n.b. When you unbundle it from an app store, processing $30 transactions costs about $1.50 to $3 at the high end (getting screwed by a legacy processor) not $9.
He's doing VASTLY better than e.g. if he had taken that book as a first time author to a technical publisher. For one, the book is actually published: he'd still have months on the timeline at even the most progressive dead tree publishers. For another, at similar sales levels, his ~$5,000 advance would not be "earned out" yet and he could expect his first royalty check the day after never.
With regards to authoring as a commercially viable profession: traditionally, it isn't for the majority of published authors. There do exist folks who make incomes engineers would find reasonable from selling snooks (including technical ebooks). Well, OK, some of them make incomes engineers would find unreasonable, but not for being too low. (Independent authoring, like independenr software development, is 10% about writing and 90% about successful execution of a sells-writing business.)
One of our goals at Leanpub is to create a world where authors can make a living. This seems like a crazy vision to some, but why should it be?
I believe that we will look back at right now as the start of a golden age of writing. We just haven't realized it yet as the signal is masked by the noise of all the gnashing of teeth from publishers.
He's doing VASTLY better than e.g. if he had taken that book as a first time author to a technical publisher. For one, the book is actually published: he'd still have months on the timeline at even the most progressive dead tree publishers. For another, at similar sales levels, his ~$5,000 advance would not be "earned out" yet and he could expect his first royalty check the day after never.
With regards to authoring as a commercially viable profession: traditionally, it isn't for the majority of published authors. There do exist folks who make incomes engineers would find reasonable from selling snooks (including technical ebooks). Well, OK, some of them make incomes engineers would find unreasonable, but not for being too low. (Independent authoring, like independenr software development, is 10% about writing and 90% about successful execution of a sells-writing business.)