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Ask Slashdot: Funding Models For a Free E-book?
danspalding writes "I'm an adult education teacher in SF who wrote an e-book about how to teach adults. It will be available to download for free in January 2013. I Kickstarted enough money for editing, design and publicity, but not enough to pay me anything up front. I'm considering making a $1, $10 and $25 version available from Amazon as a way for folks to donate money to me, as well as a straight up PayPal link on my site. Is it possible to produce quality material for teachers to download for free in a way that's economically sustainable? Might readers accidentally pay for a copy without realizing there's a free download and get angry? And where should I host the free-to-download version?"
Is it free or for profit? It can not be both.
Either release it for free for the good of mankind and be happy or make it commercial and try and make money.
If you try to make money off a free book you will be sadly disappointed.
Putting items on amazon with a price as a way to "donate" doesn't sound like donating and doesn't give customers that impression. Can you buy "donations" on amazon? (I really don't know, I'm not being sarcastic)
Why don't you just sell it? $10 isn't too bad imo (depending on what it actually is) and is almost a steal... And you can still ask for donations after that...
But if you want it to be free, make it free with donations but that's the price you pay for really making it free. Trying to trick people into giving you donations (whether you believe you are doing that or not) is sure to give you a bad rep as an author. Simply making it not free will look less sketchy but will guarantee income for you.
Either is fine. There's nothing wrong with wanting to make money. We all need to eat, need to pay the mortgage, and all that shit. However you have to decide with various projects if they are to be free or not. Trying to mix it is never going to work out for you.
So far, Kickstarter has done its job: You got the money to do the project. That's all it really is for. If you deliver the project to your backers, you've fulfilled your obligation and they'll be happy. After that? Well that's up to you.
You can decide to make it free to the world. That's a nice thing to do for the world, but you'll get almost no money. Asking for donations generally doesn't result in much, people tend to donate their money to larger causes/organizations. Reactions from your backers will be mixed, some might be irked about having paid for something that is now free, others will like what you are doing. Either way doesn't matter, you met your obligation to them.
You can also decide you'd like money from it. The backers got their copy due to their backing, now the rest of the world needs to pony up cash if they'd also like a copy. Many KS projects do this. The Kickstarter is to get the shit up and running, then any sales after that are profit.
So figure out what you want more, and then go with it. It is all up to you. Just don't try to do both or it'll work poorly.
Make the pay-version truly "adult". Sexy teachers teaching sexy teaching methods.
I noticed some back there's a mediocre rate of these Ask Slashdot Askers actually ever coming to post in their own threads. I feel insulted posting notes to questions when they are not read by the Asker.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
The author wants to make donationware. He wants a tiered-level donation system ranging from 'freeloader' to 'platinum donor.' What is the most user-friendly way to make this happen? Stamped: human.male.american
If it's already written, then you're ready to go viral. We don't want to wait until January. That's not how the modern release cycle works anymore. Release it as a "Beta", with further editing to come later. What's this about funds for "Publicity"? You just nailed an Ask Slashdot, so here we are!
And what's the license? I would like for once to see texts released in one of the Creative Commons licenses, and not the straight "Copyright ___". You say your text is about teaching adults, right? So why not go with the pure "By" (Attribution) license, where you freely allow mashups and chopping and all that fun stuff that used to be praised as "Active Learning". If you try to lock down your exact words it sends a chill related to the basic school methodology of "I am the teacher, so be quiet and listen."
Meanwhile, precisely why are you asking where to host it? Isn't that what Web Hosts are for?
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Not sure how big of a market you are talking about here, nor the material(s) involved - for example, is it a straight textbook or are there lessons, syllabi(?), etc
Create a free version and a paid version. The paid version should obviously provide some substantial improvement and/or additional features from the free version. Perhaps those lessons and/or syllabi
If this is an on-going process of improvement then at some point you could make your older versions free and charge for the newer version -- even have some sort of a step down. Say full price for v3.0, half price for v2.0 and free for v1.0
I mean, thats how software has done it for years and that seems to be sticking around so it must work, right?
"Oh, you hate your job? There's a support group for that, it's called everyone, they meet at the bar."
My personal viewpoint would be that you should provide downloadable versions from your website in a number of open formats and allow people to donate as much or little as they wish with some suggested amount, i.e. $10.
Would I be unhappy if I bought it and then found out there was a free version. No.
Would I be unhappy if I bought a version that was DRM'd to the Kindle and then found out that there was a free version that wasn't. Yes.
If you design your website so that they have to provided their email address first, then you can email them some time later asking if they enjoyed the book and would they provide feedback and/or a donation.
