Crime writer. Many of those crimes involve computers.
General publishing announcements
The July 2012 issue of BSD Magazine has an article by yours truly: freebsd-update as an Intrusion Detection System.
It also has a code to get you 30% off of Absolute FreeBSD at No Starch Press. If you don’t have your copy of this book, here’s your chance.
It has other good articles too. None as awe-inspiring as mine, of course, but definitely worth a read.
As I beaver away on the new Absolute OpenBSD book, I’m pondering options for what to do afterwards. Part of that pondering concerns the business aspect of publishing. And I want your opinion.
This blog post is about tech books — or, more generally, “highly researched non-entertainment nonfiction,” a category which includes but is not limited to technology books. I’m explicitly excluding fiction and entertainment nonfiction. I’m discussing books meant to help the reader make more money, or at least keep their job.
I’ve wanted to write about certain technologies for years, but there aren’t enough buyers to support a traditional publishing run. They’re topics that would appeal to a majority of my blog readers, but a few hundred readers just can’t support a traditionally-published book. If I self-publish on such topics, I would get more money per reader. This could make special-interest books sufficiently profitable for me to invest a year writing them.
My goal is to make “enough” money so that I feel it’s worth spending my evenings and weekends writing a book. The exact value of “enough” varies with the topic, how hard the book is to write and research, how much I have to spend to write the book, who I have to work with to write the book, and what exactly I gave up in favor of writing the book. (Yes, I’d like to make great big steaming HEAPS of money. But that’s not realistic.) To achieve this, I must set the price of a book such that the reader feels he’s getting fair value, but still puts “enough” money in my pocket.
The problem comes in the payments I receive on the book.
You’ve probably heard that Amazon pays 70% royalties on self-published ebooks. That’s not quite accurate. It pays 70% royalties on self-published ebooks with a retail price of $9.99 or less. Barnes & Noble has a similar policy (look under Pricing and Payment Terms). Smashwords has a more complex royalty system, because they feed multiple ebook vendors. Royalties on books bought directly from Smashwords are about 85%, but royalties through various platforms that they feed pay varying percentages up to certain ceilings. For example, Kobo pays 60% up to $12.99, and 38% above that.
Physical book pricing is simpler. I get a certain amount for sales through Amazon, and a lower amount for sales through third parties such as Barnes & Noble or indie bookstores. Those royalties don’t have artificial ceilings.
I have no problem giving an ebook retailer their fair cut for delivery. I don’t wish to waste my time building and maintaining an ebook store when I could be writing. But the royalty scheme used by the large ebook retailers is clearly aimed at novels.
Companies like Amazon and B&N want self-published novels to be priced under $10. But there’s a definite difference between a 100,000-word novel with a potential audience of millions and a 300,000-word technology book with a potential audience of hundreds.
I cannot afford to spend a year writing a book with 500 expected buyers and sell it for $9.99. The income is not “enough.” Once I raise the price over $9.99, however, my royalty is halved. To raise my income a penny, I must increase the ebook price to over $20.
Unfair? Probably. Unnecessary? I’d say so. But that’s the retailer’s business decision, and I cannot change it, waste my time griping about it, or go on a long rant about how companies X, Y, and Z are destroying all that is good and wholesome in the world. (They aren’t, by the way. But that’s a separate blog post.)
So, for the sake of a purely hypothetical business decision, let me make up some numbers and facts. The pedantic will note that I’m rounding everything to the nearest dollar, but I’m already making up my own numbers, so who cares?
Assume I want to write a hefty book about a hypothetical project, MaguffinBSD. This project will take a year, expenses are minimal, and I have friends, allies, and supporters in the community. I decide that $14,000 gross is “enough”. My research indicates that maybe 500 people will buy the book. (How do I get that number? The community is about 1/10th the size of FreeBSD’s, and Absolute FreeBSD sold about 5000 copies in the first three years, with a dwindling long tail thereafter.) Let’s also assume that the book is up to my usual standards; it’s readable, mostly free of really blatant errors, and so on.
