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Comment by hyperman1 | Hacker News Reader

These numbers are brutal. We pay 58 dollar, het only gets 0.01 cent, and things get better if he can sell 1000 books.

I can't believe this site alone doesn't have 1000 doom lovers.

I have met Fabien a few times at work, he is a lovely human being. I don't want to be too presumptuous and speak for him, but I don't think he cares about making a profit from this. He just likes to write and wants people to read and enjoy his works.

Contrast this with a niche firearms book from the host of Forgotten Weapons which is nearing $500k sales at a considerably higher price point.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/headstamp/chassepot-to-...

I wonder how many people would prefer to pay more for his books if they were collector's quality. Kickstarter might be a good way to figure this out.

I read the PDF version and donated 10 dollars a few months ago. The book is worth more than that, but given the numbers he expose I didn't even feel guilty.

This is absolutely insane. It would be cool to see a service where users could pledge cash for a book printing, then the number of pledges by the time of release determines the actual price and quality.

https://unbound.com/

My partner is currently writing a book for them, and they go way beyond basic print on demand. They’re pretty stringent about what the quality they’ll publish, give loads of support in the fundraising process around things like producing the pitch video and workshops on promoting it, and once the book is done put it in front of professional editors. I can’t recommend them highly enough.

And because she’d kill me if I didn’t take the chance to put the book in front of a new audience, you can find it at https://unbound.com/books/all-my-worldly-joy/

As it turns out I don't actually have any original ideas

"Anticipatory plagiarism occurs when someone steals your original idea and publishes it a hundred years before you were born."

I thought I had the original idea of regenerative braking for recovering energy in cars... But it had been done.

Maybe the reason ideas come around again is because they haven't been fully exploited and people are unaware that they exist... Which could be another reason why execution matters more than the idea...

I have invented the holographic lens, bicycles and network cables. Each time, it turns out someone else invented it before I was born.

This is pretty much “running a Kickstarter with several stretch goals.” Although I guess having a one-stop shop that handles making the printing and shipping happen could be a thing.

My experience doing small press stuff via KS is that it’s probably not gonna be anywhere near worth doing until you can print at least a thousand books at once, though. There are economies of scale to deal with.

The $0.01 (not cents, Verizon) comes from him not trying to make money.

The things most worth producing in the world are universally not profitable.

With a very subjective view on the worthiness of the enterprise

Indeed, profitability is a very subjective definition of worthiness.

But being profitable means that at least someone is willing to pay you to do the thing.

Note that there can be market distortions that either cause profitablity where it wouldn't otherwise be (e.g., government mandates) or prevent fully realizing costs (externalities).

He mentions that $0.01 is the minimum allowed, so I guess his aim isn't to make money on them.

To improve the profit I was going to suggest Createspace, then I read the article. Then I felt embarrassed for even thinking of recommending Amazon printing to anyone ever. Unfortunately Createspace support has never been great, and the transition to Kindle Direct has lowered the level of support even further.

Their PDF restrictions are sometimes nonsensical and whether or not it gets approved seems to be blind chance. You can spend days resubmitting the same PDF like a gambler at a slot machine. Win some lose some.

I always thought it was just me, but reading the author's experiences shows this isn't the case.

this is really sad.

the site has some pretty obvious bugs in the ordering sequence. if you click "billing address same as shipping address" before entering the shipping address the form fails; you have to check and uncheck it... when I see sloppy stuff like this, I always choose PayPal, but as that's not an option, I guess I will pass.

When I choose PayPal, I always see sloppy stuff like this

- Me 10 years ago.

Maybe it's better now.

That makes zero sense to me. Why even bother? He'd be better off with us giving him $20 in exchange for a PDF.

His goal is not to make money, but to make content available. He accepts donations, but the books are being sold at-cost on purpose. PDFs are free.

There was a breakdown somewhere where he compared different printers. There were cheaper options but the print quality had issues. This is the reality if you want to print a full color book.

That is in the linked article

Exactly.

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