Re: Marketing help wanted

[email protected] ((Randal L. Schwartz)) 19 Jul 2002 08:15:48 -0700
Newsgroups perl.trainers
Organization Stonehenge Consulting Services; Portland, Oregon, USA
Message-ID <[email protected]>
>>>>> "Danny" == Danny Faught <[email protected]> writes:

>> Another approach that could work is to write a book.  

Danny> Yup.  That's somewhere on my to-do list.  I've got half a dozen book
Danny> ideas bouncing around.

Please keep in mind that except for runaway bestsellers (like the
Camel and Llama), books *never* make enough money to pay back the time
you could have spent billing to customers.  Books are a credential and
a work of passion, not an income source.

The 250 page Llama takes 250 *man days* to write.  Try computing how
many dollars that is at your current billable rate.

Now realize that your royalty will be about 1/10th of the typical
discounted price of the book (about $2.50 in royalties or so for the
Llama).  Now figure out how many books you'd have to sell to break
even.  Ouch.  Don't forget to divide that out amongst your co-authors
if you have some.  And that the money is in an exponential decay after
the first year, so if you don't make it the first year, you've lost.

-- 
Randal L. Schwartz - Stonehenge Consulting Services, Inc. - +1 503 777 0095
<[email protected]> <URL:http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/>
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