Tech Publishing and developer.* Books
I originally posted the following as a comment to a very interesting thread on David Heinemeier's Loud Thinking blog called "Shaking up tech publishing." I thought I would share it here also on my own blog, with the thought in mind that people might be interested in learning more about what we're doing with this developer.* Books thing. I have pasted it here verbatim, though I have added in a few links that I had kept out of the original (so as to not appear to be trolling for page rank on David's blog). If this kind of meta stuff about developer.* Books interests you, you might also enjoy this, which I wrote a couple weeks ago.
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I've enjoyed very much reading the original post and this thread of comments. As a brand new entrant onto the software development book publishing scene, I find discussions of this sort endlessly fascinating. Thanks to David for getting the discussion started, and to Tim and Gary (and everyone else) for adding to it. I'll do my best to add something of value as well.
At the risk of appearing as if I'm using this as an opportunity to pitch my own venture, I would like to point out another direction that I hope to see more of in the future: small, independent publishers using digital printing and on-demand distribution for niche titles. This is direction we've decided to go with developer.* Books (DeveloperDotStar.com). We are the very definition of an indie, with my girlfriend/partner and I working out of our homes, doing business totally over the internet and phone. We financed our first title ourselves, and it was just released a couple weeks ago: Software Conflict 2.0, which is a collection of essays about software development by Robert L. Glass, with a Guest Foreword by Pragmatic Programmer Andy Hunt.
Most books (including those by O'Reilly, Apress, and Pragmatic Bookshelf) are published using offset printing technology, which has been the standard for a long time. The strengths of this process are that it is extremely flexible (think of the huge variety of shapes, sizes, colors, bindings, and materials in the books you see in the store) and can produce a very high quality product. The primary downside is that the setup process for a print run is cumbersome, and it's only economical (given the publishing economics described so well by Tim above) to print books when you can print them thousands at a time.
In contrast, the "print on demand" model, as it's commonly known, uses a digital printing technology--basically a super-charged laser printer with book binding capabilities. The most obvious advantage is that there is no need to print thousands or even hundreds of copies of the book all at once. If I need a case of books to keep in my inventory for direct sales, then I order a box and they ship it to me. If a customer on Amazon orders one, they print one and ship it to that person.
And depending on the printer you use (we use Lightning Source, which is affiliate with the wholesaler Ingram) the books are of good quality. An experienced eye can tell the difference, but the average person can't. The cover stock is full color and a good weight, the paper is good quality acid-free paper, and the binding is strong.
There are disadvantages, naturally: your choice of cover stock is limited (no matte finish, for instance), you can't do color inside, and your ability to reproduce detailed, grayscaled graphics (like photographs) is limited. Also, the per-unit costs are higher, as you might imagine.
The primary disadvantage and challenge, though, is one of perception: because the vanity publishing industry jumped on the digital book printing bandwagon early and enthusiastically, "print on demand" in many people's minds is synonomous with "vanity/self published." This is a shame, and hopefully time will change this perception.
It's easy to identify a self-published or vanity-published book because the design will be amateurish and clunky. Even readers who can't articulate exactly why, they know instinctively that the book doesn't "look right." The cover looks a little cheesy somehow. The interior typography looks like it came out of Word with none of the margin or line height settings adjusted. There are typos, and there's no index.
The secret, we believe, to overcoming this perception barrier is high standards in title selection, editing, and design. Tim points out that one of the primary things that O'Reilly "brings to the table," so to speak, is strong and dilligent editing. Most people who have not been involved on the other side of book or magazine publishing have no idea the amount of editing effort that can go into even a mediocre book or article. And then you have design. For our first book we sought out an experienced designer who produced for us a design that I would put up against most big publishers software book designs. It took several months to get it right. Add in things like copy editing, tables and graphs, and a professional index and it's no trivial task to "crank out a book."
We strive to operate developer.* Books like any other scrappy independent book publisher, except that we use digital printing instead of offset. We don't just publish any old book because, even though the printing techology is different, it still takes a not insignificant amount of money and a whole lot of sweat to put out a book that's worth putting out--notice I didn't say "a book that will sell," because I have no idea how to do that yet, but a book that's worth putting out.
To see an example of a very successful company that looks and acts like a normal publishing company but that is using the print on demand model, check out Prime Books and its sister imprint Wildside Press. They publish an impressive range of high quality science fiction/fantasy/horror paperbacks and hardcovers. The books are all professionally designed and edited, and they are definitely *not* a vanity press--they're an indie. If you're hip to the sf/f/h fiction scene, you will be able to see that right off.
As experienced authors and publishers will tell you, sales come primarily from promotion and distribution. Promotion means taking out advertisments, paying for placement on Amazon.com, sending out review copies, sponsoring conferences, etc. All of that stuff costs money. Distribution in the traditional sense is about getting on bookstore shelves. If you have a good product, and you have a little luck, and you're willing to give a book distributor a ~70% discount on your book off of the cover price (retailers insist on a 55% discount, so the distributor needs a cut too), then you can take the risk of printing up several hundred or thousand copies of your book and sending them out "into the trade channel."
There is indeed a great deal of risk here (returns could be as high as 30-50%, and as Tim illustrated, you have to eat these), but the wider distribution (as Tim has also pointed out) gives you a real opportunity to scale up sales-wise.
Choosing Lightning Source was an important choice for us because of their affiliation with Ingram. Ingram will always show stock on our books (they call this "virtual stock," but it looks like real stock to retailers or anyone else placing an order through Ingram), which is key to being visible to the channel. If your book does not show stock at (in the US at least) Ingram or Baker & Taylor, your book for all intents and purposes does not exist to the channel--the friendly lady at your local indie bookstore might even be reluctant to order one for you if Ingram is not showing stock. So the point is that even though with this model you're not counting on traditional bookstore sales, you still have to consider distribution through the traditional channel--it's just more a pull *from* the channel (as people, hopefully, order your book) than a push *to* the channel.
