November 30, 2006
Windows Vista Shipped today, November 30 and, er, will ship again on January 30
for retail users. Oh, and the cost will vary depending on which of the four versions you buy.
Volume license users (corporations) may buy Windows today, but I wonder, will they?
Why didn't Microsoft try to simplify this?
There's a nice post about this at Monkeybites, Windows Vista is Here! Or Not depending on Who You Are.
November brought us Vista and Zune (Did Microsoft Copy the Wrong iPod?), talk about your anticlimactic product launches.
Thank goodness Gears of War rocks.
Posted by matt at 2:16 PM | Comments (0)
October 31, 2006
Flat computer book market, re the O'Reilly Radar
Time again for Tim O'Reilly's State of the Computer Book Market Q 3, and it looks like the early gains this year have leveled off. Perhaps worse than that, Tim says --
We suspect that the combination of increasingly sophisticated online information, easier to use Web 2.0 applications, and customer fatigue with new features of overly complex applications, combined with the consolidation of the retail book market, mean that the market will never return to its pre-2000 highs, despite new enthusiasm for Web 2.0 and the technology market in general. In addition, new distribution channels (including downloadable PDFs) are growing up as retailers allocate less space to computer books.
"Will never return?" Pre-2000 numbers were huge compared to today's market, so I'm sure he's right, which of course leaves me in a pickle since about half of my business is related to tech titles.
The bottom line for agents as well as authors is that you've gotta do more than books, or do more than books in one niche.
As for me, I'm still repping plenty of tech titles but I'm also working on more non-book projects, including documentation deals, white papers, programming gigs, DVDs and more.
I'm also signing a steady stream of general non-fiction. I'm not looking for the long tail but I'm looking for the long score, books that will sell consistently for five or ten years, and books that need to be revised less often.
There are still bestsellers to be had in this tech market, but they're fewer and farther between.
What will publishers do? Beyond scrabbling for the shelf space that remains, tech publishers are moving online with some alacrity and we'll see more ebooks from them as well as perhaps more initiatives around online education (note that Hungry Minds pre Wiley acquisition failed at this spectacularly but Thomson picked up Ed2Go.com and that's a successful business today).
I also expect that publishers will move sideways and try to extend successful tech brands into other niches, ala the "for Dummies" and the "Complete Idiots" series.
Education, anyone? Test prep? Personal finance? Business? How about health and wellness? There's a lot of room out there for a motivated publisher.
Posted by matt at 9:45 AM | Comments (0)
July 27, 2006
O'Reilly's analysis Q2, part 3, How the publishers fared
Part 3 of Tim's State of the Computer Book Industry.
Tim suggests that both Pearson and Wiley lost some market share last quarter, but I won't be surprised if both companies recapture some of that next year, when and if we see a year of blockbusters. Vista for Dummies can change this chart in a hurry all by itself.
Tim gives the nod to "for Dummies" as the largest imprint (per sales volume) and notes O'Reilly has the largest revenue, but I think that's a little misleading because there are so many disparate brands in the O'Reilly pantheon (One on One, Head First, Missing Manual, In a Nutshell -- I'd almost count those as imprints themselves). Also, it's also unclear to me if the entire Wiley consumer non-dummies branded books (which are under the same publisher/vp) are included in this calculation.
Despite any erosion, Pearson and Wiley remain the largest publishers in this market by far.
You have to admire O'Reilly's strategy of "co-optition." O'Reilly has done a great job of "growth by distribution," picking up partners like Manning, Pragmatic and No Starch, rather than growing by acquisition. And I like Tim's very public wooing of APress.
Another interesting point to keep in mind, although the numbers here don't reflect it, is that Pearson and O'Reilly are partners in Safari, and O'Reilly appears increasingly committed to ebooks as well.
With all these various ventures (and conferences too) O'Reilly has plenty of bets placed all over the board. Considering the topsy-turvy environment of the last few years, I have to think that's a good strategy.
Posted by matt at 3:33 PM | Comments (0)
July 26, 2006
O'Reilly's analysis Q2, part 2
Again, I suggest that all my tech clients read O'Reilly's latest analysis of the tech book market, Linked here.