500 customers to raise $14,000 means that I must extract $28 from each buyer.
Option 1: I set the ebook price at $80, and sell it at that price across all platforms. Per various terms of service, the ebook must be priced at least 20% cheaper than the physical book retail price, so the print book is $100. My profit on the physical book is much higher, but sales are much lower.
Option 2: I write four smaller books: “MaguffinBSD, vol 1: Base Configuration,” “vol. 2, services,” “vol. 3, ongoing support,” and “vol 4: stupid MaguffinBSD Tricks.” Each of these books is available at all ebook retailers. I price each at $9.99.
A “MaguffinBSD, vols 1-4” is available as a print book, with a consolidated index and Table of Contents.
The version that appears in print is available as an ebook via Smashwords, and only Smashwords. It would not go to the other ebook retailers fed by Smashwords. Where you would pay $39.96 to buy each individual volume, I could sell the compendium for $32.
People who want individual volumes have the option to get them. People who want the compendium can get it in any desired format.
Option 3: Kickstarter. I include this because someone’s going to suggest it. I don’t like kickstarting books. Yes, some people do it, but publishing is a business. If I ever hope to make a living at writing, I need to treat it as a business. You can apply this same reasoning to asking for donations.
Model 2 increases my expenses and production time. I must prepare one book five times, in three different formats. But I might pick up some extra readers who are only interested in one or two volumes of the set, so I’ll consider that a wash.
But my gut reaction to model 1 is: oh dear God, NO.
So, my question to you lot is: which model would you accept more? Which would be more offensive? Or should I give up on writing specialty tech books and start writing about Windows, Apple, and Linux?
Samiuela LV Taufa was kind enough to write a review of SSH Mastery. Thank you, sir!
For those who are wondering why I haven’t posted much lately: I’m beavering away at the new Absolute OpenBSD, getting ready for a summer writing workshop with Kris Rusch, trying to get an article together for BSD Magazine, and when my brain is too tired to put words together, assembling a print version of Vicious Redemption.
So yes, I’m working. You just can’t see any results yet.
There’s been a slow-burning furor over dishonesty in “creative nonfiction,” most recently in this Fact vs. Artistic License in Creative Nonfiction post. Now and then someone accuses me of making stuff up in my books. For the record, here’s the truth.
I lie. I make stuff up all the time. But not technical stuff.
One technique I use in each tech book is to create a narrator. The narrator is not me. I don’t actually blackmail coworkers, as the narrator of Network Flow Analysis recommends. The narrator’s role is to bring life to the material, point out possibilities that are difficult to expose in pure technical text, and try to jolt the reader into paying attention.
I don’t create the narrators beforehand. They evolve from the material. The narrator of AO2e is worryingly like forensic blood spatter analyst Dexter Morgan. I’m trying to change that, but he’s fighting back.
Of course, some things are true. The afterword for Absolute OpenBSD 2nd ed. is the true story of a really bad night. But I don’t have enough of those stories to color a book.
This technique works. It helps the reader pay attention. Some people even find reading my books enjoyable (for example, there’s this review that made me giggle madly). There are readers who hate my books for exactly this reason. But I’m not going to change my writing style to chase a readership.
If I’m giving instructions on how to fdisk and disklabel a hard drive, the information is as correct as I can make it. Facts are inviolate.
If it’s more personal, it might be true. It might be fictional. I am a writer, and am not to be trusted.
So don’t try to call me out on this. I know. I don’t care.
Yep, Cisco Routers for the Desperate and Absolute FreeBSD are 50% off when you buy through No Starch Press’s O’Reilly distributor.
And other books. By other authors. Most of whom are more awesome than I am, so I’m not going to mention any names. Like Peter Hansteen. Or Joe Kong. Or Tom Limoncelli. Or Chris Sanders. Because they sure don’t need the press.
