Lessons learned from a year as a self-published author | Hacker News Reader

Lessons learned from a year as a self-published author

blog.leanpub.com

161 pointsjoshearl52 comments

Congratulations! Leanpub seems really interesting, and to a greater and greater extent, I'm itching to try it out for my next book. I love reading stories like these.

A consistent theme that comes up in many of these success stories is the importance -- if not quite the all-importance, then perhaps the primary importance -- of email marketing.

Your list is your launchpad. It's also your church: it's where your customers and followers are inspired, and from which they go out into the world to evangelize. It's your customer support lifeline. It's a compelling data set, to be analyzed frequently. It's all of these things. By and large, the most successful self-pub, blogging, and Kickstarter projects I've seen have been those with well-cadenced, legitimately interesting email updates. (As a very successful blogger once put it: 'I'm not writing a blog; I'm writing a mailing list. The blog is lead-gen.')

Email marketing sometimes gets a bad rap because of its vague associations with spam. Good emails are not spam. They're not auto-blasts. They are important communications to a base you have been cultivating and nurturing by hand. If you've got a modest, but high-quality list, and you're sending high-quality emails, you're in a better position than someone shotgunning crap at a larger, lower-quality list. Good emailing is non-scalable, hard work.

Only slight problem with e-mail marketing is, how in the world do you build your e-mail list?

It is easy to sell 1000 copies of your book if you have a 5000 e-mail subscribers interested in your topic.

If you write a good book on a useful topic but have no e-mail list, you will not do very well.

I have seen a lot of articles like this pop up recently.

I'm curious; do people think that any given software guy or other specialist can just decide to launch a book based on their domain knowledge, and have a shot at success like this? Or are these all the self-selected outliers, the minority of self-publishers that actually make a buck and so decide to blog about it instead of quietly abandoning the project?

I've gone so far as to draft an outline table of contents for a possible book myself, but I never know if it would have a shot at taking off, or just be likely to flounder in obscurity.

It sounds like what you might be asking is - it worth it to risk taking the time and effort to write a book? I'm going through the process right now, so maybe my thoughts can help.

I'm writing a free online book, "Clojure for the Brave and True" (http://www.braveclojure.com/), that has been picked up by No Starch. A couple of the chapters, "Start Using Emacs" and "Functional Programming" have done pretty well here on HN. I've made about $1k on leanpub so far for the unfinished book (ebook buyers will get the full No Starch ebook when it's ready).

The main thing that has worked for me has been to constantly get feedback from readers. Every time I release a chapter I tweet it, send it to my mailing list, and post it on reddit and G+. The comments have been overwhelmingly supportive. If it weren't for that kind of enthusiastic feedback, I'm pretty certain I would have given up.

Other people might have other ways to stay motivated, but this make the project much more "real" for me. I feel proud to provide my readers with quality content, and that they would choose to spend their time reading my work. It also helps to get those leanpub emails saying that someone has paid for the PDF - it's very encouraging when people pay for a free resource. To sum up this point - try thinking about what kind of process will make the risk worth it for you.

The second thing that's worked for me has been to write in a way that I, personally, find entertaining. When I sit down to write, I crank up the Lady Gaga and let out my inner idiot. It's way more fun that way, and people seem to like the result.

I hope this helps!

Just curious about this:

"I've made about $1k on leanpub so far for the unfinished book (ebook buyers will get the full No Starch ebook when it's ready)."

What happens if you burn out and decide you can't finish the book? Do people get their money back or did they pay less for a beta/unfinished copy and accept that this is what they're paying for?

[Leanpub cofounder here.]

We have an unconditional 45-day refund policy. This is so readers of the in-progress book can judge whether they think it has stalled. If so, they can decide whether they've gotten their money's worth, and if not, get a refund in 2 clicks.

In situations where books are abandoned after being dormant for a long time, we can't issue refunds since we literally can't. (We take PayPal and we take credit cards via PayPal Website Payments Pro, and we can only do refunds for 2 months with credit cards.) So, in these cases, it is up to the author to make things right.

This happens very, very rarely though: having actual readers of your in-progress book that you will disappoint if you stop is a great incentive for you to finish.

> we literally can't.

This is hard to believe. Couldn't you mail them a check or something?

What I meant was that we can do a compensating transaction (say a PayPal payment etc), but that it would not be a "refund" in terms of being a refund onto their credit card.

If we need to issue refunds beyond the 2 months we can contact our PayPal representative and have them take care of it, chances are you can do that too since it sounds like you have a fair amount of volume.

As someone who has been writing an ebook for over a year, I've found that people are pretty appreciative when you say "Hey, I need some time off due to burnout on this book."

I don't sell through LeanPub, though.

I'm three chapters into a book with a co-author now.. and there's a huge gap between having an outline and being able to publish something. Before that, there's a huge gap between having an idea and having an outline. Before that, there's a huge gap between having the skills and having the confidence to actually sketch out the idea.