Although a retrospective analysis can't always tell us where we're going, and it's already too late to jump into some of these categories, or do so at your peril, this is a useful picture of where we've been recently. And it's notable that this has some strong messages for business book authors as well regarding topics like data warehousing, business intelligence, and web 2.0. It's at least possible to extrapolate some ideas out beyond the strict tech book market.
Wouldn't it be great if we saw mainstream publishing periodicals like Publishers Weekly do this sort of graphical and granular analysis of the entire bookstore market? I hope they're paying attention.
Posted by matt at 10:07 AM | Comments (0)
July 24, 2006
O'Reilly Radar's quarterly state of the computer book industry
Tim O'Reilly has posted his new state of the computer book industry.
Unfortunately, Tim writes "While Q1 was consistently higher than any period since the bust in 2001, and looked like we might be about to break out of the narrow range of the past couple of years, Q2 bumped along at about the same level as last year."
As always, Tim will follow this post with more analysis in the next day or two.
I still expect a big bump with Office, Vista, CS3 and Leopard, eventually. There was little new software activity in the second quarter, which gives me some cause for hope.
Posted by matt at 9:00 AM | Comments (0)
May 18, 2006
Get ready for Vista, someday
Via CNET, this would be funny if it weren't so sad in regards to the ongoing scheduling saga of computer book authors and publishers everywhere. Microsoft wants customers to "Get Ready Now," for Vista, which means they want you to upgrade your PC ahead of time and benefit from special offers when the product actually ships. But you know what happens when you upgrade, prices drop the next week, and the "Vista Ready" PC you buy in November is not as capable as the actual Vista machine you buy in January, February or March. Linked.
Of course, as befits an operating system that will ship in many different flavors, you can plan to be "Vista Capable" or you can be "Premium Ready." CNET quotes the specs -- "To be classified as Vista-capable, a computer needs an 800MHz processor, 512MB of memory and a DirectX 9-capable graphics card. Premium Ready machines need a 1GHz processor, 128MB of graphics memory, 1GB of system memory, a 40GB hard drive and an internal or external DVD-ROM drive."
Posted by matt at 9:51 AM | Comments (2)
April 21, 2006
O'Reilly's Computer Book Analysis, parts 2 and 3
Tim O'Reilly has posted parts 2 and 3 of his computer book market Bookscan analysis, linked below --
State of the Computer Book Market, Part 2
State of the Computer Book Market, Part 3
It's been a year since Tim's first post on this, and I can't recall any other publisher making a concentrated effort to share analysis in such a public fashion. With Bookscan, obviously, publishers don't have so many secrets from each other, but O'Reilly shakes and bakes the Bookscan data in some interesting ways, including such measures as "revenue per title" and "title efficiency."
It's good to keep in mind that this is based on Bookscan data alone, and doesn't include some other important revenues sources such as foreign rights sales, ebooks, custom books and special sales, or overseas English language sales.
O'Reilly sees 7% growth in the computer book market compared to last Spring, which is slightly higher than I thought it would be, and extremely welcome news.
An interesting comment regarding lower end books, Tim notes that the "for Dummies" brand remains the dominant consumer brand "in the shrinking category of consumer operating systems", but also scores well on title efficiency and growth (11% by Tim's reckoning). It will be interesting to see if the Vista and Office releases will create some true positive momentum in the consumer space, and also if the early adopter growth in Web 2.0 programming titles somehow translates into a minor web title boomlet as consumers learn to work and play in 2.0 style.
Some new players have done well, especially The Pragmatic Programmer's which grew at 248%. That's awesome, and shows that O'Reilly made a smart bet with their distribution partners.
Tim notes that the Wrox brand has recovered and prospered, with Wiley doing an excellent job of integrating an ailing imprint -- and I'd expect to see the same thing next year with Sybex titles. (You can find Wrox editor Jim Minatel's comments on Tim's post here -- yes, we do have our mojo back thank you very much).
This is all required reading if you're writing computer books. No matter what, new growth is definitely great news for the business and it's nice that we're seeing some excitement around tech again: Ajax, Ruby, Web 2.0, iTunes and iPods everywhere, a digital camera in every purse, new author-driven models touted at Pragmatic Programmers, and more ebooks from established publishers.