A similar model certainly worked for Nine Inch Nails who are not doing it "for the good of mankind" last time I checked:
http://createdigitalmusic.com/2008/03/pay-what-you-will-for-nine-inch-nails-from-free-to-300/
So what did the Kickstarter funders get for their cash? Free copies? Freer-than-free copies?
Why not stick it on Lulu as a free download and make some money off the hardcopy versions?
What do you even mean by 'economically sustainable'? If the marginal cost to produce a copy is zero and you've got the initial funding from Kickstarter then charging zero looks pretty economic and sustainable to me.
I would be pissed if I paid for something I could get for free unless I knew about it before hand.
I suppose you could offer a different jacket cover for the sale book and call it the "donation version". then offer a description detailing it was the same as the free version sans jacket.
But you might need to check with amazon. They rejected a few books before that were freely available on the internet. Those books were different though. IIRC, they were already available information collected and repackaged in book form. I'm not sure if they will see the difference though.
College professors and dimming switch companies hate folks like you, but every priest is sure to love you.
A lot of technical books for courses are available for download but also sold in print. I think enough people want the hard copy that some money can be made. I don't know if you would sell enough books for this model to work but it is worth considering.
You should aim for about $45/hr.
I Kickstarted enough money for editing, design and publicity, but not enough to pay me anything up front.
Is it possible to produce quality material for teachers to download for free in a way that's economically sustainable?
Yes it is possible, including the entire cost of the book in the crowd-funding effort would allow you to release the book for free without losing out financially.
If you don't need to guarantee breaking even then crowd-funding some of the cost and asking for donations for the rest is a good idea.
There's no problem releasing the book freely but also charging for it in some market places. If an e-book store had some registration costs then the cost of your e-book in that store should reflect this. If you want to distribute a printed copy then you should print an appropriate number and then change an amount so that selling the books will cover printing, shipping, and your time. I would avoid charging extra in a store to cover the creation costs without making it clear that the book is available for free online and that buying the book in the store is tantamount to donation.
So let me get this straight, he's an education instructor who can't spell the word "teacher" in his email address?!
Put it on smashwords.com for a low price. Allow 20% of the book to be downloaded as a free sample. People who like it will pay for the rest.
Also smashwords is directly accessible via a few e-readers, does not cripple their files with Digital Restrictions Management, and from what I hear they are generally nice to work with.
No I'm not affiliated with smashwords, I just read a lot and love their model.
Note that if you want to get Amazon's 70% royalty instead of 35%, you can't offer it somewhere else for cheaper. I am not certain if that means you can't give it away as well, but I'd make sure.
And 35% in my view is a bit low to offer it as a way of donating. Although of course the volume of sales may be larger and you probably reach customers you'd otherwise not reach.
---
Offer it up for a price you think works for you. Let teachers know that they can email you for a free copy if they can't afford the price. Honestly if you made it $5 and it is really useful, most teachers will likely spring for it.
Free ebook, paying print version. http://git-scm.com/book
Sneak teach kids Algebra using a game
Release it for free, and also put a paid-for version next to it. Be sure to issue formal receipts for the paid-for version. If it is useful, those who spend other people's money (eg. teachers with a budget from their school) will want a legitimate way to send some of their budget your way. Giving them the opportunity to buy a copy will let them so so, whilst being able to bill it as a legitimate expense.
Now I know many of these are not applicable to OP, but it's what worked for me before I moved onto writing GPL software instead of ebooks.
My view is that, if the book is the only thing you have, then, no, you cannot give it away in a way which makes money, other than asking (hoping) for donations. You may be able to ask in such a way that it encourages donations — I've no idea, but perhaps there's some research / advice on this — but, at the end of the day, you are still only requesting. Where you need to look, in my opinion, is how you could use your book to make money. If the book was one part of a wider means of making money, then you may well be able to make money from the wider model whilst giving the book away for free — the book becomes a piece of marketing for your actual revenue-making products / services.
Could you offer a printed version, at a price? Would some people pay for a hard copy version, rather than be reliant on something on their computer? If so, is there enough scope in the price of a printed version that, once set, produced, printed and shipped, there's still some money in it for you?
Does someone wishing to implement your book need any consumables which you could sell? Printed templates for class activities and so on? Access to a downloadable library of customisable templates, if not physical templates to be shipped to them?
Could you make money if the book was less free? Rather than releasing it "for free," you could release it under a partly-free licence (such as the Creative Commons BY-NC-ND), and charge for commercial re-use of the work (e.g. someone using excerpts in other textbooks and so on (where this would be more than non-infringing / fair use))?