I think authors are by default outliers within outliers within outliers..

Congratulations on the success! Leanpub is the best platform I have ever bought a book on hands down.

They just send you an email with a link to the downloadable pdf or you can log in and see your purchases with simple Download links. No DRM, not third party software downloaders, just a simple File > Save As.

Really transparent and makes you feel safe buying things.

And what about epub or mobi files?

They provide all 3 formats: pdf, epub, mobi. They also have the option to set a kindle address through the site to send books to a kindle (if the file size is okay). I agree with sergiotapia by the way, it really is an excellent service.

I think they do them to, but I never use them because I don't read programming books on anything other than my PC since I keep the book and the code side by side.

why won't PDF then won't work for you?

Are you not afraid that people may send each other the .pdf file without paying ?

As an author on Leanpub (http://www.leanpub.com/php) and one who's book has made it onto at least one torrent tracker site, I can say that if your book is worth pirating, it will be, and by trying to protect it with DRM you are only going to lose readers. It's only my first book, but it doesn't seem to have hurt my sales figures, and I've had plenty of complimentary feedback about the leanpub experience.

From what I can make out, if something is worth pirating, other people will happily pay for it. IMHO, the main question is; are there enough people paying to make it worth it in itself, regardless of people sharing it freely? If so, then the sharing doesn't matter.

Cheaters will always cheat, and let me tell ya: I've spent more money on Leanpub than I have anywhere else with "proper drm". :) I guess developers have an honor code towards their fellow software developers.

I agree. I have never paid for ebooks before I came across Leanpub. If my game/book was being copied without me being paid for it, I'll be happy that people like it so much. It only means that more folks will see it and at it will pay off in better sales eventually.

I'm not inclined to dig it out right now, but if it interests you, do check out what Neil Gaiman said about his books being copied in a similar manner.

For self-published authors, obscurity rather than piracy is the largest business threat

That's even legal among close friends and within your family – at least in most European countries (private or personal use). And I consider it an absolute necessity since printed books can be easily shared and in a family, it's simply not feasible to buy the same content a few times.

I think the bigger worry should be regarding whether or not you're writing something people will buy.

The reason so many things suck these days is that people worry about edge cases, and build in rules/sucky experiences to protect against them.

Congrats Josh! Happy to have been a small part of the inspiration for you. Thanks for paying it forward by sharing your numbers.

My experience matches yours when it comes to email, Twitter, and other sales channels.

One thought: If you add a second price tier (a course with videos and add-ons at $50-100) your revenue will double.

Does anybody have any experience with selling books like this outside of the software realm? By which I mean publishing beta books as you go or bundling other resources. and charging a premium. It seems to be something that the software community finds acceptable, but does this extend to other fields? Non-fiction or fiction.

Owner of a small publishing company here. We publish "how to" guides under the "In 30 Minutes" brand (Dropbox In 30 Minutes, LinkedIn In 30 Minutes, etc.) (1) but my company has also published two fiction titles.

You asked about selling books outside of the software realm. The In 30 Minutes guides are aimed at mainstream users, and I found through some early pricing experiments that attempting to charge more than $10 for these types of ebooks is very difficult. I have also found through more recent experiments that pricing ebook versions less than $5 leads to an immediate and sustained rise in sales.

I sell ebooks through Amazon, iTunes, and B&N as well as PDF versions on Gumroad. I have also made mobi/epub versions available on Gumroad, but very few people buy them -- Amazon, Apple and Android tablet manufacturers do not make it easy to transfer these types of files to their devices, which is a roadblock to most people in my target audience.

In my limited experience promoting fiction, factors such as categorization, whether or not the book is in a series, and the number of reviews on Amazon or Goodreads influence awareness and purchasing decisions. Because there is so much competition in the fiction realm, and most new titles by relatively unknown authors are priced at $4 or less, I think the reaction to an expensive fiction ebook by another unknown author would be negative.

For anyone who is interested in self-publishing, I wrote another HN post last year that a lot of people found useful. It includes tips on how to get started using a lean approach to writing, production, and marketing (2). Good luck!

1. http://in30minutes.com

2. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6052075

I have a self-published math book, more details here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=870015

It began as a beta, then a full PDF + supplement package, then a video course a year later. I'm currently working on a calculus series.

I'm not sure how it'd work with fiction (author interviews maybe?) but for non-fiction I think it can work well.

I'm not sure how you would have a beta version of a fiction book. That would be like selling jumbled ideas. I have a friend whose mother just released her first book on amazon and I believe Barnes and Noble. It sat up next to Koontz on the amazon best selling new releases for the first few days in that category. She put it on sale for $.99 as a new release, then I assume, will raise the price to $2 or $3 eventually. If you find the right audience, and know how to promote and market it well, people will buy.

