That's not very encouraging news, Gordon, especially from a big publisher like McGraw Hill. My only experience is the handful of magazine articles I've done for SERVO and ROBOT. As you know, SERVO pays best per page, pretty decent IMO, and Robin is a joy to work with. I always encourage others here to write there about their creations.
I would never say it's easy money, at least not the way I do it. ( I envy the writers that simply review a new piece of hardware or software, THAT'S easy money but not my style.) I tend to do a lot of late nights as my deadline approaches, agonizing over technical specifics of my DIY construction articles. Rereading and rewriting, I go snowblind after a few hours. Writing is HARD WORK. So there are a lot of hours involved. My articles probably also come out to minimum wage if I ever added it up. That's OK for me, since it's just beer & bot money, but less so for you, a successful and well-known author. One might argue that these are incremental sales which might generate some buzz and possibly lead to more sales later. I would have never seen that offer and bought had you not posted, I wonder how many $1.21 sales of RBB happened. Did they advertise it somewhere? How did you find out?
Now why is your Arduino Robotics book still on sale? Might the low-price books be limited to a certain quantity?
I saw it in during a weekly scan, which I do to keep apprised of general trends.
While the buck pricing seems counter-productive if longer than just a few days (cyber Monday sort of thing), I'll wait to see if the publisher has a comment.
Not that it will make a difference in what they say; other than possibly one more edition of RBB, I don't plan on writing for this publisher in the future, and I'm planning to either go totally nonlegit with self-published books, or chase after my dream of doing activity books slanted for a much wider audience. IMO, I see little growth in the technical book trade -- far too much effort for far too little reward.
During my low presence here the past few months, I've been honing my illustration skills, and am working on some kids activity books (no robots) that I have in mind.
Have you considered buying some back, and selling autographed copies? I would certainly consider anything dealing with BS2 or Propeller, and reasonable payment for your product and time involved, but after Christmas. >:(
A pleasant thought, but autographed copies don't really have an allure unless you're blessed with a substantial following, usually reserved for fiction writers, or superstars the likes of Isaac Asimov. My followers tend to be my dog -- I can always count on her -- and my creditors. At one time, I did have autographed copies of my books for sale on my little robot kit site, and they sold very slowly.
These days there seems to be added value in smaller works that cost less, or are even "free," paid for either by ads or some other corporate support. The Erco and I had a book project going that was something along these lines, but the publisher kept adding to its complexity, and removing the things that could have been additional income drivers. Alas, in the end we gave up. Their loss, because it would have been a cool project.
The Erco and I had a book project going that was something along these lines, but the publisher kept adding to its complexity, and removing the things that could have been additional income drivers. Alas, in the end we gave up. Their loss, because it would have been a cool project.
Alas, for a how-to book, crowd funding can be too public. Publishers are known for being me-too followers. Should the book do well in the funding, other publishers would notice and just step in with a competing book. They'd have the infrastructure to get it out first. Been there done that, with plenty of scorch marks to show for it. One avoids pre-announcing these things too early.
Crowd funding for books can work if the topic is somehow intrinsically linked to the author(s), to keep the copy-cats at bay, or if the book is mostly written by the time the funding starts, to shorten the time to publish. Ours was an interesting concept and approach, but hardly unduplicatable.
Comments
I would never say it's easy money, at least not the way I do it. ( I envy the writers that simply review a new piece of hardware or software, THAT'S easy money but not my style.) I tend to do a lot of late nights as my deadline approaches, agonizing over technical specifics of my DIY construction articles. Rereading and rewriting, I go snowblind after a few hours. Writing is HARD WORK. So there are a lot of hours involved. My articles probably also come out to minimum wage if I ever added it up. That's OK for me, since it's just beer & bot money, but less so for you, a successful and well-known author. One might argue that these are incremental sales which might generate some buzz and possibly lead to more sales later. I would have never seen that offer and bought had you not posted, I wonder how many $1.21 sales of RBB happened. Did they advertise it somewhere? How did you find out?
Now why is your Arduino Robotics book still on sale? Might the low-price books be limited to a certain quantity?
While the buck pricing seems counter-productive if longer than just a few days (cyber Monday sort of thing), I'll wait to see if the publisher has a comment.
Not that it will make a difference in what they say; other than possibly one more edition of RBB, I don't plan on writing for this publisher in the future, and I'm planning to either go totally nonlegit with self-published books, or chase after my dream of doing activity books slanted for a much wider audience. IMO, I see little growth in the technical book trade -- far too much effort for far too little reward.
During my low presence here the past few months, I've been honing my illustration skills, and am working on some kids activity books (no robots) that I have in mind.
These days there seems to be added value in smaller works that cost less, or are even "free," paid for either by ads or some other corporate support. The Erco and I had a book project going that was something along these lines, but the publisher kept adding to its complexity, and removing the things that could have been additional income drivers. Alas, in the end we gave up. Their loss, because it would have been a cool project.
Self publish? Kickstarter? Crowd funding? E-pub? Monastic scribes?
I'd pay real money for a Gordric McDorf robotics book!
Have you been reading "A Canticle for Liebowitz" again?
First sucker taker, Gordon! You can frame Rick's dollar on the wall.
Alas, for a how-to book, crowd funding can be too public. Publishers are known for being me-too followers. Should the book do well in the funding, other publishers would notice and just step in with a competing book. They'd have the infrastructure to get it out first. Been there done that, with plenty of scorch marks to show for it. One avoids pre-announcing these things too early.
Crowd funding for books can work if the topic is somehow intrinsically linked to the author(s), to keep the copy-cats at bay, or if the book is mostly written by the time the funding starts, to shorten the time to publish. Ours was an interesting concept and approach, but hardly unduplicatable.