Posted by matt at 7:36 AM | Comments (0)
April 19, 2006
O'Reilly analysis on the uptick in the computer book market
This is worthy reading, O'Reilly's latest bookscan analysis State of the Computer Book Market, Part 1 shows sustained growth in the technical book market over the last year, and he includes a treemap that shows the relative growth of a variety of categories.
Some interesting data here: Web development titles are up (ASP and Javascript are way up), MS office apps overall are up slightly, but Windows XP sales are down (Windows book sales will improve dramatically once Vista finally ships).
Most noteworthy, according to Tim's analysis, is that sales seem to be growing for the bestsellers but there is less growth in the backlist, and Tim notes that with growth concentrated in bestsellers, publishers seem to be trimming their title count. This is certainly true for a couple of houses that have undergone some relatively public reductions in title count.
As to which sort of books are doing well these days, Tim suggests that references (a la Java in a Nutshell) have been hit hardest by the web, but notes that O'Reilly at least is seeing growth in the tutorial market (books that can't easily be replicated online).
Definitely worth reading, I'll link to Part 2 when he posts it.
Posted by matt at 7:14 AM | Comments (1)
March 9, 2006
Oprah, not just for books
This warms both sides of my heart, commerce and publishing, Vista's Product Manager, David Block is quoted at C-NET --
"Can we get a cool new PC in front of Oprah?...Can we do stuff like that? I think we can."
They sure hope so, check out these sales projections, also quoted from the C-NET article
Microsoft says it expects more than 400 million PCs to be running Vista within 24 months of the launch. Block said the goal is to reach a rate within that time where more than half of the machines are running some premium version of the OS.
MS is planning to ship six versions of Vista. Six Vistas, I guess you'd say.
Wow, I hope it's just confusing enough that everyone needs a book.
And maybe Oprah can help Microsoft clarify their message.
Posted by matt at 12:19 PM | Comments (0)
January 4, 2006
Tech publishing trend for 2006 -- Up
We finally experienced new growth in the tech book market in 2005, driven in large part by emerging markets (Ruby, Ajax, Digital Lifestyles), strong series (Dummies, Head First, and Missing Manual) and the consolidation and focus of a few publishing programs (Sybex seems to have settled in very well as a strong Wiley imprint).
And many thanks go to Apple for continuing to push new products out the door (now hopefully Steve Jobs will get over iCon).
I think that 2006 will shape up to be even better. After a year where we saw few big software releases (outside of open source betas at least), we're going to see a year driven again by Microsoft updates of Office and, hopefully, Vista too, not to mention a probable Adobe CS release later this year.
This should mean we'll see a bigger title count, so it's a great time to hit up your editors for wish lists. That's what I'm doing.
It's also a good time to review what's working in the market -- books that people can use to improve their lives, lifestyle, or bank account.
Security remains interesting and I'm curious to see what will happen with the Vista release.
Vista will be big and publishers are still keen to hear new ideas for Vista titles.
I was slow to understand the draw for web services titles, but if you look at the bestseller list you can see that select Google and eBay titles are still selling very well. The problem is that every market we attack becomes crowded at some point, so you need to look for unique entry points into any bestselling category.
Tech publishers also continue to expand their programs -- look at what O'Reilly has done with titles like Mind Hacks, or how the tech "for Dummies" folks are starting to publish non-Dummies branded books (see Before and After for instance).
I think this is great news for everyone and helps to breathe new life and initiative into these programs. Tech publishers have a great infrastructure to build upon, so I expect to continue to see them taking advantage of their editorial and marketing resources to push the envelope outside of their core imprints and roots.
Tech publishers are acting more like trade publishers in other ways too these days, they're focused more and more on finding authors with the right platform, which can create a challenge for those authors who consider themselves generalists. I suggest that if you're going to focus on more than a few technologies or topics, try to keep your focus very tight and keep in mind that each category you tackle may require its own marketing angle and maybe its own author web-site and/or blog.
Here's what's on my wish list for the tech market this year:
Let's get better at selling books to new bookstore buyers: for online commerce and eBay titles, let's work to get those books onto the business shelves; for digital photography techniques titles, let's get more titles on the photography and art shelves; for digital music titles, let's get on the music shelves and make sure we're represented in the right book clubs. Some of these categories themselves are mature markets.
