One question: what would be your opinion if somebody were to post here a public link to a pdf copy of the book?
There’s fairly little marketing, it all hangs on the publisher having good connections with distributors, that have good relations with book stores, and then have a pitch and cover design that are convincing enough for these book stores to stock.
As someone often creating digital content, I was impressed by how well these networks function. The book does not have a lot of online presence, yet it still found its way around the world.
When it comes to the digital version, I made it myself, because I figured that it also needed to circulate this way and that it talks to another audience. However, not doing much marketing for it other than posting on social media, there are very little sales. Visits to the website don’t really convert to eBook sales, so I think the audience I have at the moment prefers the physical medium. In posting on Hacker News I was curious if this was going to be different.
When it comes to the license, it permits people sharing the PDF. Ideally for me this means people mailing it to their friends, but I think it includes hosting on a public platform too. Because of the NC clause, to be sure the platform that hosts it should also be non-commercial, so I imagine someone could share it on their personal blog for example. This will probably happen at some point. It’s a bit of an ambiguous feeling, I realise it’s a consequence of the choice I made and that it will help the material reach more people, at the same time it doesn’t feel great to loose control. At least I hope I’ll be good enough at SEO so that people continue to realise it exists for sale :) After all that’s how paying for digital media often works, as a decision to want to support the author rather than a necessity to access the content.
It definitely does!
It was a bit surprising that you did not offer a freely downloadable pdf file for the book yourself. Anyhow, if the book is minimally relevant it will appear on library genesis for all to see. Time to stop pretending that this does not happen.
For an anecdotal data point, I systematically buy one or more printed copies of scientific and technical books whose authors distribute freely a digital copy. For example, GNU manuals and FSF publications, as well as many math books, including quite famous text books (my favorite, Ian MacKay inference textbook where you can download even the .tex sources!).
I still hesitate where to buy the physical copy of your book, though. It sells in amazon for 25EUR, but the sole review says that it is a low-quality print-on-demand thing. I would happily pay 50EUR if I was sure to obtain a high-quality print, well bound, with crisp text and figures and pages that do not fall apart. But then again, I'm a fastidious bibliophile and probably not representative at all.
Since the book sells mainly in art book shops I’d say you are representative of its public in the sense that the physical and visual design aims to be solid and at a higher level than for ex. most technical books. It’s offset printed, generous margins, nice paper stock, the spine is supple.
It’s not easy for me to know what happened with the copy the Amazon reviewer got. Since Amazon sold them this copy I’d expect them to reply and fix the problem (send a new book) but that’s probably too much to expect!
The chain is long, and I can’t 100% guarantee you that a bookshop sells you a copy in good shape but it should be no problem to return a misprinted one.
> It was a bit surprising that you did not offer a freely downloadable pdf file for the book yourself. Anyhow, if the book is minimally relevant it will appear on library genesis for all to see. Time to stop pretending that this does not happen.
My initial idea with having the eBook for sale instead of for free was that indeed it would pop up on Library Genesis, and for once the license actually allows it, but people would also buy it, giving me an extra income stream (I make more from an eBook than a physical book) and not making the publisher too nervous (after all, they might think that the free PDF would eat into sales of the physical book). It’s quite possible I’ll change this in the future, I’m evaluating it.