出版与作家生涯2022nts.strzibny.name编辑精选
一年卖出 640 本：我的卖书经历
I sold 640 copies of my book in one year
导读
一位作者回顾自己自出版技术书第一年卖出 640 册的经历与收益账目。评论区里几位有过出书经验的作者分享了更长的时间尺度：书的经济回报往往不在销量本身，而在于职业机会、长尾销售和读者信任，这对任何打算写书的人都值得一读。
可以直接用的写作要点
- 01
把写书当成长期资产而非一次性项目：前期调研和写作可能耗去数年，回报要在五到十年的职业轨迹里算。
- 02
选题优先考虑"偶尔才用、但用时急需"的轻量参考场景，读者会为省下的检索和消化时间付费。
- 03
书的口碑会累积：有作者的书在第四五年卖得比头两年还多，别用首年销量判定成败。
- 04
自出版的分成比例通常远高于传统出版社（约 10%），定价低也可能赚得更多，值得先算清账再选路径。
HN 评论精选
恭喜，第一年这个销量很体面。自出版的经济账很有意思：算上五年调研、三年写作和多年跑行业推销，悲观地说我可能倒贴了五十万英镑；第一年也只卖了约 500 本，还得自己装信封、贴标签、跑邮局。但两年后销量翻倍，直到订单多到忙不过来。更重要的是，这本书给我带来了一连串高薪工作，让我成了某个细分领域的首选顾问，还收到世界各地的演讲和授课邀请，基本改变了我的职业生涯——用"净利润"衡量它根本不合适。从零调研写一本书，差不多等于读一个博士。后来我把这本书从自己的出版公司卖给了 MIT 出版社：出版社如今不愿冒险，但愿意收购一本已有稳定销量的书，好处是所有发行和商务杂事一下子都不用你管了。
nonrandomstring查看英文原文
Well done. That's a respectable number of sales for your first year! The economics of self publishing is interesting. When I think back on my first book I count at least 5 years research that enabled me to be able to write it, 3 years writing it and then many years selling the thing around industry. By a pessimistic account I was about £500k down :) Like you, the first year I sold about 500. Unlike online fulfilment today, I spent that time stuffing envelopes, staring at a slowly shrinking pile of boxes in the corner of my study, printing labels, with occasional trips to the post-office. It was actually work, and many times I thought 'this is crazy'. It doubled for two more years until dealing with the orders actually became too much (while doing a "real job"). On the other hand, it got me a string of well paying jobs, established me as the go-to consultant in a niche, invitations to talk and teach all around the world, and basically transformed my career. So putting a "net profit" number to it seems unfathomable. Each book you write, if researched from scratch, is kinda equivalent to a PhD. What happened next is that I sold the title, from my own publishing company to a large publisher (MIT). Publishers don't take many risks these days, but they will buy a book that already has reasonable number of sales as a going concern. The advantage is that all mechanics and business is suddenly off your hands. Without an advance to pay back you then have a modest income stream and time to write the next book. Another effect of being a semi-professional writer, as a side gig, is that other people want to pay you to edit, typeset, and review works. Learning LaTeX and various markups and text processing tools has been a huge gift. That can be quite fun if you're in a vibrant field that genuinely interests you. And you don't have to be associated with academia or a big-name institution for that to work. In fact I'd say that academics these days never have time for writing and that most other successful authors I know are independent. I hope your book takes off even more, but right now I think you can count 600 sales in the first year as a definite success!
我的亲身经历让我相信写书有很多额外收益。我的第一本书出版四年半了，常收到读者邮件，尤其是关于"管理糟糕的创业公司"和" abusive 老板"的话题，很多人来信分享类似经历。有人觉得我揭露创业公司阴暗面是在毁自己的职业生涯，但也有创业者欣赏这种现实和务实，这本书给我带来了三份报酬丰厚的咨询工作。意外的是书越来越受欢迎，去年的销量比头两年加起来还多。总有一天它会显得过时，但至少现在读起来还很当下，收益仍在持续。
lkrubner查看英文原文
My own experience convinces me there are many extra benefits to having written a book. My first book has been out for 4.5 years now. I know many people on Hacker News have read it and I'm grateful to all of you.I've enjoyed getting emails about it. Especially regarding "badly managed startups" and "abusive bosses" many of you have reached out to share similar stories. Maybe at some point I'll do a blog post that collects some of those email stories. Some people thought I was destroying my career by revealing the dark side of startups, but some entrepreneurs appreciate my realism and practicality, so I've gotten three very lucrative consulting jobs, thanks to that first book. And, surprisingly, the book has gotten more and more popular. It sold more this last year than it sold during its first two years. I assume that at some point the book will seem dated and obsolete, but at least for now it still strikes people as current, so the benefits of writing that book continue to pay dividends.
我第一年卖了大约 300 本，比我在出版社出的另一本书少很多；但即便定价更低，我自出版这本赚的钱几乎更多——因为出版社给我的分成只有 10%。所以下一本书我还是选自出版。
markwisde查看英文原文
I sold around 300 in my first year (which ended recently), which is much less than the other book I wrote via my publisher. Yet, even though it is sold at a lesser price, my self-published book made almost more money. This is essentially because the percentage I make on every sales with my publisher is really low (10%). So for my next book, I'll self publish as well. (the book btw https://securityhandbook.io/)
作为你那 640 位顾客之一，谢谢你！对于我偶尔才做一次的小事，有一份轻量的参考资料真是天赐之物，省下大量时间。我可以直接翻《Deployment from Scratch》改一点需要更新的配置，甚至部署一套新系统，都比去查官方文档再重新理解一遍要快。就算碰到书里没写的内容需要查文档，因为已经有上下文，查起来也快得多。
osel查看英文原文
As one of your 640 customers - thank you! Having a lightweight reference for simple things that I only do occasionally is a godsend and a massive time saving. I can dive into Deployment from Scratch and tweak something that needs updating, or even deploy a new system in less time than it takes me to lookup and parse/refresh my knowledge from the actual documentation on most topics. And even if I do need to refer to the docs for something not in the book, it is much much quicker as I have the context already.
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