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Comment by limedaring | Hacker News Reader

I wrote Hello Web App and Hello Web App: Intermediate Concepts (http://hellowebapp.com, they're learn-to-build-a-web-app books using Django) and self-published both in 2015.

Just checked and this year I've made about $13,000 in profit. It's mostly passive — this year I started using a fulfillment company so the majority of my work is sending them orders (and answering questions about the book.)

Hoping to continue the trend next year by launching a book on teaching design for engineers (http://hellowebdesignbook.com).

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I'd be curious to hear a rough estimate on how much work went into those books, and the site? I'm assuming "13k in profit" means sans expenses for proof reading, hosting etc - but not counting the actual work writing everything?

I also find it satisfying to see that it's apparently quite possible to make (some) money on such projects - keep up the good work! :-)

So the year they were wrote (first book came out May 2015, second book in Dec 2015), I made $15k profit. Mainly because I did two Kickstarters for the books + the launch campaigns. Of course, 2015 (and a bit of 2014) was when I was spending time writing/designing/editing/publishing the books, so "profit" would be lower if you include my time.

This year, other than answering questions on my book's discussion forum as well as running a couple workshops for PyCon and DjangoCon, has been largely writing-free so it would truly be 13k in profit. :)

Congratulations! How did you promote the books? What would you say was your most effective promotion channel?

Through the Django and Python community, primarily -- they've been super supportive. The second book was aimed at folks who've completed the DjangoGirl's tutorial.

Very nice work there. Could you share the name of the fulfilment company (or a similar), Google gives me here some rather traditional results. Outsourcing support would be of great help.

I'm using PrintNinja (http://printninja.com) - they also do the printing for me, and they've been phenomenal. Great quality, reasonable prices, absolutely stellar customer service. The fulfillment is relatively new, and they're still working out the kinks, but I really like working with them so it's nice having only one company for both aspects.

This is a great product. Glad to see it doing well.

Thanks for the compliment!

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