Cross-shelving is a chore and doesn't really work, but with the right books we might find more dedicated category shelving and with enough books and publishers knocking on the door we might stretch these categories some. Let's face it, the computer book section is often a mish-mash and sometimes just a plain mess.
Let's get better at marketing our books to the general consumer; we need more reviews in the Sunday papers, more reviews in lifestyle magazines, and some sense of how to exploit serial rights like most trade publishers do. When there's tech news, let's make sure our experts and our authors are the ones being interviewed.
Posted by matt at 9:40 AM | Comments (0)
December 15, 2005
Nice Prima Games article in the Sac Bee
I haven't posted much lately. I must be superstitious after my Halloween post. To date the Kings are below .500, my pre-ordered 360 hasn't arrived, and Oblivion was delayed an entire quarter the day after my post. Talk about blogging some bad luck! Must have been the Halloween tagline...
I don't typically link to sites requiring registration, but as this is local news I thought I'd point to a Sacramento Bee article about Prima Games guidebook publishing program. According to the article, Prima (a division of Random House since 2001) sold 220,000 copies of the Halo 2 book on the first day (!) of release. That's amazing.
We were deeply involved in the nascent game book industry at Waterside Productions, and our clients helped to establish Prima's list some 15 years ago, but once game companies realized the amount of money available, and as outside forces such as the Screen Actor's Guild demanded more control over the use of likenesses in games and ancillary material, each book became an expensive licensing proposition, and only Prima and Brady (and Sybex, to a lesser, though now growing, extent) stayed in the game.
Author revenues declined, as revenue flowed instead to exclusive licenses, and for authors most game titles became work-for-hire or limited royalty gigs.
Still, 220,000 copies in one day, that's amazing. A few highlights in case you don't click through: the article says Prima is #1 in the market with 5-7.5 million copies sold each year: they published 107 titles last year; and publisher Debra Kempker takes some credit for pushing the guide books into the game store channel, which, she says, doubled sales.
What's interesting to me is that the game book companies have done a decent job of sustaining their businesses even though many cheats and walkthroughs are available online and in user forums. Being shelved at the point of sale and aggressive co-marketing programs have a lot to do with that and is something that many reference publishers could emulate.
Posted by matt at 12:51 PM | Comments (1)
June 20, 2005
The Varieties of Co-Accounting
Author Michael Thomsett posted a comment in a previous entry about cross accounting, he says--
I would recommend every author cross out the infamous "cross collateralization clause" - a mouthful, but important stuff. This is usually some reference like, "Author agrees to that any amounts due on this or any other agreements may be withheld from earnings..." This means that if you write two books and one doesn't earn out its advance, the publisher can apply earnings from the second book to the first.
This is good advice and it's probably one of the best tools in an agent's arsenal, something that authors might not learn on their own until they see lots of royalty statements. I thought I'd offer a little more perspective on co-accounting (a.k.a. cross accounting or cross collateralization) because it comes up in a variety of scenarios.
What is co-accounting?
Just what Michael said. You might have two books with $10,000 advances, but if one does great and the other poorly, you still won't see any money until the entire $20,000 advance earns out. The "tell" is when you see the words, "under this or any other agreement" in your contract.
Co-accounting is a tool publishers use to reduce their risk, and we all want to reduce risk so it's not really a surprise that it's in your contract. You should be able to remove or modify this clause, but some publishers will balk at this with a new or unproven author. If you decide you can live with it on your first book, you should certainly address the issue before you sign a second book with that publisher. You might also ask that co-accounting be limited to future editions of that book only.
Co-accounting of advances
Co-accounting of advances is usually a bad deal. There are rare circumstances where it might work okay: for instance, an author and agent may agree to cross accounting on a series contract because they are sharing the risk on a full list of titles, but this is usually balanced by a strong royalty and large advance.
Co-accounting and returns
Even if you strike the co-accounting of advances, your publisher will want to keep the right to take "overpayments" from future earnings. You can make sure that "advances are not considered overpayments," but it's unlikely that your publisher will say the same of returns. In general I think this is fair. Returns hover at 20% for computer books, and most authors don't expect to be paid for books that were subsequently returned.
