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Comment by devmonk | Hacker News Reader

First off, why limit yourself to only publishing electronically? You'll have a much larger audience if you offer paperback.

A few other options:

http://www.cafepress.com/cp/info/sell/books.aspx

http://publishing.booklocker.com/

http://pubit.barnesandnoble.com/pubit_app/bn?t=pi_reg_home

Or for amazon, email digitalrights@amazon.com or one of the several how-tos. This might be outdated: http://patdoyle.com/internetbusiness/publish-an-ebook-in-ama...

Then drum up more sales in facebook, posting info and links in forums and mailing lists, etc.

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In my experience, most people don't care about paperback if they can get it in PDF (granted my books have been technical in nature).

If they discover it online, they probably don't mind reading it on their computers. If he's planning on doing some marketing in traditional channels, then you're right. It just depends on who he's targeting.

We cannot neglect the masses who like the feel of a paperback, who will read it on the airplane, on the bus, or on the pot.

On the technical book side, I have continued to see a market for people who want their own hardcopy of SICP, TAOCP, Feynman's physics books, and other greats.

I read my ebooks in all those places.

Me too. How representative are we of the population?

Maybe not very. I can say that I see plenty of people with ebook readers on the bus, subway, and commuter rail. 'Course, I work in Cambridge (MA), which I'm sure skews things.

I read paperbacks a lot, too, but I'm going off of data from selling 3 fairly successful technical books. eBook sales are huge.

Having a paperback is a huge win, but it's often not worth the effort to futz with editing it (inserting page breaks properly etc.), typesetting it, finding a proper publisher, and messing with the whole process of getting the whole thing setup. Lulu makes it easier than nearly any other solution I've looked at, even if their margins are high (their margins aren't but their production costs are; authors balk at them but they're usually absorbed by publishers so while it seems that you're getting screwed, it's just that you're taking on the risk now instead of the publisher).

I'm only asking about e-books, because I think that Lulu offers a decent printing service - and there seem to be some decent alternatives. :)

But I'll be sure to check out your links.

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