"I'm not sure how you would have a beta version of a fiction book. That would be like selling jumbled ideas."

I know what you mean, though I'd like to point out that there is a serious and successful historical precedent for the publication of unfinished fiction: serial publishing (the way big novels used to be published, cf. Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Dickens, et al). Novelists would publish chapter-by-chapter, before finishing the whole thing, and would even change their plans for their novels in response to feedback from the public.

Now, of course for novels published serially, people do expect that at least each published chapter is finished when it is published, and is not a draft subject to change. However, as a former academic type, I find reading early drafts to be fascinating and meaningful; watching the jumble untangle is an exciting process. I've spent a lot of time reading early drafts of poems, and comparing how different versions of the same work are published by the author over time.

(btw I work at Leanpub)

I talk about this at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozO0kOnqmyA#t=935 ... The serial publishing bit starts at 14:03

I'm not sure how you would have a beta version of a fiction book.

Sell only the first few chapters. Or sell it in serial format.

While that's not really what they do, perhaps Tor Books[1] employees might have a perspective on this? Personally I think it would be really hard to do a good work of fiction without some help -- it is of course possible to hire an editor by yourself -- but I think the kind of support a "real" publisher is able to give you would be really valuable in this case.

[1] http://www.tor.com/ (For those unfamiliar, Tor was very early with DRM-free e-books as well as offering the first books of series for free download (expecting readers to purchase following books)).

You're going to want to go read every post on http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/

I also have to second the notion of Leanpub being a great platform for distribution...being able to go from Markdown to PDF/mobi/etc is wonderful. I've half finished a book on regular expressions (and shamefully haven't done updates in awhile) but earned about $1,700 so far, despite the book being free and not doing much promotion for it besides occasionally tweeting it: https://leanpub.com/bastards-regexes

The publish-as-you-write model is similar to Greenlight's Early Access, and easy to maintain on the author's side.

That is great - but just curious, how do you earn $1700 from a free ebook?

Edit : Never mind - figured out by visiting the link to the book on Epub :)

I find it more refreshing to read success stories of $16,920.12 rather than $250,000 on my first book success stories.

Perhaps it comes from the fear of the 'I know a guy who...' stories that you hear as an anecdote why someone who really shouldn't take a huge risk is about to take one.

Congratulations on your first book, hopefully the lessons learned will lead to continued success with future endeavors.

That actually made a big difference for me as well. When I had heard about self-published ebooks making money it was 37signals making $400,000+. That didn't inspire me at all since they had a massive audience.

But when I read Sacha Greif and Jarrod Drysdale share their numbers from small audiences (an audience size I knew I could achieve) I was inspired. They made $6500 and $8000 from their ebook launches.

Since I didn't have any kind of an audience at the time I thought if I did half that I would consider it a success. Turns out I did 2x!

I still share numbers, since I always have, but I agree that it is the smaller numbers that are truly inspiring.

When I heard huge successes I tend to think "well they already had a well established network". That's not always true the. I'm pretty sure Nathan Barry didn't and I would call what he did a big success.

that is another cool thing of Leanpub. if you go to lean pub.com you can see how much money they have paid to all their authors in total: Currently it says:

Authors have made $1,130,454 selling their books on Leanpub — $91,438 in the last 30 days.

My brother writes scifi books and publishes them on Kindle. Without getting too specific his take home has been over $10k per book, with 3 books published this year. Which is amazing for a new author. Lookup Jasper T Scott on amazon if you're curious.

Maybe I should really start writing that book about pragmatic finance for SME's. I never started because I always found the task of writing a book daunting, but writing bit by bit seems a great idea.

Well done Josh, this looks like a book I'm going to pony up for on pay day.

How did you manage the editorial, proof reading and technical review aspects of the book? Do LeanPub provide these services or do you do this yourself, if so how?

Authors do this themselves on Leanpub. But the thing is, readers of the in-progress book actually end up providing a lot of that in many cases, by providing feedback to the author via email, Disqus or Twitter. (Development and technical editors function as proxies for readers. We've found that readers also do a good job of that!)

[Leanpub cofounder here]

Thanks for the clarification.

I think LeanPub needs to work on how it categorises its books. Most seem to be software but are showing up under weird categories like Fitness.

Authors categorize their books themselves. Using the wrong category is presumably a mistake in autocomplete...

Images appear broken in this article. For a version of the article with working images, see the author's personal site: http://joshuaearl.com/selfpublishing/lessons-learned-from-a-...

Yes, sorry about that. The images are fixed now.

Very nice post. The most interesting part for me was your pricing - brash, yet smart at the same time. Good for you, man. You'll hit $50k in not time. Keep it up.

Thank you so much for sharing :-) Great inspiration for my own little project!

This is inspiring! This is very useful for me as I want to venture on something this month.

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