Chris Shiflett wrote:
David Powers wrote:
I suspect that your estimate of the advances paid by Apress/friends of
Ed is inflated.
Based on the fact that this is almost identical to every other publisher
(O'Reilly, Sams, etc.), and based on the fact that Richard said he has a
lot of experience in this industry, I suspect his estimate was spot on.
Read my first sentence again. The royalties paid by Apress/foED are
industry standard, but the advances are very small. Since I have never
written for another publisher, I don't know what a typical advance is
likely to be. However, the technical reviewer on one of my books is a
successful author himself, published by both friends of ED and O'Reilly.
He told me that his advance from O'Reilly was much bigger. Sales never
reached the level to trigger further royalties, but he didn't mind,
because he was better off than with the foED system of low advances and
regular royalty payments.
You're right, though, it's difficult to get any return on your time
investment. :-)
"PHP Solutions" seems to be doing quite well, but I certainly couldn't
exist solely on the income from books.
I think a major problem is that publishers tend to flood the market in
the hope that one or two will be bestsellers, and they find lots of
willing authors hoping to strike it rich. According to Amazon, 28 books
on PHP have been published or are planned for this year. Even if each
one is superbly written (highly unlikely), the potential market isn't
large enough for more than four or five to make a reasonable return for
their authors. Still, we all dream of hitting that sweet spot when a
book goes through successive editions, selling a cumulative million
copies (like Elizabeth Castro's HTML & CSS). That's why books keep on
coming. The situation in the music industry is similar.
David Powers
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