Co-accounting and subsequent editions
If you're dealing with books that are revised and re-released every few years -- something that invariably triggers returns -- you'll find that your publisher may want to reserve the right to co-account your first edition against your second edition advance, and so on. Again, this protects a publisher from the cost of returns on the first edition.
What about reserves, don't they cover returns?
Sure, over time they should. But something funny can happen when you have both co-accounting of editions and a certain reserve clause. Ideally, a publisher would deduct the returns from your reserve, but some will try to deduct the returns from books with positive sales, and keep the reserve pool flush for a period of time. This invariably delays your money. 20% of your sales are held in escrow, as it were, and your returns are debited against your other books. It doesn't mean that you won't get paid, but it forestalls that payday.
Publishers without reserves
A few publishers don't hold a specified reserve unless they see a wave of imminent returns, but they do typically co-account advances and royalties against future editions to protect themselves from the returns on the first edition.
Success is your best weapon
In the best scenario, your books are doing so well that your returns are more than offset by multiple streams of income across multiple books that are not co-accounted. If you're successful as an author, you can convince your publishers to limit co-accounting and also to release reserves when they climb too high. Cross accounting clauses hurt the mid-list authors of oft revised books most of all, since some of these books are only eaking out their advances before they need to be revised and updated. It's worth asking whether they're really worth the effort.
At the very least, make sure you understand what your contract says, and ask your editor as many questions as you can about the royalty accounting and payment system up front, especially before signing that contract for book two if you didn't already manage it with book one. Otherwise you may not learn what your contract really says until you see the royalty statement in your hands.
Standard "I don't know everything disclaimer"
Your mileage may vary. This post is most germane to computer books, textbooks, and reference titles. Every publisher's system has its own wrinkle, and I'm sure I've missed a few points here. Please feel free to post your comments, questions, or pointers to other resources that may cover this topic as well.
Posted by matt at 8:30 AM | Comments (1)
June 2, 2005
Rodnay Zaks has left the building
The Wiley/Sybex deal closed yesterday.
I'm definitely feeling sad about this and I want to wish the best to any Sybex employees who have been let go. Good luck to all, and best wishes to Rodnay -- he was such a force in this industry for a very long time. It's my understanding that Wiley will keep the Sybex name in use as an imprint, and I hope they do so for a long time. The remaining Sybex employees will work out of the Jossey Bass building in San Francisco. Good luck to all that are staying as well, I hope you do well in your new roles.
There's probably no way Sybex could stay in business as a large independent with such a reduced market share and hopefully this was the best result for all in terms of the overall number of jobs lost.
Posted by matt at 9:21 AM | Comments (4)
May 11, 2005
Wiley Buys Sybex, it's official
Here's the press release.
This gives Wiley a new foot-hold in the certification market, as well as more higher-end networking and graphics titles. I'll be curious to see how they integrate this list. A good number of authors already wrote for both companies, and will benefit the most from more marketing muscle.
I'd expect Wiley to convert the Sybex royalty system to the Wiley schedule over time, but I wouldn't expect much in the way of hiccups with this.
Posted by matt at 7:19 AM | Comments (0)
May 10, 2005
One less independent?
The tech book market has been brutal the last few years, so maybe it's inevitable that we're seeing another big acquisition.
Word has it John Wiley & Sons is purchasing Sybex, and I gather the sale will close at the end of the month. This is probably good news for Sybex authors who will probably get more marketing support and better access to the retail sales channel, but I'm sure it will result in some layoffs at Sybex and it will be sad to see another independent publisher (not to mention computer book pioneer, Rodnay Zaks) leave the scene.
Wiley has proven to be very smart at buying companies when the time and the price are right. Let's see what happens next. I just talked to one Sybex author who said "consolidation is a good step toward getting this industry back on track." I think a healthy dose of innovation and continued great work by smaller publishers is another critical element.
Posted by matt at 10:56 AM | Comments (2)
April 25, 2005
Book Sales as a Technology Trend Indicator
There's a fascinating post at O'Reilly's Radar, Book Sales as a Technology Trend Indicator that sums up trends in the computer book market.
O'Reilly is doing cool things with internal mapping and trend analysis -- no surprise given their technical chops -- and they've created a detailed "Treemap" of the trends, based on Bookscan data, over the last two years.
