Then I saw that there's no book book with the $30 option and it was just the final nail in the coffin. I think if that was the only option, or it was listed first, I would buy it. Especially if there was no patronizing "one month of something" and copy that tells me I am a bad person for not wanting the bells and whistles.

But here's the thing, my feedback reads: "As your target market[1], I don't like what you're selling me".

[1] assuming the target market are people in the process of writing and publishing a self-published (e)book

No. The target market is "people in the process of writing and publishing a self-published (e)book - who are willing to buy a ebook at price point $X".

The market of folk who would buy the book at $10 is probably larger - but I guarantee it's not 10 x larger.

And if you're not going to get at least $30 value from the book - it doesn't sound like you're the market.

(Also - as an aside - I get the impression that you think that paper is the largest cost of a paper book. That for $30 price point paper would be expected... The thing is that the paper bit is the cheapest part of a book. On a normal bookshop book it's about 10% of the money you pay.)

After I read his Influence book I couldn't have a normal interaction with sales people for a long time, since every time I'd recognise the techniques I would feel manipulated and angry.

It wasn't until a few years later that I actually could be impressed with the finesse of their execution while evaluating the morals of their actions separately.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upselling

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trojan_horse_%28business%29

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bait_and_switch

Like you, I can't stand it - I jump straight to a transcript or other text to consume the information: I read and understand WAY faster than people talk (or I can listen).

That said, I hate physical books, and am much happier with a PDF (or better, an actual ebook format) for the full price of a regular, physical book. I'm paying for the content, not the dead tree components.

I'm in the same boat as both of you regarding taking little away from video, but while I see this statement a lot, my limited experience doesn't seem to match (of course, neither of these things indicates either position is correct in any meaningful way). Is there a reason you believe this, or is it just other people you've met/spoken with who have that preference?

A two-way conversation or even a live person talking work well enough. But if I want to understand something in great detail and be sure that I get it, I'm going to need text.

The only thing I haven't done yet is print books. Maybe eventually.

If you're interested in print, it's actually very easy. I used Aaron Shepard's books to get a rough idea of how things worked, and also found a freelancer who showed me the ropes. His 'Plan B' is great advice for how to get amazon to discount your book without reducing your royalties.

If you have any questions about POD, I'd be happy to help. My email's in my profile.

Be careful you aren't looking at presentations in video format as an example of video for learning. It's not.

What I've found--it's entirely puzzling to me--the new generation does indeed.

I teach kids computer stuff and one of them (14) is experimenting with writing minecraft mods in Java. He seriously prefers watching a YouTube screencast of somebody narrating what he's doing in the Eclipse IDE over reading the exact same info on the minecraft modding wiki. There's no editing, direction, it's just a screencast of an IDE. It's tedious because when he gets stuck I have to seek through the video where he went wrong, a lot more effort than a quick scroll through a long wiki page. He knows this, and tries to work off text tutorials a bit more, but to me the case is more than clear: the current generation of young hackers prefers screencasts (and I really cannot fathom why, but I take it as a lesson in becoming an old fart).

When you test them do they achieve the same outcome you would expect from a text?

That said, yes he's definitely not just blindly following the steps in the screencasts but really trying to make his own thing and figure shit out. He also does other stuff (had a go at Unity--unfortunately I didn't have enough time to learn it myself first). A lot of the kids here actually have a bit of a resistance against just blindly following set instructions without adding their own ideas to it :) Often I have to hold them back a bit--just do this simple exercise first, yes just exactly like that, it'll give you some insights on the basics and after that you can have a go at trying to work out your grand idea (I word it differently of course, but that's the gist).

And yeah he may not understand all of what's going on when going through the decompile - run script - modify - repackage steps in minecraft, but he does learn a lot. There's no real set goals, if he learns that "whatever a computer is supposed to do, I can alter it and make it do my own wishes" at the very least, just learning about the possibilities (aka more than a microwave oven), it'll plant the seeds of a hacker-spirit :) (though in this particular example I can assure you it goes further than that)

And we'll see where it goes from there. If I notice they just learned one trick and go through the same motions every time I'll try to put them on a more challenging track. Although even in that case, say a kid is making a game (we use GameMaker) and after having struggled through a basic gameplay engine they are comfortable with simply creation zillions of levels, I don't necessarily stop them, as long as they're being creative. It doesn't have to be programming after all, if that is not their talent, maybe they can think up a great storyline, or draw cool graphics. Also it turns out that most modern games do in fact have zillions of levels, and when I see them ordering them into "world 1", "world 2", they must be up to something. That example is about a bunch of 8 year old btw, so I don't expect hardcore hacking/programming yet (but they're clever!), one of these 8 year olds was so super-proud of the game he had been working at for a while, "This game is getting really really AWESOME"--that can't be wrong :)

I often record the audio off a video (if I can't directly download it) and listen to it at 300% speed when I'm doing other activities that don't require mental focus.

Printing it yourself is actually quite inexpensive -- provided that you have a laser printer. (The economics of an ink-jet printer for long documents is horrible.)

Let's do the math:

The OP says his book is a 125-page PDF. My double-sided laser printer will use just 63 sheets of paper. I can buy high-quality 22-pound paper for $10, including tax, for a 500-sheet package. Therefore, paper will cost 63/500 * $10 = $1.26.

The cost of my laser printer is one-time sunk cost, and I need a laser printer for other reasons than printing e-books, so I'll ignore the laser printer's cost (besides, it's not even that expensive).

