Books and Software

Charles Petzold, well-known author, writes about Hard Work, No Pay: What's the Point?, a response to Jeff Atwood's post on publishing his own first book.

I looked into the economics of writing books, and, considering the amount of time it takes to actually write a book (Charles says six months to a year of full-time work), writing software seems economically more viable.

Well-known .NET author Chris Sells takes in five dollars per book he authors, but, with gross margins in the 90%, I could easily fetch thirty times that amount per software license. A unique piece of software could fetch far more copies than any individual book.

Also, software upgrades and subscriptions provide an annuity stream with low effort and risk. I doubt that new book editions pull anywhere the same repurchases. The code-base of one software package can be reused, modified and repurposed to produce a second related software package.

I do wonder sometimes about a very targeted e-book, which combines aspects of software and books. E-books typically have less content than books, but are often priced the same (without the middleman).

Comments

[Chris Sells]

The problem with ebooks is letter folks know about them and getting them to pay for them. Book publishers have an enormous sales and marketing arm to get books sold; how are you going to replace that? If the answer to that question is "Google will make it available to potential readers," then how are you going to sell your info when everything else Google turns up is free?

[Wesner Moise]

I bought a few ebooks, but they were extremely targeted and leveraged the unique experiences of the authors.

For example, "How I sold a million copies of my software," and how you can, too. http://www.millionseller.com/

[chiph]

Of the authors I've talked to, the books make up the least part of their income. What they do is elevate your standing in the community, so that you then get invited to come in as a consultant or contractor, and that's where you make the big bucks.

One of them referred to his books as "multi-page business cards", and after some thought, I had to agree with him.