This post describes my efforts at using Amazon KDP select to sell technical non-fiction books. After some success in my efforts last month (reaching the top of my sub niche), I can report that I fell back a few spots but for the most part sales have been steady. As can been seen in my Amazon sales chart, the rank for my Treading on Python book have been semi flat for the past month. Sales of my Decorator Book have been similarly flat. They have been hovering in rank 8-15 which is pretty good considering the other books are the standard Python recommended books or a textbook. Apparently self published books can do ok, considering my books and that number 1 or 2 is usually Al Sweigart’s Invent Your Own Computer Games With Python.

What has happened in the past month?

During PyCon I ran a promotion on Treading on Python. The Rasberry Pi folks picked it up (probably due to Steve Holden’s tweet) and I actually had more sales in the UK that in the US that day. (Odd considering that US is around 8-10X sales of UK in my experience.) Given that sales have been relatively flat, I’m wondering if I have peaked. Perhaps I have. Though I struggle with efforts to promotion. It seems I’m labelled as a troll if I try to post anything to reddit programming or hacker news related to my book. Which I find a little odd, because others seem to do so with ease. I can promote through Python channels, which for my more advanced books seems to work, but Treading on Python is aimed at people wanting to learn Python, so promoting through Python channels seems a little less effective there.

I’m still going to be running a few more promotions for my books. They seemed to have been effective.

Another challenge has been getting reviews. I think every author struggles with that. (And reviewing is long tail behavior).

In the meantime I’ve also silently pushed out my next guide, Guide to: Learning Iteration and Generators in Python. This book is not in KDP Select. I’ll probably put a bundle back up on my site and perhaps BN or Kobo. If you are interested in a review copy let me know.

To close off this post. I think technical self publishing can be “successful”. I’m not sure that you will retire like fiction writers who hit the jackpot. But I’m pretty sure that with Amazon’s 70% (or more if I sell myself), I’m getting almost as much money as people selling their books for $20-$40 (most of the rest of the people in the Python top 20 list).

Here’s just a few notes from my PyCon 2012 experience. This was my 7th PyCon, and though the conference has changed over the years, I think it is mostly for the better. A general theme of PyCon this year was data analysis. I’m probably biased since I’m doing that at work. In contrast with previous years, where there seemed to be two Django tracks running concurrently.

The quality of the talks has also increased over the years. Most of the talks I attended appeared to be well rehearsed and pretty well thought out. Though I did hear some grumbling that many talks could have gone a little deeper.

The quality of the food was excellent this year. The quantity less so. I heard one attendee claim he “lost 5 pounds during the conference”. But herding 2200+ people through the lunch line is no small task and the team did it with efficiency and ease.

The layout of the conference was a little confusing. There was a double indirection between talk locations and the actual locations. Talks were located in a track. A track was located in (what appeared to be an arbitrary) room number. Said room number did not line up with the pre-existing hardcoded conference room numbers and in some cases conflicted. This caused confusion on the first days of both tutorials and sessions. With 2200+ people confusion of such type can be annoying.

Also the layout of Open Spaces, and the open space signup board was relegated to a far side of the building that didn’t get much traffic. The two BoFs I hosted were poorly attended. Perhaps that is due to marketing or the subject in general (yes, Python tiling wm’s are boring), but there was very small traffic through the open space, with the exception of the TiP BoF. This BoF was probably larger than the first PyCon I attended.

Previous years also had a job board. I told a friend that I would post a job listing for them. But alas, I never saw the job board this year. The exhibition hall was perhaps a huge t-shirt dispensing machine, but no corkboard to post a description on. If you are interested in changing the world working at a non-profit, ck12.org is looking to hire.

The PyCon 5k was a excellent respite from days of sitting and breathing regurgitated air. The amount of minimalist and even barefoot shoes relative to the general population leads me to believe that pythonistas are geeky, enlightened or suffer from Stockholm Syndrome. I really enjoyed it. During my final tutorial an attendee pulled out an ultimate disc. It was great to get outside in the wonderful weather and toss the disc around.

