Ask PG: Your new book on Startups? | Hacker News Reader

Ask PG: Your new book on Startups?

30 pointsprakash23 comments

Your bio (http://www.paulgraham.com/bio.html) mentions that you are working on a new book on startups. Can you share some more info?

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It'll be a collection of essays. Most are already on my site. I may try to finish it this summer.

What do you think of print on demand services such as Amazon's createspace.com?

I have a feeling he'd be able to get a traditional publisher pretty easily.

With a traditional publisher you usually get a royalty of about 10-15% versus 4-6 times that with print on demand. Announce publication on YC and let bloggers promote with amazon affiliate links. Everyone wins but Barnes and Noble.

With a traditional publisher and a good book, you can easily get more than 4-6 times the sales. Sorry, gatekeepers can still be pretty effective, even in this day and age.

Question: if a publisher pays the author 4-6x the revenues brought in for the book, wouldn't that mean that on any 'good' books, they're losing money to publish them? Or am I missing something?

I just had to set the price of my own book, so I quickly learned where all the money goes. If the MSRP is $25.95, as mine is, then distributors who sell the book to bookstores or sites will require a 55% discount right away. That means that per copy, the publisher receives 45%, or $11.68. Of that 45%, a publisher might typically pay the author 10%, or $1.17 per copy. The printing costs are probably in the $3.50 (China) to $6.50 (United States) range, so the publisher stands to profit anywhere in the $7.01 (China) to $4.01 (United States) range.

When you print on demand, your printing costs are twice as high per copy, but since there's no middleman, you make more as an author. Of course, it's impossible to distribute, so it doesn't really matter. It's only a good option if you really only intend to sell a few copies to friends and family.

A decent book contract is more on the order of 10% of list price, with increases at certain volume levels.

This is 100% correct. My book sold over 100k copies the traditional route, there's no way it would have sold more than a few k with my pushing it myself, even though I had a widely read blog in the niche.

It's just like the equity equation. Also, being published once makes it easier in the future should you desire to go that route, while self publishing does not.

The way I see it, a writer self-publishing is like a hacker building his own servers and running them from his basement.

I don't like the low quality of the physical books these services produce.

Really? I just made one with Lulu and I was pretty impressed with it. It was very well-done.

I checked your profile but couldn't find it. Care to link us?

It's on Lulu here: http://www.lulu.com/content/2609902

It's moving to Amazon hopefully tomorrow, which is why I didn't link to it anywhere. I'll probably post it to reddit tomorrow at some time. Nonetheless: the book is very high-quality, if a bit glossy, and Lulu's store is a very effective one. There's a full preview, too.

A friend of mine speaks highly of Lulu books as well, says the ones he printed out were the same quality as one you'd get mass produced from a major publisher.

That's what I think Lulu's marketing edge is, actually. It's free for you to publish, and the quality is surprisingly decent. I don't like thinking of it as self-publishing (I do intend to try my luck with agents and publishing houses, though). Rather, it's a sort of site for entrepreneurial writers. Your works sell entirely depending on your writing quality and on how well you advertise. The job falls on your shoulders. And you can pay Lulu to help, but come on, that would be cheating. ;-)

I just received my copy of let over lambda which was printed via lulu and I am very impressed with the quality (other than the fact I would have preferred a thicker stock for the cover or even hardback).

I published my GNU Make book on lulu.com and I think the quality is perfectly good.

http://www.lulu.com/content/2584447

I have to agree. After deciding to ditch New York publishers, I had the choice of [digital] print on demand versus offset printing for the release of my book, and I chose offset.

If you want to publish something that is taken seriously by the publishing world, print on demand simply isn't an option at this point in time. There are a couple reasons why. Many people, myself included, find it annoying to read digitally-printed books because the ink tends to reflect light a lot more. Also, many distributors simply will not accept books that are print on demand. It's difficult to reach bookstores without distributors.

Print on demand doesn't necessarily mean not taken seriously: academic/university publishing houses are increasingly using print on demand to make low-run books viable, and to keep back catalogue titles available.

Does PG really need a book? Maybe to make a little money, or for the vanity of being a published author, but his legacy is online. It's just the new medium.

Personally, I prefer reading words on a printed page over a computer display. Print offers much better resolution, a more natural way to read (for me), and I'm not distracted by email/blogs/work.

I prefer to read physical books, for anything I care about. At this point the web is more of a replacement for low-engagement mediums like newspapers than books.

Humm "Hackers at work" (co-written with JL)?... just kidding.

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