What I learned from screwing up my first ebook launch
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Furthermore, I'm pretty famous for my teaching skillz. My blog has 7000 readers. My Scriptaculous cheat sheet, for example, has been downloaded about 500k times.
I can't tell you how many big important people in the Rails community have come up to me and told me that they have my ActiveRecord cheat sheet hanging in their cube. (Or did.)
I gave a 3-hour tutorial at OSCON on JavaScript and I've given normal-length talks on Prototype there as well.
And my coauthor, my husband, wrote the Script.aculo.us framework and is one of the top 10 people in the world for this very topic.
Why would I charge $10 for a 150 page book? :)
Plus the DOM Monster tool, which will save our customers hours of work.
Many geeks undercharge because they don't know what creates value. I do know what creates value, and I do it - I write so anyone can understand, I make people laugh, I format the book in a beautiful and screen-friendly way, I make excellent diagrams, and I am incredibly picky about quality.
All those things, and the content is in-depth and detailed to a degree you cannot find anywhere else.
I don't undercharge. :) I could have easily charged more.
And what I'm really interested in, a few steps down the line, is teaching others to do this. I think that the stranglehold book publishers have is an illusory one. I think that there are tons of people right here on HN who could make good money and help people, rather than dreaming of writing a paper book where they get 10% of the discounted price at Amazon.
My first ebook on software design sold for $97 starting in 2001 and that's when nobody had even heard of ebooks. I made six-figures several times over with the product.
Amy, I would suggest spending more time on the sales page. I don't think it's driving home just how valuable the book can be. Put yourself in my shoes as a developer and hear all the silly questions I'm asking about the book and the problems I'm having with my code in which your book will help out.
For sure, you shouldn't have your bios hanging out on the side of the page. Drop them in the middle and really allow yourselves to shine.
I'm not even sure if the best angle to spin the guide is as a "is your app slow?" type of book. Some of us want to produce high-quality code and want to see useful techniques for improvements across the board. "Supercharge your Javascript" resonates more strongly with me than "Do you fall asleep waiting while your apps are running?"
Feel free to ping me if you'd like some additional advice. For sure, add a box to the webpage for folks to sign up for updates. Get a cheap account at aweber.com. Regularly mail updates out about the guide. Often, it takes 7-10 impressions of a product to make the sale. And once you have thousands of folks on your list, selling the second guide you write will be much easier!
Thanks for... actually, anything I try here sounds silly - support, sharing, etc., etc. But, in any case, thanks.
Re: the sales page, you're right. This is the beta sales page. When I ship the final version (next weekish), the sales page will change. I didn't think it made sense to work on the sales page again before the book was done. :)
I'm always looking for more advice so I will definitely ping you.
Nice to see another geek doing this stuff, not just sleazy "I make $102,221.392 repeating on Google Adsense every picosecond!" people. :)
That's amazing. Does that mean there are on the order of 500k programmers in the world using Scriptaculous? How many programmers are there, anyway? (In this case, discounting non-procedural languages like Excel.)
I'm not even deep in the Javascript/Ruby/Interface communities (where she's most known, and I'm a Linux sysadmin more into hypervisors), and I've heard of her, her work, and some of the things she's created. (http://twistori.com/ for example.)
When/if I'm ever ready to dive deep into a topic she writes about, I'd definitely buy/attend something she produced. Not only is she knowledgeable, but she's just a really solid, clear communicator, things that don't always go hand-in-hand :(
Thanks for the blog post, ahoyhere. Lots of lessons to apply for people in many industries.
EDIT: typo
It seems your frame of reference is to a paper book on a non-technical subject. If you compare it to a scifi paperback, yes, it is high. However, your frame of reference is borked -- this is a technical product designed to stop the problem which is preventing your customers from paying you money.
Here's my frame of reference, then: an experienced Javascript programmer from my company would be charged out at $100 an hour. Compared to a few hours of their time to resolve a Javascript performance problem, $25 doesn't look too expensive.
Something like: http://www.cafepress.com/cp/info/sell/books.aspx
So if you end up with 150 pages in the book, it'll just be something like 11 bucks extra. And most people prefer to have technical manuals in paper format. + You can charge a little bit more for the printed version, to make the ebook that much more appealing
Only one person has asked for it.
