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On Books, E-Books, Copyright and Author Return

15th January 2010 By 14 Comments

Ivan Pepelnjak at ioshints.info has made a good point about people who steal textbooks. Basically, it takes months to go through the process of writing a book. It isn’t a part time activity, and you need to get paid a reasonable amount of money to take time off from your work to get this done.

And the money that the author gets isn’t very much. Typically about 5% of the cover price goes to the author, and you need to sell a lot of books to get a months salary in the bank at two or three US dollars a book.

As Ivan says:

Do you really want that? Do you really think Cisco Press (and numerous other publishers) would still be in the business of book publishing if the vendor documentation addressed your needs?

I wonder if that is why many of the Cisco Press haven’t been updated in the last three or four years. If the authors aren’t making enough money to make the process worthwhile, they won’t do it. I haven’t written or published a book myself because there is not enough money to make it worthwhile.

If you don’t pay, it wont get written and you won’t get good quality study material.

Think about it.

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About Greg Ferro

Greg Ferro is a Network Engineer/Architect, mostly focussed on Data Centre, Security Infrastructure, and recently Virtualization. He has over 20 years in IT, in wide range of employers working as a freelance consultant including Finance, Service Providers and Online Companies. He is CCIE#6920 and has a few ideas about the world, but not enough to really count.

He is a host on the Packet Pushers Podcast, blogger at EtherealMind.com and on Twitter @etherealmind and Google Plus

  • http://ertw.com/blog/ Sean

    Having written two books myself, I’ve found the $/hr for the book isn’t good, but the spinoffs are great. I’ve made a good amount of money writing articles, book content, and tech editing based on my being published and having a relationship with some publishers and my agent.

    I’d wager that the reason many books don’t get a second edition is not because the author didn’t want to, but because the book didn’t earn out its advance and/or the publisher didn’t make enough money to make it worth their while. If it was a profitable venture for the publisher, they’d simply find another author to do the revision.

    FWIW it’s certainly possible to write while having a full time job. Writing a book is a lot of work, but doesn’t need to be a full time gig.

    Sean

    • http://etherealmind.com Greg Ferro

      Sean

      I agree and have experienced some new opportunities (such the the Tech Field Day) from writing this blog. But, really, you want to make money from the book, not from other work that may never happen and requires even more work to get that money. No ?

      • http://ertw.com/blog/ Sean

        I guess everyone’s motivations for writing are different. The money was nice, but I went into it knowing I was probably only going to get my advance and I was OK with that. I didn’t expect to get rich, and I didn’t :(

        • http://etherealmind.com Greg Ferro

          I don’t want rich, but I would like to make a living out of it. Sadly, consulting makes a lot more money.

          • http://ertw.com/blog/ Sean

            Most authors don’t make a living off of writing books. They’ll do books + consulting, or books + other writing. I’m sure there are exceptions, just like a fraction of people will also make a living playing basketball.

  • Dmitri Kalintsev

    The two major contributors to piracy are the inflated price (of which, as you’ve rightfully pointed out, the author gets bugger all) and restricted availability.

    Making books easy to buy and handle around (like borrow) and bringing the price to within the reason will make piracy obsolete.

    Yes, it will take time for this to happen. And I hope Apple will do something about it, as the opportunity is certainly there, all right.

    • http://etherealmind.com Greg Ferro

      I can see your point, however when I did a cost analysis they don’t actually overcharge. The bookshop gets 50% of selling price, the publisher gets 45% (includes cost of printing and distribution), and author gets 5%. While those numbers are skewed, they do reflect the actual costs.

      The real question is whether the publisher will reduce the price of e-books by 50% when e-books eliminate the bookshop and all its costs.

      I bet they don’t.

      • Dmitri Kalintsev

        The cost of distributing an e-book approaches zero as there are no costs associated with a physical good.

        Yes, there are costs in production and potentially marketing, but beyond this it is practically pure profit.

        I do not see how an e-book should cost anything more than 10-15% of the hardcover version. I also think that with the move to e-books authors should be rewarded much better to stimulate the creativity. This very well may encourage regular updates to good books (and will be MUCH easier with e-books to do, too. Conceivably, there’s nothing that could stop publishers from offering an “up to date guarantee” for a premium, which would ensure you will always have most current edition).

        Anyway, I think the brave new world of opportunity is out there waiting.

  • http://www.mtin.net/blog Justin Wilson

    Books tend to be out of date quickly too, especially in the IT/networking world.

    • http://etherealmind.com Greg Ferro

      That’s true, but why don’t the authors update them every three or four years ? [I don't know the answer to that question, I am wondering though ?]

      • http://ertw.com/blog/ Sean

        The economics just aren’t in their favour. Look at the books that are getting revised, they’re fairly generic and targeted to a larger audience. These are the ones that are making enough money to pay someone to revise. They’re also the ones earning out their advances to make it worth the author’s while.

        IMHO the better model is to have 60-100 page eBooks on certain specific topics instead of 500 page monsters on the greater topic. eg instead of “Everything you wanted to know about the ASA” then it’s “Enough knowledge to get your ASA out of the box and protecting you from bad guys.”, and maybe another one on “high availability for the ASA” and so forth. The cost would be a lot less and you’d be able to get more money to the author, and a better chance of getting revisions out.

  • Darby Weaver

    Great article. The people who should probably read it are busy downloading right now.

    We are living in the “quick fix” and “me” generation.

    I posted a picture of 2 of my bookshelves and a triple CCIE who is a trainer said he did not have but a few real books “but his e-books collection” is as impressive.

    The fact is file-sharing has obliterated any chance of a person earning a decent income writing books – not just tech books either.

    It’s a sad fact.

    People don’t realize that if they want to earn “mythical incomes” the economy has to be functioning correctly.

    Most people can’t look outside of the mirror in front of them and come up with a garden variety of excuses.

    Me… I don’t mind browsing ebooks or having them available… however I buy my books – sometimes used but I like to have them close by and available when I need them. Just me.

  • http://www.ipexpert.com/ Marko Milivojevic

    One can have perfectly legitimate and very impressive e-book collection. For one, I started buying books when I discovered Safari and their subscription service.

    From time to time I buy hardcopy books, but I do most of my reading on the screen now. I sense that’ll change when e-book readers become more available (and less geo-restricted, which is an utter nonsense to begin with).

    • http://etherealmind.com Greg Ferro

      I couldn’t live without my O’Reilly Safari Subscription these days. I have bought and downloaded several textbooks from there as well as continuing to read old and new titles online.