September 14, 2004 | View Comments (30) | Category: Our Thoughts
Summary: I was wondering how book publishing works and was hoping someone out there could help me understand it.
More than one of our peers in the community have published a book. Book publishing has always fascinated me for some reason. How cool would it be to walk into a store and see someone reading the book you wrote?
For a while I figured that once you publish a book you have it made. People buy it and you make loads of money. However, I have read articles that state book publishing is not something anyone would wish to get involved in simply because the ROI is too low.
So I searched for articles on how much one can make from publishing a book and how the whole industry works. I haven't really found that much. I am not interested in publishing a book simply because of the amount of time and effort it would take I would have to put all my sites on hold. I was just curious.
So if anyone has any experience or information or can provide me with some links about the book business that would be really cool. I always wonder what type of money Zeldman, Cederholm, and Fried are seeing from their books. Would they do it again? Was it worth it?
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These usually have some good resources for book, journal, and magazine article publishing. Granted, the majority of the book is specific info for a myriad of publications/publishers, but there are also short essays, tips lists, and testimonials in each edition: 2004 Writer's Handbook
Randy J. Hunt (http://www.randyjhunt.com)
My first (money-losing) publishing experience was in the music business. After spending $15,000 to produce and print a music CD I was left with boxes of inventory in my garage. When I decided to publish golf travel guide "books," I decided to self-publish and do it all online, i.e. no printed inventory.
The ecomonics of printed book publishing are terrible. In order to get the price per book down to a range where you could make a profit (after the publisher, distributor, and book store take their cuts) you have to commit to 2-5,000 copies. And, it's hard to sell that many books. The only people making money are the people selling you books about how to self publish!
By publishing online, I have no inventory and can update my guides at any time with virtually no cost, i.e. I have no inventory to dispose of. I use a nifty piece of software called LinklokIPN (http://www.vibralogix.com/) which integrates with PayPal and enables secure, protected online delivery of my .zip archives which contain multiple PDF files. It's all automated and my customers get instant satisfaction. I'm happy because I provide a valuable service and information without having to take a huge financial risk on my part.
Rob Babcock (http://www.golfadventureguides.com/)
Books are an amazing source of inspiration and knowledge. However, there are waaay too many of them.
Whatever the process is to publish a book - it is far too easy, because everyone is doing it. Not that too many books is bad - but it's over saturated.
I wish I could read 1/1000 of all the books in the world, but if you think of it, we probably only read about 200 books in a life time. At least, for me.
Matthom (http://www.matthom.com/)
Rob, that is exactly the same stuff I have been hearing. Interesting...
Scrivs (http://9rules.com/)
My advice is that if you're even asking questions about how much money one can make by writing a book, you're probably better off not writing that book.
Not that it's not a legitimate question to ask. It's just that there are too many books out there (esp. tech books) written solely to fill a publisher's lineup that end up falling short of what could be considered inspired writing. The fact is that quite a few -- but not all -- books are written by first or second time writers as an ego thing and that just usually doesn't turn out so well. The writer spends way more time than they imagine, the book is edited to death, it is released sometimes after its prime period of relevance, and the writer walks away with a few grand and the satisfaction, as you say, of seeing the occasional copy out in the wild.
I was asked three times by the same publishing company once to write a book on a topic that I honestly thought could be covered in ten pages. Do we need any more books like that?
If you're going to write a book, write it because you have something to say that is worth 300 pages of saying it. Zeldman's book are great on so many levels and that's what makes them as close to "classics" as we have in this industry. The man is as much a writer as a web practitioner... probably more so even. That's what the world needs more of.
I think the best way to go about the decision is to basically plan on coming out way behind in any "time vs. money" calculations and then ask yourself if you still want to write the book. If you do, then you owe it to yourself to give it a shot.
Mike D. (http://www.mikeindustries.com)
Just to clarify, I have zero intentions of ever writing a real book to be published. This was me being curious since I couldn't find the information myself.
Books are like websites that go unnoticed and quickly forgotten. Seems the only time they are worthwhile is when they get some attention.
But great advice anyways Mike for someone that is looking to write a book :-)
Scrivs (http://9rules.com/)
"I am not interested in publishing a book simply because of the amount of time and effort it would take I would have to put all my sites on hold."
scrivs, are you serious? you could write a book and keep all your sites going in your sleep - all 3 hours a night :) I'm sure "the busiest man on the internet" can make the time to squeeze in one more little project :)
For what its worth, if you did write a book, I'd buy it for sure ...
chuck (http://telerana.f2o.org)
"I've found that books are irrelevant. So there is no sense in writing them."