This is part of the EFF’s Day Against DRM. Use the code DRMFREE to get 50% off ebooks via O’Reilly.
Go to the O’Reilly site for all the details.
For the record, my tech books are all DRM-free. (I have one short story with DRM on Amazon. It was the first story I put up. Amazon doesn’t allow you to change your DRM choice without removing and republishing the title. And I have two good reviews on that story, which I would lose if I did so. So I’m stuck. But you can get that story DRM-free on other sites.)
And how do I feel about doing this as part of a “GNU promotion”? Despite what a lot of people think, I have no objections to the GPL. I think it’s morally inferior to the BSD license. Sharing with the condition that people share back is generous. A pure gift is even better, however.
Lots of people have offered to tech review the second edition of Absolute OpenBSD before it goes to print. Peter Hansteen is doing the final tech edit, but I still need a reality check before it goes to him.
Henning Brauer has offered to do this for me. He’s reviewed a few chapters already, and he’s caught a vast array of my inadequacies. I’ve decided to rely on Henning for fact-checking, rather than my usual volunteer community review process.
This will probably disappoint those of you who really wanted to volunteer. I appreciate you more than words can say. But the community review process is the single biggest time consumer of my time in book production outside of actual testing. Henning certainly knows OpenBSD, is more than capable of catching my errors, and is highly motivated to have the book be accurate. (Or, if you prefer, he’d rather not have some doofus author misrepresent his hard work. I’m good either way.)
I’m highly confident in their ability to point out every single mistake I make. If I make an error and both Henning and Peter miss it, well, then, apparently it was meant to be that way.
I just got asked one too many times, “What’s in this book that’s not in the man pages?” And I’ve snapped.
I’m blogging my answer, so I can point here and save myself from typing the answer again.
I’m best known for writing about BSD technologies, a field where the developers are notoriously detailed in their documentation. If you look at the man pages for any open-source BSD, you’ll see that everything is included. If something is missing, it’s a bug. In addition there are extensive, lovingly-maintained FAQs and community-supported handbooks. How could I possibly add anything to than knowledge?
The short answer is: integration and context.
The man pages almost certainly contain everything you want to know. But man pages are not examples. Man pages do not provide context for the use of that knowledge. The ability to read disparate manuals and assemble that knowledge into a working, cohesive whole is a very specific skill. Programmers, in particular programmers who learn new technologies, have that skill. Many systems administrators develop that skill, after years of practice.
Some people can take a whole pile of man pages, assimilate their contents, integrate that knowledge together, and create a holistic understanding of the field they cover. They can extrapolate from documents into use cases, and reverse-extrapolate from actual uses into configuration. If you are one of these people, I have two things to say to you:
1) You do not need my books.
2) You are smarter than me.
3) By attempting to convince me of things I already know, you are wasting your own time.
I also concede that many technology books are nothing more than recitals of man pages. Others are nothing more than collections of screenshots, saying “click the Next box” four hundred times. These books are a waste of electrons and wood pulp. I blame them for dragging down the reputation of technology writing. (I also writhe in envy because these books sell far, far better than mine. But that’s a separate issue)
Good technology writing provides context for the information, and guides the reader to create a holistic understanding. Yes, some people can do that purely by reading man pages. Others need help.
Why should I write a book that competes directly with, say, the FreeBSD Handbook or the OpenBSD FAQ? Not everybody learns in the same way. Discussing the same facts in different language, with a different organization, makes the knowledge take a different path through the reader’s mind. The reader’s job is to use new information to make new connections in their brain, and seeing the same information presented very differently can help.
On a personal level, I do my best to make the job of getting that information easy, and present the reader with a whole bunch of ready-made connections.
If you want me to listen to your proclamation of superiority, I have to say: put your money where your mouth is. Donate the list price of one of my books to an open-source project that I write about. If you feel the uncontrollable need to advertise your superiority, write “That Moron Lucas Is Wasting His Time” in the note field. Copy me on the emailed receipt. At that time I will pay attention to you, in direct proportion to the size of the donation. I won’t change what I do, mind you — I probably won’t even answer the email — but I’ll pay attention to you. And I promise you, the recipient project won’t mind.
