[HN Gopher] The unusual way I'm funding my open source work
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The unusual way I'm funding my open source work
Author : sylvain_kerkour
Score : 69 points
Date : 2021-02-10 18:31 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (kerkour.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (kerkour.com)
| sylvain_kerkour wrote:
| Hey HN,
|
| Funding Open Source is a hot topic here and after more than one
| year of full-time work without being paid I have finally achieved
| (a little bit more than) ramen profitability.
|
| I'm happy to answer any question.
| andrewnicolalde wrote:
| Might have just missed it on the website, but will early access
| buyers get access to the finished version on completion?
| sylvain_kerkour wrote:
| For sure! I will send the chapters to all early access buyers
| as soon as they are available. Please remember that chapters
| could be updated even after their initial publication
| according to the feedback I will receive.
| Sophistifunk wrote:
| This sounds like "having a job on the side" only far less
| profitable. Being an author is like being a musician, there's a
| handful of superstars, a few people who make a living (by working
| their tits off), and hordes and hordes of people who might
| occasionally make some money, but still need a real job. Hell, in
| Australia, even the (comparatively) superstar musicians have day
| jobs.
| rychco wrote:
| I have yet to dive into Rust beyond "hello, world", but I am
| looking forward to the book.
| blackbear_ wrote:
| Immediately thought of "how to lose money" [1] (posted a few days
| ago):
|
| > 2. Write a Book
|
| > Most consistent
|
| > You might think writing a book is a great way to make a bunch
| of cash - and you'd be wrong. In spite of the many books that
| will tell you how to make money writing a book, I'm here to let
| you in on a secret -writing a book is actually a fantastic way to
| lose money. I've written four short books and they have literally
| grossed hundreds of dollars. Now - hearing that I've sold some
| books might make you think you should write one also. But it's a
| trap - you will spend hundreds of hours writing a book and then
| make hundreds of dollars in return. Not sure about you, but if
| I'm working for $1/hour I'm losing money fast. My latest book
| probably has more pages than it has copies sold - take a look
| here if you want a quick reference on how to get a job.
|
| Jokes aside, props for the creativity and best of luck!
|
| [1] https://www.getrevue.co/profile/andrewtye/issues/how-to-
| lose...
| acegopher wrote:
| You forgot the link... would like to read.
| blackbear_ wrote:
| Oops, added!
| ghaff wrote:
| Interesting post from the other day about author regrets when
| writing books. [1] I don't totally agree. The out-of-pocket
| amounts seem pretty high to me--especially if you're going
| through a publisher. But, then, book writing for me (as a
| business) has always been reputational as opposed to trying to
| be a serious income stream in its own right. Which I think it's
| been very effective in doing even though I've made very little
| direct money.
|
| [1] https://withoutbullshit.com/blog/the-15-biggest-regrets-
| that...
| amelius wrote:
| Solution: put the book on a crowdfunding website and only write
| the book if it is fully funded.
| devlopr wrote:
| I created an ebook[1] and made about $2,000 in the real estate
| category. Getting it written, transformed into an ebook format
| and in the amazon / smashworld store altogether took a
| christmas break 1 1/2 weeks.
|
| My secret was I didn't write more than 5% of the book. 95% came
| from discussion posts written over the years on one of my
| website forums.
|
| I still get orders.. I'm still in the top 500 small business /
| real estate books in canada. This was written in the 2012 and
| lives on.
|
| I would encourage everyone to publish at least one book. But
| don't actually write it yourself that's insane amount of work
| for the expected return.
|
| [1] https://www.amazon.ca/Ontario-Sale-Property-Buyers-Guide-
| ebo...
| inopinatus wrote:
| You can always graduate up to starting a restaurant to lose
| even more money, and for those trying to divest themselves of a
| billion or so I believe the usual recommendation is to start an
| airline, with the caveat that this strategy misfired for
| Richard Branson and Niki Lauda.
| sylvain_kerkour wrote:
| Thanks! Indeed it's less lucrative than freelancing or working
| in a big company, but so far the experience is so enjoyable
| that the ride worth it :)
| Swizec wrote:
| Writing a _popular_ book is also the easiest way to make money.
| While it 's infoproducts not just books, I've made around
| $250,000 over the past 5 or 6 years with my sidehustle. If you
| add the dayjob/consulting opportunities it enabled, that number
| easily jumps to $500,000.