Matthew Oliphant (http://businesslogs.com)
we probably only read about 200 books in a life time
I probably read that many in a year :P technical and non-technical.
I absolutely love books more than anything in the world, mainly due to my love for grammar, tradition and language. I've read quite a lot of e-books, but I don't get the same satisfaction when I read them.
Nice advice Mike, considering i'm concentrating on writing a book myself.
Robert Lofthouse (http://www.ghxdesign.com)
Booksquare can fill you in, especially It's Your Business. None of this is specifically about tech books, but about publishing in general.
Stephanie (http://www.sillybean.net/)
"...How cool would it be to walk into a store and see someone reading the book you wrote..."
Probably not as cool as one day seeing the download statistics on a white paper that's been coming "soon" for 4 months now.
;-)
Mark (http://www.lightpierce.com/ltshdw)
Writing a technical type of book won't get you on the best-seller lists, but it can be a great tool for publicizing yourself and your ideas... so you can do more websites, write more stuff, and speak at conferences, and maybe somehow start making a little money out of all that.
david king
I used to work for a book publisher and the ROI is low, especially for new authors. Advances (money you get up front) are in the 4 or very low 5 figure range. So, if you figure a short book is about 50,000 words and you get maybe $10k from it, that's 1/5 of a penny per word. (Magazines pay $1-2 per word in contrast.)
Thus the morale of the story: never write a book for money.
Dan Saffer (http://www.odannyboy.com)
Check out this article about a first-time author who found out that getting published wasn't necessarily the hard part of the business. It gives you a good look at the publishing business, especially for non-fiction works.
From the Columbia Journalism Review:
http://www.cjr.org/issues/2004/5/ideas-books-beckerman.asp
Gates
I used to write with a writer named Peter McWilliams when I was a political editor and a beginning writer (under Brady Jameson) -- he has since passed away, but he was a good writing business mentor to me:
http://www.mcwilliams.com/
http://www.hazlitt.org/hero/
He was a 10x New York Times best seller, and he was financially comfortable but nothing insane. What I've learned from my own poetry/prose/political publications (I am in anthologies, but not my own book) -- is that there is an odd balance in the industry.
1. You write a small section of the book (or offer up a small section of the completed book) to an agent. If he or she takes you on, they get a percentage of the final take, you get the rest. The benefit of this is you can, depending on the quality of your agent, quickly reach a large amount of publishers/editors by their connection, but you are also at their mercy.
2. Write your own book and be your own agent. You now have to pitch and sell your work, that it will return a profit and bring in a large audience, but it will also sit on a stack of all the other people who've pitched their book. You don't have the social system of the agent, but you do keep all the profit... IF it actually gets published.
3. You write and self-publish. Many people opt for this route (Peter McWilliams did in the later half of his career, and his books such as life 101 and love 101 were self-published and award winning) -- you can control the printing, control the editing, control the publishing... but, you now have to sell and market your work to vendors (distribution companies such as Barnes & Noble or directly to a buyer like New York Press), and sell/market your work to the people and the media (which a review can make or break you).
Self-Publishing gives you the most control, but you sacrifice the help and the speed -- but all can have benefits to any user.
That being said, like Dan wrote above -- never write for money. If you want to be Dan Brown, you can write a novel that you can almost feel the 'Made for TV' lifetime movie in your head as you read (Da Vinci Code)... or you can be Joseph Heller who wrote the excellent 'Catch-22' -- his novel was passed up four times for publication by large publishers as they said there wouldn't be an audience -- it sat dormant for two years with maybe only 5k copies printed, and then a NY Times publication found it, thought it was fantastic, and they couldn't keep up with printing enough. He wrote that for the love of writing.
So, if you're looking for a quick financial make, it won't happen. Books are investments in time, energy, and sometimes finances. If you are not the best writer, it could break your chances of finding a publisher -- even if your story is great. If you have a great story and are an excellent writer -- it'll die without a theme or an appropriate tone. Follow and break the rules as needed, but love the work and work on the talent, or it's nothing more than a Daniel Steel penny novel - and I don't want to remember Scrivs like that:)
As for money, I can make somewhere between 10K and up a year on magazine+newspaper+anthology publications -- but it's a law of averages, and time consuming. If I mail out one piece 100 times I may get one publication -- and make no mistake, editors are jerks, and their publishers want writers who will continue to make return business with either new or updated work, so they want an investment. Hope that helps!
If you want to talk about publisher, what types of publishers to target, what literary groups to talk with, and any various industry jabber, feel free to email me at my site and I will introduce you to other writers that are published, editors, the like:) ...and that invitation is open to everyone, since someone helped me a while back to get started. Hope that helps!