I can refill a 6000-sheet toner cartridge (black only) for $75 including tax. Thus, toner to print the 125-page PDF will cost 125/6000 * $75 = $1.56.

Total cost to print the PDF yourself: $1.26 + $1.56 = $2.82.

So unless you really care about the binding, or the PDF is in color (and needs the colors), then printing it yourself is really quite cheap.

There is nothing wrong not to buy the product. If I just knew Nathan for the first time with Authority, I probably won't buy it either. But I've followed him for some time and trust he can deliver, so I bought the complete package without much hesitation.

So, the book appeals to people who think like this?

Independent authors, who are trying to actually make somewhat of a living off of their works, do not have such luxuries. They are the editing department. They are the typesetting department. They are their support department. They're doing all these things with no benefits of economies of scale whatsoever. So it costs more. This is also why academic presses tend to cost more, too, because they're operating on a much smaller scale.

I can appreciate the desire for a physical book. I, too, prefer dead trees. Some of my own readers prefer it too (and for some reason think for $12 [or less], they'll get it), but in reality you have to realize that in paying $39 or $69 for that PDF, you're paying for a lot more hours of work from one person, costs that aren't spread across an entire business like a publisher, and that money is going directly to the author who is providing the product, which means it's probably (not always) going to be of a higher quality and a better purchasing experience (i.e., you could likely e-mail Nathan with a question and get a reasonable response).

Also, the scale of marketing for an independent author is much smaller. It's simply impossible to negotiate with the bigger players for shelf space, and it's not profitable to invest in tons of streams of marketing typically. So, you're left to target the niches you're writing for the best you can and hope it works out in your favor. I've had fabulous successes ($50k+++) and horrible flops (< $1,000 for a lot of work). A lot of that is because it's difficult to saturate the general market and get them interested in your work. Very rarely will someone come over your book and say "Oh hey I've heard about Rails [or whatever]. I'll buy that." because most people aren't browsing the Internet using Google's "I'm Feeling Lucky." So for most indie authors who aren't selling like Nathan, the higher price is needed to justify the investment of effort into the book.

So, that wall of text is to say: please think about the person behind the book and the effort they're putting into it when you look at the price tag. Obviously, they want to make money. They're not pricing it to give it away. But likewise, they're also [probably] trying to feed a family and keep writing more books.

But I expect a book for that sort of money. I'll gladly pay shipping costs on top of that price. On demand printing costs $4 per copy, I just checked.

In fact, if there was just a $29 option without all the other options, I might actually have bought just a PDF. But his copy actually tries to make me feel bad for just wanting the book and none of the other stuff. Perhaps that is really what rubbed me the wrong way the most. The further down that page I was scrolling, the farther away I was getting from a decision to buy.

Maybe I'm just weird.

(and yes, I get it, I'm a self-publisher author too, lots of time, low prices, tiny profit margins ... but 30 bucks is still a lot for a PDF)

Buy it, upload the PDF to an on demand printer, send yourself a copy? :-)

I don't think anyone who reads Nathan's book and ends up doing something because of it is going to bemoan the format they read it on.

I felt the same, actually. I find I absorb information better from paper.

But I know this is more a psychological than real hurdle. I did buy the PDF, as I'm an author and figure it's got to be worth at least $29 to me.

But I almost didn't, for the same reason. Some may have hesitated the wrong way. I only bought because I saw it a second time here on HN and reconsidered.

I probably would have preferred some kind of '$40, get both the book and pdf' option.

Of course, that adds complexity to the checkout process, so any prospective author has to figure out what segment of their market is like me and the grandparent.

Yes. Just like I prefer paying for Spotify instead of CD's. Just like I would rather pay for Netflix than cable. And so on. Medium matters in value perception.

There's a huge disconnect between the above statement, and the below statement:

But I expect a book for that sort of money.

You claim to be willing to pay $29 for the content, and then immediately say that you expect a physical book! If you truly would love to pay $29 for the content, then by all means go do it, and quit complaining about the lack of carbon included in the product.

I don't want to pay $30 for something I won't read. A physical book is there, it begs to be read. Even if I put it away for months on end, I will still eventually read it. Ebooks ... eh, I have tens if not hundreds on my ipad that I've never gotten past the first ten pages.

Yes, what? What are you replying to? I didn't ask a question.

If you read it out loud it sounds perfectly natural.

#1 I expect to be able to read extensive excerpts for free. Table of contents is not enough, because I want to know how that one section is more than a few paragraphs.

#2 I buy the ebook and start reading it. If it isn't Kindle it must be DRM free.

#3 If I finish the ebook, and I find myself continually referencing back to it I buy the print version.

#4 If I think the book is really good, I'll buy anywhere from 1 - 10 more copies to give as presents. Doesn't happen often.

I don't want a print book taking up space unless it is collectible or for reference.

The only thing I could do with one is gift it to someone that doesn't already prefer ebooks, and there are few and fewer people like that.

Some people just want a physical thing. It might be irrational to want a physical thing, but if not getting a physical thing is holding them back from giving you money, it doesn't really matter how irrational you think they are.

I've heard this in other venues too, usually accompanied by "so I started offering one, and I made a startling amount more money".

Question, Swizec - would you pay $39 for a physical copy of the book? That would cover printing costs and (just about) the additional labour.

(Of course, it's also a valid decision on the part of the business owner to say "well, I don't want to provide a physical thing: it's too much hassle". Maximising profit is not always the ideal route.)

A 13.8% loss in profit would sink many businesses.