having an in house team with direct communications.

some companies have people in india, and others don't.

