Trust me, I know people are buying (I've made nearly as much as or more than Amy off my eBooks other than the authoring one). The volume for something that sells well isn't the issue. It's really that people don't want to pay as much for eBooks as one would hope/think.
Part of the problem is the "I don't get something tangible for my money." Never mind you're receiving a lot of, you know, information or anything. People want something they can point to and be like "Yo, I bought that." That's hard to do with eBooks, so you have to consistently price them lower.
Also, marketing to programmers/the HN crowd is significantly harder than a mainstream crowd because you have to deal with the Nick Burns Effect: you are an idiot and I could totally do everything better than you in a weekend. Rails 3 Upgrade Handbook? Received hate mail for weeks about how I should have made it free, how I charge too much, how the book isn't available in HTML, how they could write the whole thing in a weekend using an automated script (seriously), etc. I still get the occasional e-mail about how "I'm probably going to write my own FREE AND OPEN SOURCE guide (which is MORALLY SUPERIOR TO YOURS), so you should just give me a free copy of yours to help you fix any errors." It's a culture issue that's difficult to work around.
Even worse, selling them on something that isn't essential to their job function is difficult (most people don't write eBooks for a living), and the problem with http://authoringebooks.com is compounded with the fact that I'm competing against people who are entrenched and SEO'd out the butt. I don't have time to sit around and tweak my SEO stuff all day, so my organic Google traffic is significantly lower than what it would be if I were more visible.
And also, the market for those who want to write a technical ebook may not be as big as I originally anticipated. :)
What I'm suggesting is that you should raise prices sharply, and just ignore anyone who this discomfits. If they think they can do it in a weekend, let them. They won't do it because pathological customers are flakes, but hey, if they were hypothetically not flakes, it is a free Internet.
There exist programmers who happily pay $50+ for ebooks. Empirically, there are enough of them to support successful businesses.
P.S. See also consulting rates, writing OSS, etc. After somebody hits my patience for free support I just quote my daily rate at them. If they don't like it, well, enjoy the code.
Part of the problem is the "I don't get something tangible for my money." Never mind you're receiving a lot of, you know, information or anything. People want something they can point to and be like "Yo, I bought that." That's hard to do with eBooks, so you have to consistently price them lower.
Also, marketing to programmers/the HN crowd is significantly harder than a mainstream crowd because you have to deal with the Nick Burns Effect: you are an idiot and I could totally do everything better than you in a weekend. Rails 3 Upgrade Handbook? Received hate mail for weeks about how I should have made it free, how I charge too much, how the book isn't available in HTML, how they could write the whole thing in a weekend using an automated script (seriously), etc. I still get the occasional e-mail about how "I'm probably going to write my own FREE AND OPEN SOURCE guide (which is MORALLY SUPERIOR TO YOURS), so you should just give me a free copy of yours to help you fix any errors." It's a culture issue that's difficult to work around.
Even worse, selling them on something that isn't essential to their job function is difficult (most people don't write eBooks for a living), and the problem with http://authoringebooks.com is compounded with the fact that I'm competing against people who are entrenched and SEO'd out the butt. I don't have time to sit around and tweak my SEO stuff all day, so my organic Google traffic is significantly lower than what it would be if I were more visible.
And also, the market for those who want to write a technical ebook may not be as big as I originally anticipated. :)
So, uh yeah, I agree. Pathological customer bad.