One of the ways that we've decided to mitigate the distribution challenge is to focus on books that have a timeless quality to them, books that can stay in print for years, building up momentum and sales over time. This is a double-edged sword: we're not on the same technology-driven rollercoaster that heroes like O'Reilly, Apress, and Pragmatic Bookshelf are on, but we'll never make the kind of money they're making, and we'll never be putting out books on hot topics like Rails and AJAX. But hopefully we'll put out some books that we'll be proud of, books that will enrich people and be pleasing as physical objects, and hopefully the authors will make a little money too. Too soon to tell.
If anyone has any questions, feel free to get in touch at dan~AT~developerdotstar.com.
Best,
Daniel Read
developer.* Books
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If you think this is all pretty cool, and if you would like to see developer.* Books publish more books, please vote with your wallet and buy a copy of our first book! :-) Also, we believe that a rising tide lifts all boats, so we are happy to help anyone else embarking on this road if we can. As suggested above, feel free to get in touch.
Answers To Edward's Questions
Thanks for the great questions, Edward.
First, on the topic of libraries, it is definitely our intention to make sure that our books end up in as many libraries as possible, including the Library of Congress in the U.S. If you could help us get into the library of Hong Kong University, that would be great. I'll send you an extra copy that you can bring to them as a gift, in fact. Being part of "the memory of civilization," as you put it, is one of the primary reasons for writing and publishing books in the first place--at least it is for us.
Your comments numbered (3) and (4) point out the downside that if a book is only available for purchase online, then how can potential readers peruse it as a physical object while browsing in the bookstore, and how do they stumble into it in the first place? There's not a quick answer to this, but I'll hit on a couple things that hopefully will suffice.
First, we would love to get our books onto brick-and-mortar bookstore shelves in every store in the world so that browsers could stumble into it and skim the text before buying. Our model does not specifically exclude this--we simply do not *count* on it. We have already been sending the book out to retailers for their consideration, and I've contacted some independent stores myself via email (believe it or not there are a few indie technical bookstores still around). If one or more retailers wants carry the book and orders a certain quantity, then we'll be happy to print those up--in fact, they won't even have to deal with us directly to do this; they can just order whatever quantitly they want from our wholesaler, Ingram. We give a standard trade discount, and we accept returns.
The difference from the standpoint of publishing business technique, if you will, is that we don't *start* from that position: printing up a large number of books on an offset press, storing them somewhere, and hoping, hoping, hoping that the channel will order them and sell them through. If we were forced to start there, the whole risk profile would be different, and we couldn't take a risk on a great book like Software Conflict 2.0. We'd have to stick to AJAX and Rails books that we could be sure would sell.
There's also nothing in our business model that says that we are precluded from using offset printing or doing a large print run of a certain title. In fact, we know one publisher who is doing a mix, using offset for some titles, print on demand for some titles, and even a hybrid for some titles.
The other angle of this that you mentioned was the browsing effect, creating the opportunity for people to stumble into the title and then giving them a way to check it out before making a decision. Our strategy is to create analogs to this online as much as possible. For one, we ensure that anyone searching for the author's name on any search engine is only a click away from finding out about our book(s) by that author.
We also maximize Amazon and other online retailers as much as possible. Amazon in particular is used as a book browsing tool by many. We are participating in Amazon's Search Inside program also, which means that buyers can see scanned images of excerpts from the book. Not to mention, we have excerpts, the Table of Contents, and other information about the book available on our web site.
We are also, of course, following the traditional promotional path of sending out review copies to various publications. Many people as you know find out about new books by reading reviews. We're also hoping that as more people receive and read the book that word-of-mouth will kick in also.
As I stated above, time will tell how this all works out. In the meantime, however, our whole strategy is based on the idea that a book is a timeless, mysterious thing that is a worthy end in itself.
Dan
University Press Going to Digital Printing
I'll post comments to this thread from time to time that reflect two trends that I see as positive for everyone, especially authors and readers: on the one hand, the trend of more and more independent publishers popping up, especially in the software development space; on the other hand, the increasing importance of digital printing (aka Print on Demand).
On the latter topic, we have today this post by Tim O'Reilly (of O'Reilly Media) about the fact that Rice Universtity Press is going to a combination online and print-on-demand model. Expect to see more of this. It's a natural for text-oriented books where there is little reason for printing up enough books to fill up retail distribution channels; if the bookstores are only going to stock bestsellers and "mainstream" titles anyway, why take the significant financial risk of printing up and storing thousands of books? If you do get lucky and get into the bookstores or have a big seller, digitally printed books sit on a bookstore shelf just as nicely as offset printed ones, and there's nothing to stop you from doing an extra offset print run of a title.
Thanks for reading,
Dan
Comments on Dan's business model
Dan, I think on-demand publishing a great idea, but, I have two concerns.
(1) Will a copy of the on-demand book make it to the Library of Congress?
(2) More generally, will libraries world wide have the opportunity to order a copy of an on-demand book? I say this because being in the library of Hong Kong University (as is the case with my book) gives the book credibility. More important, it becomes part of the memory of civilization.
(3) What about the browser? How many people simply don't know that want a book until they hold in in hand?
(4) Again more generally, true book lovers don't "want a specific title". They don't know what the hell they want. It's the practical man, who doesn't read most of the time, that knows exactly what book he wants.
People treat a book author with a bit of awe, since he's done crossed de line into a status with what Walter Benjamin called "aura".
His words may actually reverberate years from hence in libraries covered with the sea when the sea again retreats.