Brady J. Frey (http://www.dotfive.com)
...oh, and I don't think there's just too MANY books, there's just too many crappy books and they saturate the industry -- just like living in the bay area and competing with New and upcoming skilled designers who use Frontpage and MS Paint, and can undercut my web design by 500 bucks! Is it quality, no, but it's sometimes a needle in a haystack, and everyone's in it for the money... if there is any left.
Brady J. Frey (http://www.dotfive.com)
So it definitely seems the economics of the industry is out of whack. Wonder if Zeldman, et al, would agree.
Scrivs (http://9rules.com/)
Well, I would say that most of the people who bought his book are high end CSS XHTML developers, or want to be. That's like Martha Stewart selling a cook book, he has a niche audience. If you want that niche, then I would start selling your full name on here too -- and as new users and old users come in, they'll view you by that, and when you have a new book, they'll buy it from that... etc. Zeldman has probably made much more than what I posted, simply because our close nit group keeps recommending it! To guess would never be close probably, but like said above, he probably has made much more money from the book because he's viewed as an expert and can do speeches on it. Technical books are almost money enough for your resume and your image more than the financial gain, but I'm sure for Zeldman, that helps.
But the industry is out of wack, you're right, it's just like the music industry -- the money is in the publishers, not the artists... until the artists either reaches God status -- or they have always been an independent and made it.
Brady J. Frey (http://www.dotfive.com)
just to throw this into the pot, consider the last essay in George Orwell's book "A Collection of Essays" called "Why I Write".
A bit of a more realistic stance on the whole money issue, and a slight trampling of the "writing for the love of writing" gushyness.
Johnny Lactose (http://www.milkplusmedia.com)
good point -- I do agree it's a pipe dream to love for writing, but it's the same as design. Artists sometimes have to cough up the corporate work to make money, and then their art for the love of it... but the best works have always been without cash in mind; not Oprah Winfrey book club stuff, but penguin publication.
That being said, I didn't think Scrivs was going for the American novel, just technical eh?
Brady J. Frey (http://www.dotfive.com)
Okay now I really don't think anyone reads the entries. I am not going for any kind of book!! I have stated it in the entries and in the comments.
*sigh*
Scrivs (http://9rules.com/)
Oh, so Scrivs, is *Sigh* the name of your new book? Thats awesome. Is it a comedy, drama, suspense, horror, or what? :) j/k. I could do the ebook thing, but not a real book.
Bryan (http://www.juicedthoughts.com)
Scrivs, it was sarcasm -- that's the problem with text only, no tone. But sigh is a unique title, there you go -- would could write about the social etiquette of comment feeds.
Brady J. Frey (http://www.dotfive.com)
Or you could write a book about how you do it. You're what, 23? You have eleventy billion sites with new content daily on 110% of them. I think that you fly between timezones everyday just to get more hours in a day. You probably spend less time sleeping in a week than I spend being serious.
Yet you feel as if you cannot handle a book?
I think a good book title for you would be, "Hi, you may know me from 90% of the sites you visit on a daily basis."
Ryan Latham (http://www.unmatchedstyle.com)
"Hi I'm Troy McScrivs. You might remember me from such websites as 'Forever your Geek', 'Big Monkey Tips' and 'Lame Ass Jab'.
I'm here today to give you the skinny on design, thereby completing my plea bargain
with the good people at Cuban Council" of Sunny San Francisco."
PS. Typography is better now, I really like it. There's still the text-resize issue with the 'About Whitespace' block though.
AkaXakA (http://akaxaka.gameover.com)
Anyone who thinks publishers are getting rich is kidding himself. Check out an example profit and loss statement on a nonfiction book. Compare the author's earnings to the publisher's net profit. Comparisons to the music industry are, shall we say, inaccurate at best.
Stephanie (http://www.sillybean.net/)
So it would seem that Digital Books are a better way of distributing (non-fiction, technical) books?
The only 3 costs would then be:
system, server and time.
Given that Scrivs already uses 2 of them and the third (system) wouldn't be hard to acquire, it seems to me that is the way he should (hypotheticly) go.
AkaXakA (http://akaxaka.gameover.com)
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#1
Most people agree that writing the book is hard work, and that the ROI indeed is low, unless you're a best-seller. Most people I know who've published their book (or part of such) have never actually made more money from the book than from good 'ol fashioned work. Then again, most people I know write technical books, but I've known a few novel writers who live from it but live a rather modest lifestyle due to their earnings. They're all aiming for that best-seller, but getting one is not that easy.
Alexander (http://shelter.nu/)