Would you say that (2.5 months * 30 days per month * 2 hours per day) + 100 (hours of overhead, editing, etc) + (4 months 4 weeks per month * 3 nights per week * 2 hours per night) = 346 hours is a reasonable approximation of the amount of hours you spend on this? (If anything, it's probably grossly underestimating).
And of the 17k, is it reasonable to say that you pay 30% in processing fees etc?
So that would come out to approximately 35 USD / hour, of course not including the time it takes to actually learn the subject the book is about?
Do you think it's feasible to write for a living? Or in your experience, can writing books only be something that people do next to a 'regular' job? (acknowledging that no two books are the same and that the investment/reward can be vastly different from one book to the next).
It seems like this book was written mostly out of love or as a hobby, in which case one doesn't measure success by USD/hour made. But when in this very thread people state that they think ebooks are expensive, it seems that a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation would show that the real question isn't how come they're so expensive, but more how on earth it's possible that still so many books get written, with the financial motive (which can also be phrased as 'the desire the eat', depending on what tone one wants to set) seemingly having vanished completely from the list of reasons to be an author.
346 hours is both an underestimation and an overestimation. I can say that I definitely did not sit down at the keyboard for 346 hours to put this together. But how do you account for time spent thinking about the content, planning, visualizing, etc? What about the fact that most of that time was 'overtime'? ie. over and above my full-time job.
The other perspective here is that this took a lifetime of work. I've been learning about the source material for the past several years. Obviously it wasn't just to write this book, it has many practical applications besides. I've 'practiced' teaching people and writing for years before this, all of that certainly contributed. This quote sums it up nicely: http://www.marketingquoteoftheday.com/pablo-picasso-on-prici....
I don't think it's fair to try to trim down a project like this to an hourly rate because it simply doesn't work like that. I could stop putting time and effort into the project right now and I would still see some money come in, arbitrarily increasing that hourly rate.
Just to drive home this point having a book with my name on it opens up new opportunities. If I were to write another book and spend the exact same amount of time putting it together my 'hourly rate' would probably increase because I now have more people listening to what I have to say and trusting that I will provide something of value. So investing time now into this project is a long-term investment that I may not make back on the sales of this book, if you know what I mean.
I've no idea if it's feasible to write like this for a living. There are lots of people (even in the tech education space) who make a living selling their own products, but typically not just books. Look at people like Marc-Andre Cournoyer or Peter Cooper who have written books but make their living through some combination of teaching mediums (video, webinar, books, training, etc). For many of them their first product was an ebook.
Just to clean things up, this book was written out of love. I felt like I couldn't not write this book once the inspiration came. That being said, there was also a financial motive. I wanted to be compensated for my work, but also wanted other people to place value on the material. Too often free material is considered worthless because there was no exchange made for it. "If you don't give anything you don't get anything", so to speak.
n.b. When you unbundle it from an app store, processing $30 transactions costs about $1.50 to $3 at the high end (getting screwed by a legacy processor) not $9.
He's doing VASTLY better than e.g. if he had taken that book as a first time author to a technical publisher. For one, the book is actually published: he'd still have months on the timeline at even the most progressive dead tree publishers. For another, at similar sales levels, his ~$5,000 advance would not be "earned out" yet and he could expect his first royalty check the day after never.
With regards to authoring as a commercially viable profession: traditionally, it isn't for the majority of published authors. There do exist folks who make incomes engineers would find reasonable from selling snooks (including technical ebooks). Well, OK, some of them make incomes engineers would find unreasonable, but not for being too low. (Independent authoring, like independenr software development, is 10% about writing and 90% about successful execution of a sells-writing business.)
One of our goals at Leanpub is to create a world where authors can make a living. This seems like a crazy vision to some, but why should it be?
I believe that we will look back at right now as the start of a golden age of writing. We just haven't realized it yet as the signal is masked by the noise of all the gnashing of teeth from publishers.
well his revenue isn't over...most of that is fixed cost...his variable cost is very little.
So a year from now, that same book will still bring in similar revenues(he just has to keep up with the promos).
Meanwhile he can write 4 more books in that same period, and quadruple his income. The next year he can write 5 more, and a year after that he can write another 4.
And altogether they'll make the same income...especially if he builds a reputation for writing good guides, and will begin marketing to his existing customers("hey, if you liked my book on Unix...you'll love my book on Linux")
And so many books are written, because people are hoping to strike it rich. To be the next Harry Potter writer. Same with startups...the stats show that 90% of them fail...but people are still doing it hoping to make billions.
Indeed. Writing a book creates a passive income stream. Much like a blog with ads. It's arguable it's not completely passive, you can/should do promo - but equally you may want to do SEO on a blog.
The Hunger Games trilogy will be getting a lot of sales now, since the movie has been released and it did well on Amazon. The first book is 4 years old though, plenty of books pay off after the initial release.
When you publish with Amazon, 30-65% is in "processing" fees. Similar with Apple, BN, Kobo, etc. Self distribution can be a lot cheaper if you already have the marketing platform built it, which apparently @jstorimer has.
From my own experience writing, it would have been a better investment of my time to do side consulting jobs. But like @jstorimer, once I had the itch, I needed to scratch it (along with writing my own tooling for ebook production).
But the goal is to get a passive income. From the "indie" publishing crowd, (which has a fiction bias), the following are needed to make a living:
1. Luck
2. Good reviews
3. More books
The first two cover the quality of your book, the last is supposedly a multiplier (at least in fiction and I assume in non-fiction as well). I would need to write a bunch more books to write for a living. But there have been other benefits to writing as well.
Don't stop at the revenue from the book. There is also the value of credibility from a published technical book.
Having this book as a consultant could justify a high rate for Ruby Unix work. He could gather speaking fees for Ruby and Unix conferences. It could also lead to follow on books from standard publishers.
I would say this revenue could be the start to more.
And of the 17k, is it reasonable to say that you pay 30% in processing fees etc?
So that would come out to approximately 35 USD / hour, of course not including the time it takes to actually learn the subject the book is about?
Do you think it's feasible to write for a living? Or in your experience, can writing books only be something that people do next to a 'regular' job? (acknowledging that no two books are the same and that the investment/reward can be vastly different from one book to the next).
It seems like this book was written mostly out of love or as a hobby, in which case one doesn't measure success by USD/hour made. But when in this very thread people state that they think ebooks are expensive, it seems that a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation would show that the real question isn't how come they're so expensive, but more how on earth it's possible that still so many books get written, with the financial motive (which can also be phrased as 'the desire the eat', depending on what tone one wants to set) seemingly having vanished completely from the list of reasons to be an author.