Is there any value in offering your time/services to readers? Much like the open source support model, the code/book is there for free, but, if you need a hand with something in particular, such as working out how to implement your technique in a particular environment, or designing something for a particular school, even devising a taught course to train teachers, you pay for support. A consultation via Skype may well be desirable to some people, even running an actual course in person?
Make a version using iBook Author. Put it on the Apple iBook Store. If you want people to get a free version or pay, that's very simple: Make a sample that covers the whole book, except a page that says this person has paid. Samples are free to download, and you get a button on the last page automatically that allows to pay for the full version.
Now with my cynicial world view, making teachers pay for something that they can get for free is very, very, very difficult.
Translation: I once tried to use paypal as a business bank account while passing myself off as a private buyer/seller and got caught.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
I think you shouldn't put a price on the book, but do mention the possibility of donation in the book (in the preface and possibly elsewhere). Write something like "if you enjoy this book or find it useful, please consider donating a small sum at my web page http://.../ to help me create more free books."
Why don't you do it like Diestel's Graph Theory (http://diestel-graph-theory.com/index.html).
Offer a free rasterized version, and let people pay for the ability to search, read at higher quality, etc.
Donations can help to continue the development of a free project, which is why a lot of free projects ask for them. There's nothing bad in that, and occasionally if I use a free piece of software a lot I will pay its developer some money, because this kind of thing does encourage a developer to continue.
That's how I understand "economically sustainable". Dan Spalding wants to create more free books, but working on them at his own expense is not practical. Enough donations could help sustain this idea indefinitely.
Please don't use Paypal. Give Google Wallet a try.
I'm an author who posts their books for free. I can afford too: I have a regular 9-5 job and just do this in my spare time. I'm actually an academic and so I use it to build my reputation. I have a PayPal and a Flattr link on my book pages, and I've made ... about $150 so far on my latest book - not enough to live on!
But the reason I did it that way was because of the freedom I gained. I had two books published the traditional way and the first was a horrible process driven by the publisher and the reviewers. The second was better, but I had to work hard at convincing the publisher that Interleaf was a valid document processing tool. For the third, I gave up on them and just "did my own thing," publishing alpha then beta versions over many months. So I got a presence almost from the beginning, without having to wait for the publisher's impramatur. Finally a publisher came to me to produce a paper version, and that was a much more pleasant version. Note that the publisher came to me because of the reputation I had built up by making the book open source!
So look at your goals and what you want to achieve. If you've got a writing itch that you want to scratch, then open content is a good way to go. If you want to make money, well, 99% of authors don't make a cent anyway! If you want to build reputation for use in getting invited talks, guru status, etc, then write a good well-regarded book - and get it out into the open as soon as you can.
Making money from a book is hard. Making money from a book that is available free for download is likely harder. If the latter is going to be successful, your book needs to be much more popular than in the forced-paying scenario. Having it available for free definitely helps the popularity angle, but your proceeds are based on a quite smaller ratio of actual uses of the book.
With mediocre material and mediocre interest, the paying scenario will give you mediocre income, while the non-paying scenario will give you close to nothing. Starting with excellent material, marketing skills will disproportionately scale the amounts you can make from a free version. If paying you does not offer any convenience or advantage or reward, this will be very tricky. Stupid things like button placement and similar can make huge differences.
In case seeing Dan's Kickstarter listing might help inform the debate.
As someone that did something similar (high school world history textbook in my case) I ended up developing different versions, and pushed them out through different channels.
-A PDF and unDRMed ebook can be had from my class website for free for students.
-A version with practice questions, interactives such as maps, timelines and videos, and additional student resources can be purchased through the Apple Store, or as a paper copy.
-A teacher version, with all the student assignments, rubrics, lecture slides and standards, and a ton of other resources can be purchased through my website.
My whole project was born through not having enough textbooks for my students to take home, and the textbooks I did have did a poor job of teaching the material and meeting the curriculum maps set out by the school system I work for. Thus, if my students want to take the textbook home, they can either grab a paper copy, or use the electronic version. If they want additional practice and resources, they can purchase it, and I ended up giving a lot of my stuff to new teachers, so I figured they would pay a couple of hundred dollars to have something to build their own curriculum from. I'm never going to get rich off of my work, but that wasn't why I did it. My two cents.
Of course, if your book isn't any good, then nobody will want to meet you. But I'm assuming that you think sufficiently highly of the work that you produced, that you are willing to take the chance.
To break even, figure out how many people would buy the book if it stinks, then that's how many people need to come to the first few workshops. You maximize the chance that they will come to those workshops by distributing the book widely. Also, the workshops will allow you to revise the book and improve it using feedback from interested people.