A few highlights: we may have finally hit bottom as an industry and sales seem to be growing in 2005; database literacy is increasingly important; C# is gaining on Java but programming titles in general are down: and increased sales of Quickbooks titles may indicate more small business activity.
Photoshop Elements, iPods, and related digital lifestyle titles are the big gainers. And Mac OS, Photoshop and Dreamweaver have slowed some, probably in anticipation of the new releases.
Soft titles ala The Cult of Mac are a growing category, which I think is indicative of the overall computer book market becoming more and more like the traditional trade market. Not only do we have big publisher and author brands, we have a sense of culture now, and readers are interested in the history, personalities, and context of our industry.
O'Reilly also notes that they're one of the few large publishers to have any significant growth in the last few years (I'd probably add Peachpit to that list). O'Reilly has really expanded their scope. They've done a great job of breaking into the Mac market, and now the graphics market, two areas that were anything but synonymous with ORA five or six years ago.
Posted by matt at 12:51 PM | Comments (0)
April 20, 2005
Tim O'Reilly on Self-publishing
I missed noting Tim's blog when I listed some of the computer book bloggers out there. He has a recent blog entry on self-publishing. It has some great O'Reilly history in it (my favorite is the image of the bucket brigade), and valuable info for potential self-publishers.
Posted by matt at 10:30 AM | Comments (0)
March 16, 2005
The Decline and Fall of VB6
Harold Davis has an excellent post about Microsoft dropping standard support for VB6, and the impact of web languages on the adoption of .Net on his Googleplex Blog. He writes:
"To a very great extent, instead of trying to deal with the move from VB6 to VB.Net (or C#.Net), the mom and pop developer decided to put their applications on the Web, using languages such as Javascript, Perl, and (most widely and appropriately) PHP. It's unwise to underestimate the intelligence of any computer programmer, even the mom and pop developer, and given the choice of the horrendous and dubiously appropriate upgrade, these people probably made a very smart move. The Web is the closest thing we have to a universal platform."
There's a very natural sort of ecology here where the increasingly complex challenge of trying to control a platform is balanced against the almost organic evolution of software made possible by open source technologies and the legions of programmers who contribute to them. I see many authors trying to bridge this gap, either moving to open source titles, or working on books that are platform independent.
Standard weblog disclosure, Harold has long been a client of mine. His Googleplex Blog supports his forthcoming book, Building Research Tools with Google for Dummies .
Posted by matt at 7:59 AM | Comments (0)
March 3, 2005
Do you need an agent in the tech book market?
There's a spirited conversation on Wiley publisher Joe Wikert's blog about whether computer book authors benefit from using an agent. David Rogelberg and Claudette Moore have chimed in, and so have I. Here's my post, though it's probably worth visiting the link and reading what the other agents have to say:
I posted something about this in a response to a question about agency commissions this morning and I'll repeat it here, though admittedly it duplicates much of what Claudette and David say --
"A better question might be "where does an agent earn his 15%?" In the tech book world this is a fair question as we're in a relatively small industry and there are plenty of author listservs, lots of contract info that's readily available, and easy access to acquisition editors.
"I earn my money in prospecting for titles the author might not have found on his or her own, managing schedules and publisher expectations to ensure that my author has very little down time between projects, working out conflicts in the editorial and production process, helping to find a co-author or contributor when we're in a jam, and packaging new ideas for publishers. On this basis on some projects I'm probably overpaid and on others I am most certainly underpaid."
Joe, your post is great for igniting passions but I'd like to add to this discussion the fact that I, as an agent, and probably the others who have posted here, have often come up with authors to help un-agented authors bailing on their own un-agented Wiley projects. I've worked with every group at Wiley from the trade group, computer group and business group, so you might imagine I would also take some offense. That said, the agents have stated their case quite well.
The bigger question (as far I'm concerned) is do my authors need Wiley? Can we get a better deal, or find more ownership, or more timely advance payments elsewhere? And ultimately, in some emerging markets, do they need an agent or publisher at all? And what can I do to help them deal with this changing landscape?