My tutorials were packed. My biggest issue was the influx of people 25 minutes into the first session. Being that it was beginning Python, that caused a small delay as I helped people get going. It is pretty satisfying to walk around during the assignment portion helping people out and realizing that 95% of the people are busy hacking away. They weren’t just browsing Facebook or reading email, they were actively learning Python. One attendee told me it was the best tutorial he had ever attended, which is nice to hear. I also recieved some more constructive criticism from others. I’m always open to feedback, and if you attended one of my sessions you should fill out the tutorial survey.

Yes, Python videos are now up on the web. Some of the content is there. But the conference is more that the videos. I was talking to someone who was relating that they had an issue with translation while they were travelling in Siberia. They did a lazy twitter and got a response. While we were talking about this a fellow entered the conversation who was from Russia. Lo and behold he was the lazy web helper, but the two had NEVER previously met in real life before.

So yes, PyCon is about the people. And even though there were a lot this year, it was a great conference.

PyCon starts today. It’s great to be back in what used to be my backyard for PyCon. I love the Bay Area. To celebrate I’m doing an Amazon KDP Select Promotion on my Treading on Python book. During an Amazon “promotion”, the price is reduced to $0.00 for the day!

This book is aimed at getting programmers quickly bootstrapped on Python and should correspond quite well with my Beginning Hands-On Tutorial (go figure). Now I’m off to register and teach for the day.

If you are more of the handout/cheatsheet type, you might enjoy the handout for the tutorial.

Feedback as always is welcome. If you are at PyCon say hi. Cheers.

Assigments for PyCon Hands-on Tutorials

• Beginning Python
• Intermediate Python

Here is the latest iteration of my beginning Python handout. It has gone through a few iterations over the years. It is pretty cool that about 90% of the basics of Python fits on both sides of a legal sized paper.

Yesterday was the start of the ultimate test of the promise of Amazon KDP Select. The Kindle Direct Publishing Select program is a 90 day exclusivity commitment to Amazon, in return for some reward. Amazon reports authors finding ~30% increased sales due to enrollment. I’ve read a bunch of fiction author’s reports, but none for non-fiction, so I figured it would be a nice experiment. I was previously selling on Barnes and Noble as well as a Epub/Mobi/Pdf bundle on my own site. BN was pretty weak, but my bundle was close to 30%. I figured I could turn it off for a while to experiment.

I ran a “promotion” on one of my books. A promotion for those who are not familiar with Amazon KDP Select is a day where the book is discounted to a price of $0.00. You are allowed five of them when you sign up with Amazon KDP Select. Yes, for the honor of being exclusive to Amazon for 90 days, they give you the ability to sell your book for nothing.

The idea of a promotion is not new. The idea of free promotion in this world of social media is a little different. I have seen first hand what happens to iPhone apps when they are promoted on such sites. The ideal situation is free loaders (who would normally not buy your digital goods) come in droves and create such a media frenzy that over the next couple of days, those “lost sales” turn into marketing gold and you are riding the waves to being the next Indie Developer/Author retiree. Though staying in that short head where the few people who actually make decent money is difficult.

I have also been on the other side of this. I will admit, I’m a free loader for Android apps. I visit the Amazon Andriod Market every day just to see what is for free. If the app has good ratings and I think it will be useful now — or in the future (since I get free updates), I will “buy” it. “Buying it” doesn’t force me to actually waste space and download it to one of my android devices. And I’m a very “long tail user” here. I’m not engaged. I don’t review or rate the apps. Most of them I haven’t even bothered to download. But for the chance that I might it the future, I’ll put it in my Amazon virtual app locker. These days my Kindle Fire is mostly used for Carcassonne (an app that isn’t even available in Amazon’s market), though the kids love the normal apps, Angry Birds, Plants vs Zombies, and Where’s the Water (all Amazon “purchases”).

I can see the appeal of this for fiction where you have potentially mass appeal. I’m not sure it holds water for non-fiction. Right now my Guide to: Learning Python Decorators is #1 in Programming and #275 overall in the “Free” Kindle Store. It “sold” about 13X more copies during the promotion than it did the other 19 days of the month. It is also possible that I just gave the book away to 90% of the people who might be interested in it. I’m hoping that maybe I’ll get a positive review or two out of it. The feedback I’ve gotten previously from my books has been positive. But I think that the crowd who purchased it was very self selecting. When you discount the price to a freebie, the net widens. It will be interesting to see if the net catches many high value short head readers or not.