Update 5/2/2013: With the OpenBSD book coming out, I’m getting more of these. What really amuses me is that people think it’s important that I know the book is not useful.
I promised several authors results of my private label publishing experiment. I now have sales numbers from February from Amazon, B&N, Smashwords, and CreateSpace. Just like the January post, this comes with some caveats:
Without further ado, here’s the numbers:
I said last month that February sales were lower than January’s. One a per-day basis, they were much lower. But the book only went live on Amazon on 20 January. The excellent January numbers were due to my hard-core fans buying it. (And I thank you all, sincerely.)
Similarly, the print version was available on 27 February, if you bought it directly from my CreateSpace store. It went live on Amazon on 29 February. One copy sold on the 27th, and three on the 29th. The March average per-day sales per venue will be lower, but the greater number of days will create higher totals.
A couple sales per day per channel adds up. The B&N sales don’t look impressive, but hey, it’s $52 that I wouldn’t otherwise get, and eight readers I wouldn’t otherwise have.
I expect sales to go down from this point on. Reviews drive sales. Reviews this far have all been from people who follow my work. There’s nothing wrong with that — indeed, I appreciate every review. But I think I’ve basically worked through all the reviewers in my hard-core fan base. In the future, I must attract disinterested reviews. I have saved the contact information for everyone who has ever reviewed my work, and am working my way through the list offering review copies. I’m going slowly; I’d rather have 3 reviews a month for 6 months than 18 reviews in one month.
So, what about the expenses? Publishing this cost:
So, how much more do I need to sell to break even?
Total expenditures: $3,399.86.
Total Jan-Feb royalties: $3506.88
I have made $107.02 in about forty days of sales (assuming my time is free). So, I’d like to give a sincere “thank you!” to the 482 people who bought SSH Mastery in January and February, as well as those who bought it since then.
Again, this assumes that my time to write, design, lay out, test, corral reviews, and so on, is free. Also, I don’t have that cash in hand yet. Ebook retailers delay payment for 30-60 days after the close of the month or quarter. I’ll get my first check at the beginning of April.
Clearly, the self-publishing route is viable, if you have good content. (I’ll babble about tech book content, and the distressing quality thereof, some other time.)
If you want to do this yourself, I strongly recommend you to get into Dean Wesley Smith’s Think like a Publisher workshop. No, I don’t encourage you to go. I command you to go. DWS is a fiction writer, and his other workshops are for fiction writers, but TlAP is suitable for all sorts of writers. I spent weeks pounding my head against the desk trying to figure out how all the different ebookstores work, and this workshop not only solved all those problems, it let me get this book into print as well.
I’m also going to cut off the Big Question that I get asked any time self-publishing comes up: “What about Absolute OpenBSD, 2nd Edition?”
Even if self-publishing SSH Mastery turns into an absolute freaking gold mine and self-publishing showers me with riches, I will finish AO2e. I will send it to NSP. I’ve promised that I would do this book, and I know many people are eagerly waiting for it. Breaking my agreement with my publisher and, more importantly, my readers, would be blatant asshole behavior. And I’m just not going to behave that way. AO2e will be the next big book I publish.
Lots of people claim to have “the secret” to promoting books. After all, your book is awesome, isn’t it? The problem must be that you aren’t promoting it. You can attend workshops, courses, and buy books that all proclaim The Secret.
For SSH Mastery, I’m responsible for all of the promotion. I’ve followed the usual advice: I have a blog, I have Twitter, I have a fan page on Facebook, and so on. You can stalk me through any method you choose. I also have real-time access to sales data from Amazon, Smashwords, and Barnes & Noble.
For this example I’m going to use Amazon data, because Amazon provides very nice graphs through Author Central. If you’re an author and you are not on Author Central, get on it NOW. (Then check it only once a month or so.)