Just put out a cheap version, eg $5. Go for volume. Those that want a free version will go to a torrent site. A percentage of those that pirate it will end up buying it if they find it useful. Sell ad space in the last 2 pages. Offer a printed version with audio commentary on CD for $20.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
Unless you are desperate for money, consider not trying to make money out of it at all - a free version of what you are doing would look super-amazing on your CV, and would end up making you way more than a few thousand dollars in the long haul. Some guys who wrote some poor-quality FOSS educational software managed somehow to get on the front page of slashdot with a link to their product a couple of weeks ago, and wound up selling a pitiful 30 copies (last time I checked).
If you still want to monetize:
Have the free version on your site, and put a Kindle version on Amazon for $5. Offer a "special edition" print version if you think you will sell enough copies.
Have google adwords/amazon affiliate/donate to Paypal links on your website.
If you are intending to make money to further enhance your project, let people know this. If you are spending it on living expenses, also let people know. Telling the truth upfront is a long-forgotten but surprisingly effective marketing technique.
When I read your post I realized that I would like to pay something between your suggested $1 and $10. And each time you give that choice to one of your customers they will pay less than what they're willing to, not more. If you're able to offer a "pay what you want" option (but require to pay at least $0.01) you can rest assured that many of your customers will go higher than the "pre-set" options you might offer them. Not a complete solution but at least my 2 cents.
That's an excellent point.
It could be explained by the fact that most people can't be on Slashdot 24/7. It seems likely that the Asker is unaware that his article is currently featured on slashdot - it doesn't make any sense to get this great free publicity and then ignore it.
Maybe the slashdot editors don't give any advanced notice of when the Ask Slashdot is going to be published. Is there a way for members or signed in users to see how long ago this article was submitted? Presumably the editors at least auto-email the submitters when their submission goes live - if not, that's a bad flaw in the system.
(after some small research) The author lives in California, where it is currently 5AM. That would certainly help explain why he isn't online. He's going to be pissed off when he wakes up and sees his article heading to the bottom of the front page, and oblivion.
O'Reilly discovered that people will pay real money for a printed copy even when they get an electronic copy of the book free. "Using Samba" was and is distributed free with the "Samba" SMB server program, through the initiative of my editor, Andy Oram, and the book went from a distant third on the subject to one of the company's top sellers of the year.
--dave
davecb@spamcop.net
I would be sure to stick with what you said you would do on the Kickstarter campaign. You owe that to the people who donated to the cause. I doubt most donated for a cheap copy of a to be written book but instead thought they were supporting a project that would provide a free opportunity to train teachers to work with adults. With a post like this and without a link to your Kickstarter project it leads me to believe that your looking for justification for monetizing a project that you said you would not. I hope I am wrong but if it were me I would be sure the project lived up to what it said it would (no to say that it is not, I do not know) and if it did not do this I would consider it a failure. I am sure those that donated would agree.
Make it available from BN too.
Start a new Kickstarter. This time it's for setting up a training seminar series.
A book is good but workshops are better.
The Kickstarter is for tickets to the seminar. Your goal is similar to the crowd sourced concert series featured here on /. previously. I believe it was a plan to get enough tickets paid to cover costs (including your time) for a small private show but hoping for enough participants for a larger more profitable show.
Give the book away at the seminar. Give it away on a website - but market the seminar series on the same website.
If you have a good product/service you will get the attention you deserve. If it was my book I'd look at a version that targets businesses and consultants who primarily are "training" adults in addition to "education". Talk to local recruiting agencies, local community colleges, local prisons.
Good luck!
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
You could Auction the freedom off. You could do it either by setting a time limit, number of freedom donations or total cost of the freedom price you set.
Dont sell the book, sell the freedom.
and I recommend another one: nodebeginner book, free on their own website with a link to a paid bundle on Leanpub.
Leanpub seems to be the thing the OP wants - simple ways to take payment for ebooks in multiple formats, low royalty overhead, and can offer free versions too.
or manybooks.net
or archive.org or
many other free e-books web sites with a link on your home page to those sistes for your free downloads.
Gutenberg.org was the original e-book web site, I believe.
You have to give someone a cut for a printed version anyway, be it Amazon CreateSpace or someone else.
App publishers for Androis, iOS, etc solve this problem by releasing a cheap, ad-free version, or an ad-sponsored version. Many people download the free version, and pay the $.99 or so to support the author / remove the ads. No reason you cannot do this with an eBook.
This is correct. I asked a question a while back, and had no warning when the article was actually approved and posted. By the time I noticed (just a few hours later) I tried replying and adding with details, but by that point it didn't seem like my follow-ups were noticed.
