Re: Guess what: we suck!

[Laura Lemay <lemay -at- lauralemay -dot- com>]

I happen to know something about computer book publishing.  There are  
a number of problems with this  "Let's all write Dummies books"  
idea.  Warning, long.

 > sales of "For Dummies" books and O'Brien's series of books  
(including the "Missing Manuals" series) are in the high millions.

These books sell millions of copies *in the aggregate.*  For the  
Dummies series  -- which has thousands and thousands of titles -- the  
vast majority of those millions of copies come from Windows and  
Internet.  The average Dummies title barely sells anything at all.   
I'm pretty sure Missing Manual (which is from O'Reilly) is the same  
way -- most of the sales are from the big OS titles (OSX and Windows).

In computer book publishing these days a book is a runaway best  
seller if it sells 10,000 copies.  Most computer books sell in the  
low thousands.  The failures are subsidized by the successes.  Book  
publishers spread out the risk by publishing a lot of titles on a lot  
of subjects.  Even so it is a very very hard business and a lot of  
publishers have failed or been absorbed in the last 6-8 years.

 >(Of course, the downside is that they might end up hiring Pogue  
instead of us. <g>)

Indeed.  Computer book authors get an advance of between $4 and $10K  
per book.  That's it.  There is potential for ongoing royalties, but  
most books don't earn out.  There's no salary or benefits.  I don't  
know a lot of computer book authors who are doing it full time;  it  
is too hard to make a living.  A lot of them are working as contract  
technical writers because the money is a lot better.

I've come across a bunch of really tiny companies over the last ten  
years who look at professional technical writers and wondering what  
it is they're paying $50-100K per year for exactly when they can hire  
freelance writers to do much the same thing for far less money and  
get what they see as better quality writing.  No, they don't get  
complex single-sourced content management systems in DITA.  They get  
a book in PDF, or a small collection of web pages.  That's all they  
want.

Be very careful of what you wish for.

 >Does it take any longer to write 500 pages of "for Dummies" book  
than it takes to write 500 pages of "by
Dummies" book? <g> Nope!

Computer book authors have the advantage of working with software  
that doesn't change on a weekly basis.  They don't have to argue with  
engineers and marketing about the best way to describe a feature.   
They only have to explain features that people will actually use.   
And, most importantly, they don't have to reuse content for print,  
web, and field-specific help across multiple platforms and products.   
Its just one book and one release.

 >Does it cost any more to print it? Nope...it should cost less,  
because we're producing more copies (one per
copy of the software), thus the cost per book is lower.

Hm.  I'm not so sure about that.

The tipping point in publishing for where it makes any sense to even  
print a book is  somewhere around 10,000 copies.  That's where the  
cost of goods falls down below about $5.  You'll note earlier that I  
said that a runaway best seller is 10,000 copies.  Yup.  The vast  
majority of books don't sell that many.  The vast majority of books  
are overprinted.  They vast majority are remaindered and pulped.  The  
best sellers subsidize the failures.  Publishing is a tough business.

The last time I specced hardcopy was, admittedly, ages ago, for a  
smallish company and a medium sized release.   It was for 2500 copies  
and the cost per goods was $18 per.  I don't think things have  
changed that much  You only get good pricing when you're printing a  
LOT of copies.

I'm not convinced that most companies are going to be able to get  
good pricing on hardcopy because most
companies are not going to order a zillion copies of any one manual  
for any particular release.  Personally I haven't worked for a  
company that's sold more than 10,000 copies of any piece of software  
for years.

 >Does it take longer? Presumably not, since these books come out  
about as fast as
the software, and the authors don't even have the same lead time or  
access to the SMEs that we have.

It takes less time to write a computer book than it does to write a  
manual for a number of reasons -- partially because you're working  
with finished software, as mentioned before, and partially often  
because contracts *require* tight schedules (my average writing  
schedule was three months per 500 page book).  Often there are  
multiple writers on a book even if there's only one name on the  
cover.    But there's also a huge team of publishing professionals  
supporting every book.  For my last book I had a developmental editor  
to help me work out the structure, three copy editors, four technical  
editors, a technical ilustrator, and a team of layout and production  
people to format the book.  Plus marketing and PR for the book  
itself.  All I had to do was write.


In short (too late), I think you're greatly underestimating the costs  
of third party books, and overestimating the benefits.

There are also the other SIGNIFICANT problems of producing hardcopy  
manuals in a commercial software environment.  Once you print a  
manual it is set in stone for that version.  You can't update  
hardcopy, so if the software changes at all you're screwed.  You run  
into the "documentation doesn't match the software" complaint which  
used to be all too common in the bad old days (it was never "software  
doesn't match the documentation," sigh).  If you resolve to keep the  
docs and the software in sync then you're prevented from doing any  
sort of frequent software releases unless you want to continually  
fling money at the documentation.

There's also the big issue of lead time:  given the six to eight  
weeks it takes to print the manuals the software has to be completely  
done and frozen at least six weeks before it ships -- and usually  
even more than that if you account for review and QA and translation  
etc.  Given the tight schedules we have these days this is just  
unacceptable.

And the trees.  All that paper.  Won't someone think of the trees.

All of these were the excellent reasons why we moved documentation  
online in the first place.

The concept of value-added documentation isn't necessarily a bad one,  
per se.  Microsoft and Adobe are doing it -- but they are huge  
companies, with huge products on slow schedules, and they are not  
doing it with their core documentation.  Both have adjunct publishing  
company businesses that have their own staff and produce a lot of  
titles on already-released products.  But these are special cases  
that are probably not duplicatable by smaller companies without a lot  
of stable products or capital to be able to absorb the risks.

I can't argue with the original argument -- that excessively linked,  
no-content help files suck (they do, I have this same complaint) --  
but going back to hardcopy is not the answer.

Laura


On Aug 16, 2007, at 1:18 PM, Geoff Hart wrote:

> Milan Davidovic noted: <<Well, someone thinks we suck. Or that some
> of us suck. Scroll down to item #10 here for details: http://
> monicapdx.livejournal.com/46224.html>>
>
> I'm probably going to get flamed for this, but it's undoubtedly worth
> mentioning that sales of "For Dummies" books and O'Brien's series of
> books (including the "Missing Manuals" series) are in the high
> millions. Clearly, this poster isn't alone in thinking that as a
> profession, we're doing something wrong. I don't doubt that some of
> us do top-notch work, but clearly that can't be said of the
> profession as a whole.
>
> Part of the problem is that none of us go up to our managers and
> point out that David Pogue is bringing in millions of dollars of
> income for O'Reilly with the Missing Manuals series, and that we
> should be writing those books instead of letting all those profits
> end up in someone else's pockets. (Of course, the downside is that
> they might end up hiring Pogue instead of us. <g>)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------
> -- Geoff Hart
> ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca / geoffhart -at- mac -dot- com
> www.geoff-hart.com
> --------------------------------------------------
> ***Now available***  _Effective onscreen editing_
> (http://www.geoff-hart.com/home/onscreen-book.htm)
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