[TriLUG] OOo, PDF and Lulu

Steve Litt slitt at troubleshooters.com
Mon Apr 13 11:30:54 EDT 2009


On Monday 13 April 2009 08:26:44 am Tim Jowers wrote:
> Screw LuLu for not supporting Linux and not even documenting this.
> Otherwise, LuLu is totally great. Their support folks are great and
> their stream-lined process is great. A good experience overall (of
> course writing tech books is a huge money/time loser - but that's not
> just because its in a recession. I confirmed with friends who wrote
> for Microsoft Press and for O'Reilly and others and an enormously
> successful tech book is one which nets you $6000. 

Yeah, I think that's a pretty accurate statement if you take out the 
word "enormously". There are always the "Linux Unleashed" type books that 
sell hundreds of thousnads, garnering their main authors at minimum a decent 
year's salary (and it doesn't take a year to write a "Linux Unleashed" type 
book.

> You have to 
> understand the author ends up with like 50 cents on a $24 book. 

I think it's a little more than that but yeah, it's not much. That 5 or 10% 
that sounds so good when the acquisitions author talks to you turns out to be 
5 or 10% of "net revenue", which might be around half the cover price.

These are all the reasons why, after writing my first book for a big publisher 
(Samba Unleashed for Sams), I decided to self-publish thereafter. That $24 
book is gonna have to sell 10,000 copies to give the author $6,000, and the 
average big publisher tech book sells, from what I've read varous places, 
about 3,000 copies. This is why so few authors make anything beyond their 
original advance.

> In 
> LuLu tyhe author gets more but has to pay around $150 to get going. A
> very successful book on LuLu might net you $1000 over two years - I
> still hope I can attain that lofty goal. Unseccessful books net you
> $1-$100 if priced right - higher is better since it is a niche market.
>
> :-)

I confirm that so far, book authoring hasn't gotten me rich. However, my 
finding is that over the years as the number of books I offer increases, so 
does income. I think the trick is to have a lot of books, and to make them 
books that don't obsolete fast or else you're always playing catch up. Also, 
you have to have other sources of income (courseware in my case).

Bottom line, if someone wants to self-publish I certainly wouldn't discourage 
him, but I would tell him a lot of the facts you state in your email so he 
doesn't think he'll write one book and live on easy street.

SteveT
 
Steve Litt
Recession Relief Package
http://www.recession-relief.US
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/stevelitt




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