Clearly, Amazon makes a lot of money on those sales. They are doing all the logistics, so that's fair. Also, prices in other countries are slightly different, so consider anywhere between 30%-100% of those numbers.
So why do I do this?
Distribution. Reach. Exposure.
I want my books to be read by as many people as possible. I know the books are good and that people will recommend them, so I am going for reach. Revenue is secondary. That'll happen over the next few years.
Gumroad, on the other hand, is spectacular for royalties. It's just not very good for reach. I have to do 100% of the marketing for every Gumroad sale. Affiliates help, but it's no Amazon.
So there you have it. The economics of a self-published book launch.
Any questions? :D
And by the way: as much as Gumroad is better for revenue, I prefer sales on Amazon. The sales there rank the book higher on the best-seller lists, and those determine how many new readers I will find in the future.
Because I've been asked for some advice on how to write a book, let me share a few thoughts here.
A book isn't written in one go, it's a whole process.
Here is how I approach writing:
🧵👇
I follow the outline approach, so I come up with the main topics I want to cover, and then I make a big Table of Contents with the chapter names. Once that is looking good, I start writing the chapters, one by one. Like blog posts, but all fitting together.
You don't need to write in order. You can add to any chapter at any time. Feel like writing the ending first? Go ahead. Have an idea for one more good example in chapter 12? Add it today.
It's starting to rank, too. It's currently #10 on the Entrepreneur best-sellers and all three editions (eBook, paperback, hardcover) are on the Top 100 New Releases. 🥳🚀
Most paperbacks and hardcovers are not included in the Amazon list — yet. I assume that an additional 50% of the reported number was ordered as a print version, so add another ~60 to the mix.
So day one saw 318 - ~370 sales. We'll know for sure next week when they're delivered!
Sales on @Gumroad have been spectacular. As usual, that platform allows me to reach those readers who don't have easy access to Amazon as Americans or Germans might. Also, the Notion-based toolkit is sold exclusively on Gumroad.
The Embedded Entrepreneur is a book about audiences written with and for an audience. From the start, the book was written in public, because I knew that my future readers were the best source of feedback.
The original title of the book was "Audience First," which got changed to "The Embedded Entrepreneur" after I had a few insightful conversations with my audience.
Look at it from a distance, and the silhouette looks threatening and imposing.
Look at it from up close, and you’ll see intricate details, unique and different landscapes, never what you thought it would be from a distance.
You'll find that what looked scary at a distance is something else entirely when looked at closely.
That service you thought would be your direct competitor? Their feature-set is tailed to larger B2B customers while you're building for freelancers and small businesses.
At the same time, what looked like "just another small hill" turns out to be a potential source of trouble — maybe not today, but in a few years' time.
Google just slapped every Chrome Extension author in the face by removing payments while making it impossible to migrate existing customers without involving them (which you can't, as Google doesn't give you the email address).
If you have built a bootstrapped or a lifestyle business on the Chrome Extension store and have used their payments API, you now have to scramble to integrate an alternative provider and hope that you can find a way to reach your users so they can continue their subscription.
This will cause churn, complaints, confusion, and ultimately so much work that some developers will rather scrap their projects than go through the motions.
This is a corporate decision that is hostile to small developers.
There's an interesting Ask HN by someone looking for side project ideas.
My advice, abbreviated: The best products happen at the intersection of an existing niche you are a part of already and a technology that has not yet been adopted in that niche.
I've found one approach work very well with my mentees:
1. Figure out which "special interest groups" you are part of beyond software engineering. That can be "aquarium owner", "coffee lover", "morning person", "diligent grandson" — the less technical, the better
2. Among these "niches", find the ones that could benefit from a transfer of technology, like "teachers who work from home" (education niche) + "automated submission and pre-grading of homework" could work (digital document collection and rule-based checking logic) …