The Quirkz Handbook of Self-Improvement for People Who Are Already Pretty Okay
Yes the forbidden word. Sure this isn't reddit, but in evolution the strong survive. Having Ask Slashdot askers be available to clarify questions would make the Ask Slashdot function much more versatile.
My experience, too. I submitted this question last night and only found out it got posted when I got a message from a kind soul who went by "Poo Poop" telling me I was already on Slashdot. Because I happened to be up at 6am (getting ready to teach at 8) I was able to get a few posts in, but only after about 70 other folks beat me to it. A few of those early posts - including some by folks who didn't seem to read my question clearly - got modded up to 5 by the time I logged in. Even after I replied to them to clarify, later posters are only replying to those original, misunderstood posts, not to my clarifications. Maybe in the future Slashdot could give you a 1-hour heads up that your question is about to go live? If I had had some warning, and this post had gone up during PST business hours, I think the quality of information would've gone up dramatically.
Teaching, coding, coffee, revolution.
From my experience as an ISV selling a low-price tool, it's very hard for teachers to get you paid unless it's out of their own pocket. This kills most school sales for us.
School boards tend to require *all* purchases to go through a rigid, old-fashioned admin maze where the teacher submits a purchase order, the administration maybe approves it & mails a PO, vendor receives PO and possibly rejects it due to oftentimes onerous terms & conditions, vendor ships the product, invoices the school, does some more chasing after the money when they don't pay, etc, etc. For e-goods, there is sometimes a hassle getting paid because there's no physical item that their receiving department can confirm they received. There are usually no shortcuts like you'd have with regular businesses, e.g. the teacher buying or contributing and then getting reimbursed. Definitely no corporate credit cards in this market, either.
Obviously this cuts out e-vendors who require up-front credit cards or e-checks (just about all of 'em), and no teacher's going through that maze just for $10 - 20 unless they're crazy desperate. I'd suggest you either set up a scheme where payments/contributions are low enough for teachers to pay out of their own pocket and where you make it clear that you recognize and appreciate their personal expense, or high enough to make it worth everybody's while to go with purchase orders.
Add products for a fee with your FREE E-BOOK. Maybe the FREE E-BOOK is brief compared to the detailed priced version. Try the teacher for teacher website which offers free & fee products. People that posts/blogs should try to put their brain in full gear and post/blog as a professional and be thoughtful.
Just so you know, you only get to charge one price. You can't have 3 different price-points for the same book with Amazon's self-publishing. Just one. They also have a tendency not to accept your self-publishing if you wish to self-publish it elsewhere for a different price point.
-Kinsey
One premium and one free; the free edition is electronic. With the premium edition, it is a paper printing, with a beautiful shiny cover not available with free version. Include extra material, a pretty cover, maybe more illustrations, or additional appendices in the premium edition.
Have the sites offering the premium edition for sale contain a link pointing to the free edition.
You might have a policy of when releasing a new edition, the previous one is made available for free.
There are lots of potential strategies there.
There's a site called Teachers Pay Teachers (http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/) . You can make a little money and still provide the lessons for cheap.
You have a few options.
For Amazon, select a set price between $2.99 and $9.99 so you get the 70% royalty...or you can choose a straight 35% royalty and not have to worry about Amazon potentially price matching vs. other sites.
Also distribute through Smashwords.com at the same price; if you follow their guidelines they can get you into Kobo, Barnes and Noble and Apple if you don't want to bother with each retailer individually.
As for the donation version, use Gumroad.com; select a price of 0+ and put in your text that this is a "give what you want" book (just so people know for sure). Gumroad charges 25 cents + 5% on each download (minimum donation of 99 cents; if the customer gives nothing, you get charged nothing).
You could have three versions on Gumroad: the freebie/donate, the set price ($3-5) and a $20 "Deluxe Version"
If you want to do a straight giveaway, there are lots of options: hosting on your own website, put in Google docs, post on Feedbooks or Wattpad (although Wattpad wants text broken down into smaller chapters). Lots of other places will allow you to post books.
You might want to have different versions -- the freebie might be a slimmed down one, so people feel like they are "getting something" for the for-pay book. You can justify a higher priced ($20-ish) premium/deluxe version if you include some really worthwhile extra goodies for customers.
The most important things are 1) Have a great product, 2) Reach out to people who would be interested in the subject to let them know it exists...don't spam, of course, but bloggers in the field, etc. can give you great word of mouth if you have a good product.
-- Bill Smith
www.BillSmithBooks.com
Checkout if it is possible to sell your book through O'Reilly media. They sell DRM free e-books in multiple formats, which means the books are freely usable across multiple devices. I am a kindle user but what I don't like about Amazon and Kindle e-books is the books are not portable across devices.