Re: not the crypt

mlw wrote:
Gordon, do you have a web site? I have been thinking about the "howto" book
market, and I agree with you that it is dead.

I think the new author/monetization strategy for this sort of thing is a
self-published site with some sort of advertising on it.

I have sort of been experimenting with it on a couple sites, and with Yahoo
and Google, you could make a reasonable living if you could find a way to
drive traffic to your site.

The problem is that, the book store presents itself as a place to browse and
discover. People, at least, used to go books stores to do just that. The
web, people search using google. Unfortunately, the results don't lend
themselves to as much discovery as they do location of specific
information.

The challenge, it seems, is to create and promote a library/bookstore
metaphor for on-line authors.

Actually, there are "howto" books that do quite well. Much of the
success of any howto book is the age of the topic, which means how
likely the information can be found somewhere else. Amateur robotics is
a mature topic, even as new things are developed. So, books on robotics
won't do as well as a book on something that is new. MAKE magazine's
compilation books on making geek gadgets are doing pretty well, for
instance -- any Amazon ranking under 10,000 usually points to a book
that is making money for its publisher and author(s).

In the ideal world, you want a printed book that is self-discoverable by
readers who enter a bookstore to browse, because there is a section of
the buying public that still does not use online resources to buy
things. This book, in turn, leverages a Web site where you can upsell
readers with additional product, or cross-sell with ads, or whatever.

Some years ago, Fatbrain (since sold to IDG, which changed its name to
Hungry Minds, since sold to Wiley) would publish and sell online
content, specializing in technical topics, including robotics. Other
than one or two success stories, most of the "books" didn't sell a
single copy. The problem was (and is) in marketing; the effort to sell a
virtual book is much harder than most publishers and authors are willing
to invest.

As you alluded to, a printed book is its own marketing and advertising,
and still represents the easiest way of getting something sold. The
author sells it once (to the publisher), and the publisher sells it just
a handful of times (to the product buyers of bookstores; over 50% of all
bookstores in the country belong to one of two major chains). The
bookstore puts the book out on display, and readers do the rest.

Books haven't been made irrelevent, but for authors -- especially for
books on more mature topics -- the traditional
writer/publisher/bookseller model may not provide the financial
motivation it once did. It's much more of a packaged deal these days.
Authors pretty much have to brand themselves.

-- Gordon
.

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