|
| Yes, being born in SFBA, going to Stanford, and getting on the
| startup wagon straight out of school would've been a better
| ROI, but that path was not available to me. The sidehustle did
| however open it up and I'm on that ride now with about a 6 to 7
| year delay.
|
| tldr: Write something people want to read.
| jnwatson wrote:
| I negotiated with my employer to spend some time every week on an
| open source project they depend on.
|
| It isn't by any means a full time job, and I could definitely
| spend more time on it, but it does allow me to contribute to open
| source without completely ruining my life.
|
| It helps that the main job is also open-source-based, so they're
| already committed to the concept.
| 1996 wrote:
| TLDR: you are selling a book
| sylvain_kerkour wrote:
| Yes! As this is a rarely discussed topic, I thought it was
| worth sharing :)
| axiosgunnar wrote:
| He is, and it's cleverly wrapped content marketing, but I would
| let it pass since his "content" is actually a complete software
| package. If every content marketeer, instead of spamming low
| effort Medium posts, would be publishing fully-fledged software
| repos, I think that would be quite a positive development :)
| sylvain_kerkour wrote:
| Hey, I have to admit that I moderately appreciate being
| compared to the content marketing crowd but still appreciate
| the kind words :)
|
| Yes, my ability to pay the rent is directly related to the
| number of books I sell.
|
| That being said, I thought it was worth sharing because a lot
| of people think they can't make a living writing Open Source
| code. I hope to change their mind and give them ideas to take
| the leap.
|
| Edit: rephrasing
| yiyus wrote:
| > my ability to pay the rent is directly related to the
| number of books I sell
|
| Do you have (and are willing to share) an estimation of how
| many books you expect to sell per month?
| sylvain_kerkour wrote:
| It's extremely hard to tell. As iainctduncan said I will
| need to do some A/B testing.
|
| I believe that more than 100 books a month will be enough
| to make a comfortable living.
| merb wrote:
| tl;dr use a license that is not stupid for your business case.
| (in his case agpl)
| axiosgunnar wrote:
| Hi, this is interesting and I wish you all the best. Just as a
| random anecdata point, the price that I was expecting and would
| personally be willing to pay would be 20EUR. This is because I am
| not planning on working in IT security and would be reading this
| foro fun. Just FYI, since I think it's interesting for you to
| know the price sensitivity of people. Don't know if you would be
| able to finance yourself at that price point, but again I just
| want to give feedback. Perhaps this could be achieved via a
| steeper early adopter discount. Perhaps I'm simply not the target
| group. Hope this is helpful somehow.
| sylvain_kerkour wrote:
| I really appreciate this kind of feedback, because a lot of
| people will think that but won't bother leaving a comment and I
| will never be aware. Thank you!
|
| Today it makes no sense to reduce the price of the book because
| of the niche topic covered and my small audience, but for sure
| I will re-evaluate it later.
| iainctduncan wrote:
| You don't actually know this unless you have run an A/B test.
| Pricing a book is like software, you might very well sell
| many more than twice as many copies at half the cost, off
| hobbyist sales. (background, I worked in the book business
| years ago). If you really want to know if you're doing it
| right, run a time limited test of different prices and see
| what happens. I doubt this is nearly as much a niche as you
| think.
| sylvain_kerkour wrote:
| Thank you, you are absolutely right and this is the good
| mentality to approach the issue! I will do it as soon as I
| have more bandwidth available.
| axiosgunnar wrote:
| Yep, that's what I thought! Good luck! :-)
| ghaff wrote:
| I agree with the parent. Much above $20 for a technical book
| is getting into "this is an expensive book" for me. Doesn't
| mean I won't ever buy it, but it's probably not the sort of
| thing I'll go "Why not?" right away and click the button.
| sylvain_kerkour wrote:
| Here is a coupon to save 23EUR on the book :)
| https://academy.kerkour.com/black-hat-rust?coupon=HACKERNEWS...
| johnjohn22 wrote:
| nicee
| sylvain_kerkour wrote:
| Thank you!
| hpoe wrote:
| I like the idea, although I don't know this is really unusual. It
| is the basic RedHat shtick you are making money off the knowledge
| in your head. The difference is that instead of giving it out in
| a consulting contract it is in a book.
| ddek wrote:
| Except I'm not sure they're related enough. If OP's book was a
| productivity guide based off bloom, for sure. Instead it's a
| collection of learnings discovered while (although likely not
| exclusively while) developing the product.
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