Books aren't like software where you can release often and iterate. Think about your weekend prototype project. And how much effort it takes to make it into a "successful" start up. For books, you put all the effort before printing. And that effort to turn a prototype into a profitable product is what publishers provide you. And many publishers are really good at that.
Of course with ebooks and tablet, you can start thinking of a book as software: an interactive multimedia thingy that can be updated often. You are welcome to innovate this digital medium. But we are not there yet.
That's not true at all. Check out https://leanpub.com/, Manning's MEAPs, The Pragmatic Programmers' Beta books, Apress' Alpha books, Oreilly's Early Release books, etc, etc. Of course these are all digital (mostly PDFs), but they are still very much books.
Bruce Eckel's Thinking in Java was written in public. Early drafts were available as PDFs. High quality feedback, iterations, rapid releases, community engagement, mindshare, etc.
It was great to observe. Once it hit paper, I bought maybe 10 copies, as gifts, just to support the author and the new strategy.
I'm a bit disappointed it hasn't become the norm. Being on the outside, I rightly don't understand why.
I don't recall if Eckel had a publisher at the outset. Or if he was able to get a publisher by demonstrating the size of his audience. (The market for Java books at the time was flooded with schlock.)
Some people want to make a living at it, at the risk of having a smaller audience.
I'm not a programmer, but I've released a free HTML version of my books and print sales didn't decline at all. Too soon to be certain, but they may have increased. I sell PDF copies too.
A smart player will consider the volume under the sales curve, setting a price point that will lead to the greatest revenue at the least cost, instead of focusing on maximizing each sale.
I made good money publishing shareware. Maybe 1% of my users registered their copies. Mostly government contractors, who were required to. And free tech supp led to conversions about 1/2 the time.
At my scale, there's no way I could have profitably bought ads, maintained a copy protection scheme, etc. (Having since done it both ways, I know.)
Many, many artists identify exposure as the major hurdle to financial success. The same applies for indie games, phone apps, authors, etc.
> We make most of our money indirectly from the books: consulting, seminars.