Publishing Books Online

["Steven J. Owens" <puff -at- netcom -dot- com>]

Folks,

     A few months ago there was a discussion of whether there is any
supporting evidence for publishing books online.  Just thought I'd
post the following quote from fairly successful Java book author Bruce
Eckel, about the online copy of his _Thinking In Java_ (from
http://www.bruceeckel.com/notes.html):

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     Why do you put your books on the Web? How can you make any money
     that way?
     
     I think we're clearly in the brave new world of the Internet
     here, and as far as I know I may be the first to do what I did --
     publish the book as I was developing it, and leave it as a free
     book in perpetuity, after it was printed. Personally, I was
     prepared to have low sales but the book brought people to my web
     site and to the CD Rom and seminars, so I felt it was worth the
     risk. Prentice Hall did a low first printing because they were
     worried about the online book cannibalizing sales. However, this
     book has done better than all the other books I've written -- for
     the first time I've gotten royalty checks that have made a
     difference (book publishing in general is a pretty high-risk
     business; the figures I've heard are "10% break even, 1% are
     profitable).
     
     At this point I would never go back to the old model of print
     publishing. All of my future books will be electronically
     published on my site first, and will stay on the site. The
     reasons for this are many:

     * (Possibly most important) I get extremely valuable feedback
       during the development of the book. I've never had any useful
       feedback to speak of from the so-called technical reviewers
       hired by a publisher, but I got an endless stream of incredibly
       valuable corrections from readers.

     * Readership is built throughout the development of the book.

     * Publication dates are not so critical: if you are only printing
       the book, then it's either available or not available, whereas
       if it's on the web it's always available in some form, so
       there's not so much of a compulsion to rush out a half-finished
       piece of work in order to meet the needs of the readers.

     * Books can be adopted by universities before they are printed. I
       give permission for universities to print copies of the book
       for their classes, as long as they sell to the students
       strictly at the cost of printing (no profits==no hassles,
       nobody battling over profits, etc.). When the book is actually
       printed by the publisher, the university has already decided to
       use it for their classes, and they tend to be reluctant to
       change.

     * I get a fair amount of mail from 3rd world countries saying "we
       could never afford to buy this book here, but because it's
       electronic we can still learn." I know this is of no interest
       to publishers (pardon my cynicism) but if you're like me and
       you want to reach people this really does the trick -- you're
       making a big difference. On a more practical level, folks who
       may not have money now but eventually will get to know you, and
       when they can purchase they're much more likely to purchase
       your book.

     * In general, the fallout from doing this has been all positive
       and nothing negative.
       
     However, I've also heard the refrain -- mostly from publishers
     who were interested in "Thinking in Java," trying to talk me out
     of leaving it on the web -- that "we've tried this and it
     negatively impacts book sales." Upon closer inspection, though,
     what one discovers is very interesting. The experiments I heard
     about turned out to be with books that weren't doing very well in
     the first place, and lo and behold, if you put them on the
     Internet then people get a chance to see what the book is before
     buying it, and amazingly enough fewer people buy a book if they
     discover it's not very good before buying it.
     
     Another issue is the type of book. As Elliotte Rusty Harold
     pointed out, "The Java Programming Language Specification" isn't
     exactly the best litmus test. Personally, it's not the kind of
     thing I need in paperback; in fact, I would much prefer to have
     it electronically since I'm not going to read it cover to cover,
     but rather search through it when I'm trying to figure out some
     particular language quirk. In that case, I would have a free
     version and then sell an enhanced electronic version that somehow
     made it easier to use, and then finally a printed version. But
     "Learning Python" is a book that I want to read, away from the
     computer. That's what many, many folks said about "Thinking in
     Java": they wanted the paper version of it, some folks got quite
     belligerent when they couldn't get it after awhile.
     
     I think there are books that you want to read as books and others
     that make more sense as electronic books. But my experience is
     that if people download the book (even the whole book; I know
     some books publish a chapter or two, but giving the whole book
     away doesn't seem to make any difference) and they like it, then
     they want to buy it, and it doesn't seem to me that they buy it
     because they want to give something back to me (like the 2
     dollars or whatever makes that big a difference to me) but
     because they want the thing printed out for them on paper (and
     it's nicer, and in most cases cheaper, than if they printed it
     out on their printer).
     
     I think this is the wave of the future. In the past, publishers
     controlled publishing because they controlled trucks and printing
     presses, but now that is not (so) necessary. Which means that
     publishers now must re-evaluate themselves and say "what do we
     really offer" (of course, this includes publishing of everything
     including conferences, which I am also involved in -- but that's
     another story). That's a good thing, I think.
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Steven J. Owens
puff -at- guild -dot- net
puff -at- netcom -dot- com