Here’s the graph for Kindle sales of SSH Mastery, since its release.
Note that Amazon’s sales ranking algorithms are rather mushy. More than once, according to Author Central, this book has cracked the #10,000 limit. Most of the time, Amazon retroactively changes that. The peaks shown are generally within a day or two of when the sale took place, however. While this is undesirable, it’s better detail than the quarterly or biannual resolution you get from a publisher.
So, what have I done to promote SSH Mastery? I’ve blogged it. I blog every time it gets a mention in the press. The blog goes into Twitter and Facebook. I also comment on the book via Twitter.
I also thank people when they say they buy the book or when they review. Even when they don’t like the book. (This book has received all five-star reviews, but more on that later.) Being known as a nice guy, or at least a polite one, or at least “not a screaming jackass,” has publicity value all its own.
So, how does all this impact book sales?
There’s been four reviews or “general public statements about the book that might not be exactly a review” that I know of:
Peter Hansteen, 22 Jan 2012
Justin Sherrill, 2 Feb 2012
Alexander Leidinger, 3 Feb 2012
Richard Bejtlich, 6 Mar 2012
(Wow. I forgot to blog Bejtlich’s review. He is my biggest fan and a staunch advocate of my work, and I completely failed to blog his review. I done him wrong. I’m a doofus.)
There’s also been good reviews posted on all of the ebook sites. I don’t appreciate them any less, but those reviews only help when people go to the retailer’s site. That means that they already know the book exists.
Compare those dates to the spikes on the graph. Keep in mind the mushiness of the Amazon ranking algorithm. You’ll see that the spikes roughly match up with the reviews. (If I had taken snapshots of this graph on the actual day and the day after the review, the spikes would be much more apparent, but I didn’t think of that until today. Yep, I’m a doofus.)
There’s another small spike around 20 February that I have no explanation for. I don’t know why it’s there, but I’m glad to see it.
The initial high sales came from the folks who follow me via my blog, Facebook, Twitter, or some other promotional medium. I was thrilled to see fans buying my work, and of course I appreciate every sale. But that surge didn’t last long, and it’s not enough to sustain a career.
But reviews expose the book to entirely new audiences. Reviewers are force multipliers. Nurture them.
In my case, the reviews are all positive. If I really wanted to do an experiment to test the “reviews are the only effective publicity” hypothesis, I’d write a lousy book and see how those reviews impacted sales. But my authorial pride outweighs my scientific curiosity.
So, the most effective promotion tool? Reviews.
Other than that: Shut up and write. No, quit jabbering and babbling. Shut up and write. Those words you’re going to use on a comment on this blog post? Put that energy into making your book awesome.
Shut up and write.
You can now buy the print SSH Mastery from Amazon. The print version isn’t yet linked to the ebook version, but that will happen within 1-3 days.
To my surprise, Amazon has not discounted the book. I don’t know why. I spoke with their author support desk, and was told that some books get discounted and some do not, according to some internal algorithm that only Amazon knows. All of my other books get discounted before publication. I assume that SSH Mastery will be discounted as well, but I have no idea when. (Yes, Amazon has an author support desk. From clicking “Call me” to resolution and hanging up the phone, total time 2 minutes 29 seconds. I am impressed.)
For those who are interested in the numbers behind the print version:
Some thoughts on the CreateSpace store, while I’m at it:
CreateSpace gives me the store automatically, for free, so I link to it; otherwise, I wouldn’t bother setting it up. Purchases from here are “giving the author extra money because you want to.” And to my surprise, someone actually bought one there, so: thank you, anonymous buyer. (Note that Amazon/CreateSpace also makes more money when you buy from the CS estore.)
In the event that people actually start buying from the CreateSpace estore, I’d probably set up a PayPal tip jar, so that those folks who want to give me extra money can do so and still get free shipping and/or discounts. It’s a step that I’ve avoided, but if people actually want overpay me for work I honestly own, who am I to argue?