The actual price for printing the beta was $24. (I told him to go ahead and get his own printed copy.)
That would double the sales paths I have to worry about, collect email addresses from, etc.
It's really a non-starter to me. I have made the ebook screen-friendly and it's got a great interactive Table of Contents.
I don't think there's a reason to sell a printed copy when you could easily print it out and have Kinko's bind it for like $8.
I'm probably losing a handful of customers who don't email me in the first place, but that's an ok tradeoff for me in that it spares me the hassle of setting up a print-on-demand deal and (I irrationally fear this) inevitable customer service issues that arise from having to physically ship stuff (even it's a turnkey operation and somebody else is doing the shipping).
Plus - if you get it bound @ Kinko's, you can get spiral bound. And spiral bound is vastly superior for reference books. :)
* one path of sale (I do not have to integrate 2 systems to deal with my customers, maintain multiple email newsletters or manage some kind of tacky merge)
* one service that will be distributing the money to me
* one set processing fee that I pay for all sales (predictable income)
* no address required to buy (at least, not given to me)
* no shipping cost surprises for my customers
* no questions of variable quality
* no extra cost for color or binding options
* no potential for physically damaged or lost copies
* higher profit margin
The last one is the real kicker, even if I were willing to invest time and resources to handle the other issues (which I am not). The people who want printed copies are very unlikely to pay $70, thus making the entire thing moot.
This is the concept: not all customers are equal. I don't want every joe off the street. When customers start costing me money, it's not a business.
But the most important thing is: nobody is going to refuse to buy the digital version if there is no paper version available. They can get it printed and bound at their local copy bureau for pittance, much less than Lulu (or equiv.) costs.
I don't understand why people don't get this.
1. Wow!
2. My mind is blown!
3. This content is top notch, and I can't wait to get my hands on the rest of it.
There will be a sample chapter up next week.
Believe it or not, I wrote this post more to A) keep in touch with my readers, and B) turn (smart, non-sleazy, geeky) people's minds towards creating their own informational products than to C) promote the book. :)
It's like software demos -- you put pressure on the end-user to download, install and then figure out your software. I know I don't have 2 hours to figure out if your software will do what I need it to!
Whereas -- if you create a screencast demonstrating the power of your software or products, infomercial style, it has much more power to convert folks to buyers.
So if Amy really wanted to wow the masses, she could give some visual demonstrations (possibly in the form of a screencast) of the power of her ebook. Few people do this and it could be a real winner for her!
1. People are absolutely willing to buy beta books.
[Clojure's beta book was near completion content-wise, and very readable and usable in everyday learning of clojure.]
4. ... do not lay out the beta version beautifully in InDesign ...
[They were clearly typesetting in LaTeX.]
5. Have an update plan in advance.
[The update plan was announced from the beginning and worked really well via email notifications.
6. It's never a good idea to publicly promise to ship on X date ...
[They never had a final date. They even waited for Clojure to stabilize to 1.0.]
7. The types of folks who buy beta books are very involved, and will send you all kinds of helpful emails about typos, errors, or suggestions...
[My impression is that Stuart got even overwhelmed.]
And to top it, beta reviewers not only got the ebook; they were promised a free printed book. Hats off.
Any answer would be greatly appreciated. :)
We talk in the beginning of the book about how buying the correct license is supporting us creating more awesome stuff, including the upcoming Scriptaculous 2.0.
If people are going to pirate, they're going to pirate. Nothing is going to stop them. Except maybe LOOOOOOVE. :)
Sorry about our old flamewar regarding your previous issues with google ebooks. However, since I am promoting the script.alicio.us project (read: talking numbers on pi day) in a useful way that I am sure somehow contributes to your potential millions as a published author, please forgive me for defending one of the potential sources of revenue from my sites.
I don't like attention as much as some people do, but sometimes a gal has gotta defend her work. :)
indie
As I recall, you blamed Google shafting me on my "syntactically sketchy" JavaScript code samples. In a PDF. You said that must have conflicted with the Checkout engine.
That was the weirdest comment I think I've ever gotten on HN.