I have about 5 books in development with various Wiley groups as I speak so I won't pretend that I've made this decision. But you've been with several companies Joe, and you know that as publishers become bigger and more hide-bound they often become arrogant, less creative, and tighter-fisted. In that case it's good to work with someone keeping an eye out for greener pastures. That's what an agent does, and some authors might manage it quite well on their own, ala Mr. Mike Miller, and others definitely benefit from the advice, and counsel of an agent.
On the trade side of things there's no doubt that an agent is almost an essential accessory to help cut through the signal to noise ratio, but even that's changing as editors become more wired.
Posted by matt at 11:40 AM | Comments (2)
February 14, 2005
You Say You Wanna Write a Tech Book?
Dave Taylor, grizzled computer book vet that he is, has some advice for anyone who might want to write a technical book.
First off, don't do it for the money. As Dave says, you have to love what you do, and you definitely need to write for more than money. Hey -- fame, respect, future books, better jobs, all these count as decent reasons too.
This doesn't mean that you don't treat prospective deals like a pro, or that you don't expect to make it big on one of your books eventually, but with your first book you'll learn that on an hourly basis the advance for writing a computer book pretty much sucks, and if your motivation isn't higher -- such as truly helping people to understand the topic at hand, or building your own career -- it's just not worth it.
That said, there are ways to make yourself more fortunate: keep in mind that I'm stealing most of these ideas directly from Dave but they bear repeating...
1) Write books that are useful. Dave's Wicked Cool Shell Scripts is a hit for good reason, and it has a distinct market and great publisher behind it.
2) Syndicate, market and extend your brand. Dave does a lot more than books: he writes articles, speaks, syndicates, blogs, and participates in user groups. His web presence supports and expands the market for his books, and his books likewise support what he does on the web.
3) Fight Google with Google. Google, MSDN and countless other web sites are challenging the entire reference category. A few blame MSDN for disappointing .NET book sales, and I think it's easy to blame Google and improved online help for the downturn in lower end reference -- who needs a book anymore to figure out how to format a letter in Word???
Instead of being victimized by Google, Dave works within the framework of Google, selling ad space while simultaneously working to get his various pages ranked as highly as possible. Plus, he found that free advice goes a long way toward finding new readers, and he works at finding cost effective ways to do this.
For more of Dave's wisdom and advice, check out AskDaveTaylor .
Posted by matt at 9:43 AM | Comments (1)
January 26, 2005
Ye Olde Frankenbook
I was commiserating with an author today about how his publisher has published numerous books that overlap his core series title, and which ultimately cannabalize his sales in the process. This is a real problem with successful series. His publisher wants to increase the number of books sold overall and typically has very little concern with overlapping some established books as long as overall revenues increase.
Often this process leads to what we used to call the "frankenbook," an edited conglomeration built from other books, with maybe some new original content thrown in, and with the authors paid a derivative royalty which is almost always much smaller, proportionally, to what the author earns from his own, standalone, title. The old Macmillan Computer Publishing was famous for this and even used the name on a few books. But other computer publishers have also tried this on occasion. For the most part, there is little protection for the author in this situation: with rare exceptions the publisher holds the right to use material in derivative works, and the publisher almost never agrees not to compete with an author, although every author is compelled to sign a non-compete agreement.
Some of this competition is inevitable with companies that grow fast and develop multiple lines, or buy competitors and merge lists, but when I see publishers start to push frankenbooks I feel as though they've hit their creative peak and don't know what to do next.
Posted by matt at 2:49 PM | Comments (0)
January 13, 2005
Lessons in tech growth from Korea
From the Always On Network -- Writer and entrepreneur Bernard Moon has some interesting thoughts about future developments in tech use based on his experiences in Korea
Money quote for future micropublishers:
"A recent survey by Peppercoin and Ipsos-Insight revealed that from October 2003 to September 2004, the number of Americans who bought something online for $2 or less grew from 4 million to 14 millionfigures that indicate Americans are growing more comfortable with micropayments. Expect this slice of the U.S. online market to explode well beyond iTunes."
Posted by matt at 1:35 PM | Comments (0)
January 12, 2005
The Mac Mini
I have a garage full of parts that will work with this. I'm guessing we'll get one soon.
