| Thanks for your questions. Answers appear below. 1) How critical were screencasts in convincing customers to purchase the ebook versions? The big money is in product bundles, but the ebooks sold well (~$100/day) even before the screencasts launched. And that was back in 2010, when the Rails Tutorial was just getting started. 2) How dependent is this business model on books which are attached to fast-moving software? It cuts both ways, but I suspect it's generally better if the software isn't fast-moving. Products covering fast-moving software require updates that lead to new sales cycles, but products covering slower-changing software have much longer shelf-lives. As one data point, I've actually designed the 3rd edition of the Rails Tutorial to be more future-proof than before, in the hopes that I won't have to update it as often. (Even then, full updates have only been required ever 1.5 years, with minor supplements in between.) And some future products I have planned will be designed to be even more evergreen. 3) Did you make any effort (like Scribd) to prevent scraping of content from the online viewer? Not at all. The online version is plain HTML. You can even "save as PDF", but the real ebooks are so much nicer that hardly anyone bothers. In general, authors are way too paranoid about people stealing their content. You can give away huge amounts of information as long as the product you're charging for delivers real value. 4) Have you had to request DMCA takedowns of ebooks or screencasts? No. 5) Do you plan to provide guidance or best practices on screencast production? Yes, if there's demand. I take it there might be. :-) |
> Yes, if there's demand. I take it there might be. :-)
Customers of softcover.io may be more comfortable spending $150 on additional bundles if there was a well-defined baseline for screencast quality. The pitch to potential authors and customers is to emulate the sales/quality success of the Rails tutorial, so it's in the interest of all parties (platform, customers, authors) to see that baseline met or exceeded.
Edit: will the "powered by softcover" banner/footer be required for authors publishing on their own domain? If so, it would help all authors if the link was directed to a list of domains "powered by softcover", rather than a pitch for softcover itself.