Really crappy book sales

My publisher tells me that, despite a lot of good press and strong reviews, my book hasn't sold particularly well.

That's so frustrating... because throughout the editorial process there was a lot of relief that a book like this was finally being written. And with all of the people out there that I've interviewed that are in dire need of a book like it, the publisher did a pretty shitty job of getting the word out to them.

It's not about the money. It never was. I quit my job at the time I wrote the book because it wasn't about the money (I was billing huge dollars at the time). I felt that I was doing something that was really going to help people who could learn from my own weird career path.

I suppose this is largely an issue of perspective, or my lack thereof. I've had a ton of e-mail from people that liked the book. The reviews are mostly positive. Headhunters love seeing it on my resume. I suppose I could blame the publisher. I don't know. I'm just really annoyed about the whole thing. It's often hard not to evaluate yourself on some level using external metrics.

14 Comments

  • Don't take it so hard. Maybe it was just a matter of timing?



    The last asp.net book I bought was for the beta release of asp.net 1.0. And well, in my opinion asp.net 2.0 hasn't radically changed enough to warrant a book purchase. (Plenty of resources on the web anyway.)

  • well, i would buy it if there was an pdf/ebook version for sale.

    i hardly buy hardcopies of IT-books anymore, just ebooks



    said that, it does sound interesting

  • “Remember the two benefits of failure. First, if you do fail, you learn what doesn't work; and second, the failure gives you the opportunity to try a new approach.”

  • Jeff, three years ago I would have possibly bought your book. Nowadays I am doing ClickOnce applications. Is this the sign of times?



    Maybe you are not selling just because the world is changing and not because of the lack of quality of the book you wrote, so the real mistake is indeed judging yourself based on those external metrics. ;-)

  • There are so many books now a day available and with so many websites or blogs talking about a specific technologie for free its kinda logic that people dont buy as much books as they did ..



    Frans I guess Dave meant that the change from 1.0 -> 2.0 was not as radical as the change from the old asp to asp.net ..

  • I am lead to believe that your book is an architectual book. Typically architectual books don't sell well. This may be an oversimplification, but this is the first issue that comes to mind for me.

  • I bought your book couple of months. I can definitely say it was worth it.



    Do yourself a favor and see how you can ignite interest in the book. Few ideas: create a complete application (at least medium complexity) that highlights the ideas from the book and make the source code available; promote it over .net user groups; create an eBook version of the same; publish contents of the book in a reputed magazine or some place in episodes; etc.

  • Wally: Not even close. It's a book for the legions of developers who just haven't made the successful transition into OOP using ASP.NET. I run into these people constantly in the field, who treat ASP.NET like a scripting platform instead of an application platform. The audience is there, but they don't know about the book.



    Unfortunately, what I can do with the text at this point is limited, since I don't own the copyright. As my first book, I didn't feel at the time that I had any leverage to retain it. Now I know better.



    The truth is that if I do write something else, it won't be through a publisher. Too much reliance on people you can't count on, or who just don't get it.

  • I bought a copy of your book and have recommended it to others :)

  • But if you read it you'd know it already covers v2 topics like Membership and Profile.

  • Just one comment...fix the book description on Amazon. I'd never buy a book with a description like that...didn't even bother reading it. It's like 2 pages of straight run-on text.

  • Yet another thing I don't have control over. You can see why I get so annoyed.

  • I myself had a similar experience when I wrote "Shaders for Game Programmers and Artists". With the slew of shader books I wanted to go down a different path and wrote a book which appealed both to artists and programmers. The 6-8 months of work invested didn't pay off that much. Well about 1200 copies sold, which isn't too bad. But with a standard 10% royalty, it's far from paying the rent.



    So for my second book "The COMPLETE Effect and HLSL Guide", I decided to self-publish and founded Paradoxal Pres. So far, sales are around 400 copies. Which isn't as strong but keeping costs low (by printing on-demand) and keeping all the reveues, I essentially made more off this book than with my first title.



    Since then i've expanded a little and have recently published "Practical .NET2 and C#2" by Patrick Smacchia. The title has just been released so it's hard to tell how things are going but early reviews and comments look promising.



    Although large publishers have some advantages in terms of distribution chain and marketing connections. I think it might be time for technical authors to start moving away from large traditional publishers who are more concerned with quantity and move towards smaller presses which focus on less titles but which are concerned about the quality of their titles since they have more at stake.



    To me seems like a win-win for both the author and the publisher.

  • Hi Jeff



    As an author in another subject, i can tell you my experience :



    Either a book has a very short life time because it is tighten to a technology, and the sales largely depends on the advertising. It s the one shot sell book.



    Or the book needs more maturity and people learn to love it and recommend it to others, speak about it in forums, blogs... and then the sales can take off later.



    Anyway basing the success exclusively on the editor is a mistake since the editor has plenty of other books to sell not yours only despite what we would be believe (he showed so much attention before publishing...).

    You MUST do your own promotion : lectures, articles, offer free chapters...



    Good luck

    Jonathan Weizman

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