Internet Publishing Can Pay Off 161
An anonymous reader writes "Leander Kahney of Wired News has an article (Net Publishing Made Profitable) about how the publishers of the free, online newsletter TidBITS have hit the jackpot with their highly focused Take Control ebook series (nicely formatted PDFs that are easy to read on screen or print). Authors earn 50% royalties, and the books cost $5 or $10, with free updates. All the books out right now are about Mac topics, but maybe they'll branch out in the future."
PDF Books Online... (Score:1, Informative)
2600.com
phrack.org
i know others i've talked to would love them in downloadable pdf format even if we had to pay for them
what do other
Re:Effects of free online publishing? (Score:5, Informative)
pdf publications are wonderful (Score:1, Informative)
Great idea
Re:American stupidity or political correctness ? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Yes, but (Score:3, Informative)
Mac users are scavengers -- when I'm in geek mode, I build computers with scraps. When I want something that works without having to think about it -- I go with a Mac.
Is it a brand? Fuck yes its a brand. Why do folks go with certain brands? Because they are built well enough that they have gone past just making them work, they make them look good too. I know PC users that have bought great looking PC components and thought that was all there was to the Mac Fanboys and bragged about having a machine that looked just as good to me -- unfortunately, it was also me that he asked to fix it all the time, and I never failed to tell him that if he had a mac, this wouldn't happen.
So, you'd rather use something that is cheaper and almost as good. Fine. Some of think that its that 10% that is better *IS* worth paying 3x as much. That 10% is time that you are not working...I've paid for my Macs time after time...hell a week after getting my new Powerbook I was showing a friend iMovie...he needed some video edited for a 30 second commercial, and while I have FinalCut, he wanted to see it done in that easy to use app. I was paid $500 for that commercial. Not bad for a free piece of software, and it paid a forth of my machine right then and there.
As for iTunes vs. eMusic? There is no choice...iTunes wins out. I've tried eMusic and if they'd polish it up (and I'm not talking about the fucking graphics), it might had had a chance. As for Archos Jukebox, I picked up several MP3 players because I didn't want to pay the Apple Tax and thought they were all the same. I still have one or two that I couldn't return (and my girlfriend thought they were too fucking geeky to use to even give them to her). A friend from Apple sent me one as a loaner and told me if I didn't like it, I could send it back...if I liked it, he'd sell it to me...I've had that Gen1 iPod for a couple of years now. It was the only device that felt natural and didn't feel like either a computer interface on a box or a limited device that was confusing to use.
Pretend all you want that its just fanboys that make Apple what it is and the idea of shiny chick magnet electronics (ok thats a bit useful -- no girls ever asked about my work provided dell, but I've had a few dozen ask my about my Powerbook -- actually they liked my old iBook more) -- its because Apple pays attention to detail in ALL areas. OSX is my new unix. I'll still run Linux for my servers, but I have no need to ever consider it on the desktop again...
Re:ill choice (Score:5, Informative)
Our books aren't "here's menu A, here's menu B." The whole point is that they're not exhaustive, but they focus in on specific details. The books try to solve problems and to do it in finite space.
It would also be another thing if you could spend a few minutes and find the answer on Google for everything in the 50 to 100 pages in the books. But you can't. It might take you a few minutes per page to find what's in the book. So if you spent, say, 2 to 4 hours, you might save $5 to $10 -- if you could find the information.
My first book on file sharing took me about 60 hours to write on top of my experience with Unix (1994 to present), Linux (1997 to present), and Mac OS X (10.0.0 to present). The AirPort book that I just released a few weeks ago took less time in the first edition, but we commit to releasing updates with new and updated material--version 1.0 was about 90 pages; 1.1 (a free update for 1.0 book buyers) will be about 160.
Another interesting interaction with the ebooks is that we hear from readers and can practically immediately make changes. People who bought my AirPort books first version gave me great feedback. I incorporated almost all of it into new information for the 1.1 release, which all of these readers will get for free. I love that.
I hope this clears up a few of the issues. Almost all of the writers involved to date are freelancers, and it's really quite difficult to make a good living writing about using technology, which, I hope, helps other people. These ebooks make it financially possible for me to write books on topics that people are asking us for but that aren't available in a few minutes of Google searching, and that aren't cost effective for a print book, which has to sell 5,000 to 10,000 copies (depending on size) to be even a reasonable success.
Imagine, for instance, a 50-page book on regular expression pattern matching for Mac OS X users. It's a possibility, and would be highly useful. But you can't write a print book like that. (Although O'Reilly has a more generalized book on the topic in print!)
ESR wrote about this before (Score:1, Informative)
It pays for Jim Baen who gives it away. (Score:3, Informative)
Here are several ISO images of Baen's free science fictional goodness [zlynx.org], please leave up your bittorrent client for others to share.
Re:Music (Score:4, Informative)
Low cost, high volume (Score:5, Informative)
I could put bugs in the html and DRM into the PDF to see who is forwarding the newsletters to a dozen friends, but all you do is force people to take more care with their piracy. Since you'll never stop a determined pirate, why hassle everyone else? I'm sure this is "Doh!" material for the
Cost Estimate (Score:2, Informative)
Re:It pays for Jim Baen who gives it away. (Score:2, Informative)
Baen operates on the "rats pushing levers to get crack" model of publishing - they give away free product because once you get addicted, you'll gladly pay to buy dead-tree and e-book versions of new stuff. Not everybody can do this, but Baen has been getting it right so far...
Nothing New (Score:1, Informative)
as been doing this for ages. Its called information marketing on the web and it works.
Let them share books with friends, and the friends in turn buy more books from you. no one wants to be restricted woth drm.
Re:Good thing you've mentioned them on Slashdot (Score:5, Informative)
The book isn't (as I noted in another Slashdot post), select this menu item, click start, next task. I explain how to modify Apache to set up WebDAV under Mac OS X. I have details on creating custom Samba shares. I explain the bugs in Apple's implementation of lukemftpd which prevents proper use of chroot and how to get around it.
Low-level topics these ain't if you've seen the book. This thread on Slashdot has given us a lot of good feedback, but the critique is all coming from people who are IMAGINING what's in the books, not actually looking at the site, downloading the free samples, and then responding.
The economics of publishing are really weird, too. The DVD Studio Pro book you bought for $20 gives a royalty of between $1.50 and $3 to the author or authors per copy sold. The book has to sell over 10,000 copies at that price and size to really make any money for the publisher. If the author worked alone, they might wind up making between $30 and $50 an hour for their time. Not bad at all, but not a massive return.
We're producing these niche -- not low-level -- books for intermediate users who need specific information and don't want to buy $40 and $50 exhaustive books. The exhaustive books are great for general reference, but my file sharing book has details that I was unable to find in any of the giant Panther books: they perversely don't have the space to cover every scenario in each topic because they have to cover EVERY topic.