The Good

I actually received useful feedback from online comments. My book is more of an introductory treatise on its subject and does not cover minutiae and corner cases that most people do not run into. I knew this and have two thoughts. One — I’m in the process considering how to integrate that content in a way that I like. Two — said commentor is not in the target audience of this book, they already live this stuff. But that is the hand I am being dealt. I think to “market” my book I need endorsement from “luminaries”. Yet, they are usually going to endorse something that is appropriate to their level. With my book they are going to pick over every detail, not realizing that the basics that they’ve lived and breathed for years are confusing and difficult for many to understand.

I’m still working on creating a physical version of my books. I’m getting closer. I’m messing with margin sizes (I like to jot in my non-fiction physical book margins) and formatting of front matter.

I can’t complain that I’m basically in the top position for my genre. Isn’t that the dream of any self-pubbed writer? I’m not sure how long it will last. And I’m curious to see the long term effects of this “promotion”.

The Bad

I did limited marketing. I was away skiing today, so I blogged the night before and tweeted before hitting the slopes. I tried getting it on programming.reddit.com, but am labelled as a troll there, even when I try to give my book away for free. This is somewhat annoying, because any marketing to what I think comprises my target audience is automatically moderated as spam.

On the flipside, python.reddit.com picked up the book. Sadly they linked to the Amazon page rather that my blog or the book’s page. (Perhaps that is why prog.reddit moderated down, because of my affliate links … strange because I get $0 from a $0 sales but I digress).

Authors often talk about “platforms”, which means a different thing for programmers. But author “platforms” are the eco-systems around the online presence of their book. They mainly consist of:

• a book home page
• a blog
• a place to collect email addresses

I would have preferred that the links during my promotion went to my “platform” instead of Amazon’s. At least they would have understood the backstory and my reasoning behind the promotion in the first place. I can verify that they did not hit mine because my analytics numbers are less than my sales counts. Annoying, but that is the cost of having socially moderated marketing.

If you are reading this and have less “trolly” ways for me to tell you that my book is discounted to a “free” price (which includes free lifetime upgrades), pray tell in the comments.

People don’t like Amazon, Kindles or Kindle readers (or don’t have access to them). I received requests asking if I would give them a free pdf of my book. That won’t happen while I’m enrolled in KDP Select, being that it is a violation of my contract. Geeks being geeks, they are already discussing the methods to pdf creation, which look sane. I’d like to further explore this segment of potential “clients”. Do they really love pdfs? If so why? Are they ignorant of the many available readers? Are they afraid of being tied into the ebook strangle-hold that Amazon appears to have? Again, I’m not sure fiction readers care or are this technical, or that their content is important enough that it needs to be in a pdf format for some reason. But these are some of the hurdles that non-fiction writers may have to deal with.

The Ugly

I also found out this week that some people feel that my book has limited value (I hoped they picked it up when it was priced accordingly). It is not a sentiment that I am entirely unfamiliar with. Having worked very closely with open source (not just as a free time thing, but actually being employed to do so), I’m aware of “information wants to be free” arguments as well as “people associating non-zero cost with value”. Many outfits run open source backed by paid solutions to enhance performance, be they software or hardware. But occasionally you rub someone the wrong way.

So I’ll say it again. Most of what my books deal with is information that can be found on the web. I’ve collected, curated, and refined it to a more palatable format (I hope). As do most programming authors. My content has consistently been one of PyCon’s most popular tutorials. I have no problem with people learning from freely available sources. But many times I would have preferred a well written book on a topic, rather than trying to piece the puzzle together with a bunch of disparate sites.

Other people have actually written me, thanking me for a concise guide type format to a specific idea. One actually listed a bunch of potential topics. I also have topics that I would be willing to pay for, but am in no way qualified to write.

I’m wondering if price has something to do with it the gripes. Yet most programming books are expensive and not read. Even more so if they are college “texts”. Mine are relatively shorter, cheaper, and hopefully easy to read. Maybe I’m making a mountain out of a molehill here.

The tools that Amazon provides for discounts are pretty limited. One nicety of selling my own bundle was the ability to provide discount codes. I understand why the limitation is there for physical goods, but am not sure why they do not support this for virtual goods. I have some ideas, but have heard nothing concrete other than, “if you want to discount, you do a blanket promotion and give it away free to everyone”.