Posted by matt at 11:14 AM | Comments (1)
A Good day at Macworld
I've always loved the energy of Macworld -- maybe not so much in the days of Gil Amelio when everything semed so grim -- but now especially it's a great show with exciting product launches and a crowd that eats it up. As Michael Roney of Wiley noted, "You wouldn't think that so much excitement represents only 2% of the market," and he's right. It's a fanatical 2%.
The tech book publishers have to be thankful. I don't have the statistics but I'm sure that Mac users buy more books than PC users, and they're not buying the books necessarily because they're having trouble, they buy them to do more with what they've got. And Apple keeps the process moving by continuing to introduce user friendly and fun products, along with the obligatory OS update every year or so. I can't ever imagine that MS for instance will really control the home entertainment market, but Apple will take what it can and keep its devoted users happy and eager for more.
O'Reilly -- with No Starch and its other partners, Peachpit, Wiley and Sybex all had booths this year. There may have been other publishers, but I missed them. Peachpit had their typical big store on the floor, and O'Reilly had a somewhat smaller selling space but a larger presentation area for ORA authors. Both Wiley and Sybex had smaller spaces, mostly for one on ones with authors and a display of books. What's impressive over the last five years is that ORA has become such a quality Mac publisher, and Tim has done this very well, with the huge assistance of David Pogue.
I come home looking for more Mac authors, so if you know anyone who's looking for an agent in this space, feel free to send them my way.
Posted by matt at 10:31 AM | Comments (0)
January 6, 2005
MacWorld
I'll be at MacWorld, Tuesday, January 11. Please send me an email if you plan to be at the show and would like to meet.
Posted by matt at 7:38 AM | Comments (0)
November 10, 2004
Pearson's Quarterly Report
Here's a telling quote from Pearson's Nov. 10 trading update:
"Our technology publishing business continues to face weak conditions in the IT industry but is gaining share and benefiting from its lower cost base."
I'm sure part of the lower cost base is lower advances and royalties based on so much author competition for book projects. And also the result of dropping staff. Let's hope this begins to turn around someday soon.
Happily, they report modest growth in the higher education market, as well as online training.
Posted by matt at 7:45 AM | Comments (0)
October 26, 2004
Geek Chic
Computer books are transcending their user manual roots. I see many more lifestyle niches in the computer market, from digital photography to digital video, digital scrapbooking to LAN party guides.
Books that try to be everything to everyone, ala the old Using titles from Que, are finding a smaller market as readers look for more specific, or exciting, reads. My favorite trend, partly because it makes for cool books, are titles aimed at techno-hobbyists or just plain old geeks -- titles like PC Toys, Linux Toys, and the forthcoming Geek House from Wiley, or Hacking the X-Box from No Starch.
Along those lines I want to rep more one-off tech titles. Right now I'm looking for an author team for The Tech of Burning Man. I think it's a cool idea. There's plenty of hardware on the playa, and almost 35,000 people attended the festival this year. Let's see if i can interest a publisher. I figure it might be fun to follow some books from proposal to contract, and what better place to do that than a blog.
Posted by matt at 9:42 AM | Comments (0)
October 25, 2004
Tides in the Computer Book Publishing Business
I went to Border's Books in Davis the other day and scoped the shelves.
The computer book section continues to lose space, and the section was poorly managed, with books all helter skelter and shelved out of category. I was there to look at recent Photoshop books and what I saw confirms my sense of unease. The Photoshop and Digital Photography categories have been one of the few bright spots over the last two years, and there are many well established heavy-weight authors represented: Deke McClelland, Scott Kelby and Co., Martin Evening, Katrin Eismann, and others. I'm impressed with the quality of the books.
But I remember back to the booms (and subsequent over-publishing) in Java, web design, and then Linux and certification books, and wonder how long we can sustain this current boomlet, and for myself and my clients I wonder what's next.
The mass market segment has always featured plenty of me-too publishing, and though every publisher I talk to asks for a unique take on the product, at some point we're going to reach over-kill. I don't think we're there quite yet but that's my worry.
In the meantime I'm still looking for new Photoshop authors.
And I can't wait to see Katrin Eismann's new Photoshop Masking and Compositing book (Peachpit) on the shelves any day now.
Posted by matt at 9:38 AM | Comments (0)