Ask HN: Marketing and Pricing Advice for Self-Published eBook
If you were writing a technology centric eBook, would you publish it free online and sell a digital eBook (PDF/ePUB/etc.) and Print on Demand version, or just have it for sell with a free sample chapter like most traditional publishers? I'm noticing many online eBooks that are available fully free online but with for pay extras, http://railstutorial.org being a good example. The free content would obviously be a great way for people to discover your writing, but also lowers the likelihood of them paying. Then again, a for-pay eBook that no one knows of won't get sold either. Most of all, there's no reason we need to stick with only the most traditional sales methods with eBooks. What's your feelings about each method, and which would you choose? I've almost decided what I want to do, but would be interested to see the general thoughts on both models
Note: This is a repost of http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2042898, as the original post didn't get any response.
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I just finished writing a programming book (an R graphs cookbook), in the traditional way, so here are my thoughts.
I had a print publisher, who did all the administrative and editorial work on the book. I just had to do the writing.
Because of the publishing house's work, my job was easy. But I don't think I will ever do it this way again. Why? Because publishing books, especially programming books, in the traditional way just feels completely out of sync with the times.
If I had to write a book now, I'd rather blook it. Blog every day and then compile and edit the blog posts into a book. It's the only way that makes sense to me now, especially for programming books because they need to be live, fresh and up-to-date documents, not works of art frozen in time (unless that's what you are aiming for).
So I would give away the whole thing for free in the form of blog posts and also sell it in various convenient ebook formats.
That's my opinion based on very limited experience. Here are some more qualified opinions:
http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2010/12/you-should-self-publis...
http://ejohn.org/blog/programming-book-profits/
http://ejohn.org/blog/online-book-vs-ebook/
When we published Getting Real (http://gettingreal.37signals.com) we only offered it in two flavors: $19 for a personal-use PDF, and $49 for a you-can-share-it-with-10-friends/colleagues PDF. We didn't offer a free version.
A few years later, we offered a free version in HTML online. Sales of the PDF plummeted. That was fine with us - we'd already pulled in ~$500k on the PDF. At that point we just wanted to spread the Getting Real word as far and wide as we can. The free HTML version helped do that.
But the lesson is: If it's pay only, people will buy it. If it's pay and free, you'll lose a ton of potential buyers. Id start with pay only (starting at $19) and then phase in a free version down the road once you're happy with the money you've already made.