Other notes

US sales ~20X UK, ~40X DE, ~100X IT, ~160X FR, ~400X ES. Sadly I don’t have website numbers to correlate with Amazon sales due to direct linking to the book in Amazon.

The Grand Rapids Python User Group meets on holidays. They meet on holidays to discuss decorators (among other things). They also email authors of Python decorator books and ask them if they have free copies to give away at their meetings. Given that I’m subject to the terms of Amazon KDP Select, I currently cannot give away an individual copy. But I can use a “promotional” day to lower the price to $0 for Feb 20, 2012. In return I’m now an official sponsor of the group!

Enjoy. Tweet it, reddit it, etc. If you like it, or find it useful, reviews on Amazon or blogs are always appreciated. I am off to the slopes for the day so there might be some radio silence on my end.

PS — I’m still working on getting a dead tree version and am closer than I was last week. Also, I’m hoping to release the next “Guide to: Learning …” this week. Stay tuned.

I messed around with Cafepress last night creating a shirt that I will probably use as a prize at my PyCon Intermediate Hands-On Tutorial. It has a pretty good decorator on the back.

BTW — Someone should tell Cafepress about this technology called Ajax…

I am two weeks into my Amazon KDP non-fiction experiment. Guide to: Learning Python Decorators is currently #15 on the Python list as I write this, but was up at 5 during the week. It is aso #1 on the Python “Hot New Releases”, which surprises me because #2 is a really strong title. Sales of both of my books have been slow and steady. I heard that the average “indie” author only sells 4 books/month. I’m happy to report that I’m slightly better than that and I will be receiving a check from Amazon this month ($100+ in sales).

What else have I done this week? I have wondered about Amazon’s lack of existence in BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China). When I had my own store front, I was able to sell to a few individuals from some of those countries. Now I am not because Amazon has no presence there. Again this is probably not something Indie fiction writers care about (with perhaps the exception of India) — I assume fiction is somewhat language dependent. But many programmers know English, so presumably I am losing some sales. How big would they be? I am not sure, but I have received at least one request from someone who claimed they did not have Kindle reader access. Currently my non-US sales are less than 10% of US sales. I am not sure if that is a function of my marketing, or how strong the Amazon presence is in those countries (UK, DE, ES, IT, FR), or some combination of the two.

I also signed up for Amazon Author Central. Perhaps this will help with SEO, I am not sure, but I now have an author page, which also aggregates this blog and my tweetstream.

While at the Utah Python group this week, the first presenter actually mentioned my decorator book in his talk. When the meeting ended, an attendee informed me that he thought my book was pretty good (which he had purchased and was reading during the second presentation). Also he gave me some more feedback, which is always nice.

I also spent some time looking into pbook generation. My calculation is around 4% of people would prefer dead tree books (very unscientific, consists of requests divided by current sales at some point in time). KDP only requires exclusive digital rights to your sales, not physical, so this is a very real possibility. But, my current pdf generation has issues and I starting learning LaTex to solve those. I hope to have some sort of dead tree versions released soon. I’m thinking about using CreateSpace, but would be open to using other POD services. If you have experience with POD feel free to drop me some notes.

My book was submitted to the January 2012 Ebook Cover Design Awards, which was released this week. I was hoping to get some feedback on my cover, but did not. I interpret that response as an indication of the “blah”-ness of my cover. Not sufficiently interesting to warrant any praise, nor blatantly bad enough to expose the horrible design elements.

Finally, a huge advantage to KDP, is I can easily push updates and Amazon handles everything else. A disadvantage is anonymity of purchases. With sales from my site, I had emails for all purchases and could interact with buyers, but pushing updates was a bit more of a pain. Some food for thought if you are considering one or the other. I really like to think that ebooks are somehow “alive” and that I can incorporate reader feedback very quickly and actually push it out, though this is not something that “real” publishers seem to be doing yet. I’m thinking that I might stay on KDP with my more expensive/longer Treading on Python which receives a higher percentage of “rentals”, and make distribution of smaller ebooks more widely available — Kobo, my own site, and perhaps BN again.

The Utah Python group will be meeting on Thursday, Feb 9th at 7pm. Amji will be doing a short presentation on a memoization decorator and Eric will be giving a preview of his PyCon talk “Interfaces and Python”. Cheers.