Have you thought about bypassing a publisher and just producing a PDF and selling it directly? Then the only cost you'd have would to pay for a good editor and the rest would be profit.
I'd gladly pay $50 to learn everything you know about SEO. I'd bet you could sell a couple thousand copies on HN alone. Would that be enough money for it to be worth your while?
I would too. The problem is, there are people that will gladly pay 500x that amount for some of what he knows about SEO.
Somehow I don't think a book would discourage consulting clients. They want him looking at their situation and data with the benefit of everything he's learned since writing the book.
If it gives him a higher profile it might actually result in more consulting gigs.
So if you take one gram of sodium and add it to a room filled with chlorine gas, you end up with a wee little pile of salt. Pumping more gas into the room does not increase the amount of salt you get, because the sodium is the limiting reagent.
The limiting reagent in the number of consulting gigs I do every year is not the number of people who wish me to consult for them. It is closer to "How many weeks do I want to spend consulting?" That number is about ten to twelve weeks a year. I can fill my dance card at that number without needing to work very hard on getting the word out to new people.
It might make sense if I wanted to scale a consulting business up by hiring employees, training them to be Mini Me, and then closing clients on consulting engagements with fulfillment to be done by the Mini Mes. That is an option. It isn't one which really fits in with my plans for life at the moment.
And about the book, you can write down a somewhat detailed point-by-point walkthrough and outsource the actual writing of the book. Then sell it as an info product on your website for, say, $150 -- it is easily worth the money, which you get to keep most of and you can A/B test it like crazy.
Heck you could dictate the book while traveling and never have to write a line.
:)
1. The experience of writing what you know down in an organized form is an excellent way of refocusing your thoughts. (OK, you do so much of that anyways that this is not an issue.)
2. An increased demand for your consulting services can result in an increased rate for you.
3. The feedback you might get on a book could make you think of things you have never thought about.
>> closing clients on consulting engagements with fulfillment to be done by the Mini Mes
Thanks for playing.
I think it's a perfectly good deterrent for most people without adding on annoying DRM or anything else that actually impedes the reading experience.
(By the way, you do know that Apple silently embeds your name and email in every DRM-free music file you buy from iTunes, right?)
If they wanted to watermark my info into the file to prevent file sharing, that's fine. Printed on every page? Obnoxious. It's another case of legitimate purchases having a disincentive that piracy doesn't. I bought the book, I know I bought the book, I don't need to be reminded 272 times in the process of consuming it.
It might not be as intrusive as annoying DRM, but it still makes reading my ebooks frustrating.