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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.
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.
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
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
College professors and dimming switch companies hate folks like you, but every priest is sure to love you.
I think the Kickstarter campaign is at http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/teachrdan/how-to-teach-adults-a-free-beautiful-e-book
A quick skim of the pledge rewards gives
1. Recognition in the ebook.
2. A handwritten thank you note.
3. A special copy of the ebook with a different cover.
4. Teaching diagrams.
5. A printed copy of the book.
6. A 30-minute, one hour, or five hour interview with the author via Skype.
To get back to the question asked, Amazon will pay participants in their lending library a fee when their books are downloaded. Also, Amazon offers print on demand services.
Can I point out that it makes more sense to me if you treat the book as an advertising expense? Then sell advisory services. Or create an advertising-supported website where you can offer advisory services. This would be more consistent with how open source software is funded. One usually gets the software for free but pays for related services, like installation and custom modifications.
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.
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Free ebook, paying print version. http://git-scm.com/book
Sneak teach kids Algebra using a game
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?
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.
In case seeing Dan's Kickstarter listing might help inform the debate.
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.
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
Thanks for actually checking my Kickstarter page, although it's on me for not realizing my post had made Ask Slashdot. I'm definitely going to use this book as a way to put myself out there as an education consultant. I don't know if I'll ever have enough high-traffic content to support an ad-based webs site, but that sounds intriguing, too. I've been deeply inspired by the open source movement - I've been running Linux since 2001 - bit adapting it to what I have to offer has been a challenge.
Teaching, coding, coffee, revolution.
Honestly? I think I'd be pissed, too. If I go that route I'll try to make it extra clear in the product description - and besides, if anyone hears about my e-book, they first think they'll probably hear is that it's available for free.
Teaching, coding, coffee, revolution.
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
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.