Looking for a successful "book-plus" writer

Discussions
#1

I’m involved with organising the Edinburgh Publishing Conference, http://edinpubconf.net.

I’m co-ordinating the section on new technologies and business models, and I’d dearly love to include an author who’s making a success out of doing what I call “book-plus” publishing.

What I mean by this, is where you publish a book, and offer it for sale with an set of added options: so if you want just the book, it’s £30; if you want the book plus extra walkthroughs and interviews, it’s £50; if you want the site license, it’s £250. That kind of thing…

Examples of this are Nathan Barry, http://nathanbarry.com/books/, and the new “Discover Meteor” book at https://www.discovermeteor.com/packages

If you can suggest anyone who fits this category and who might make a good speaker, then please drop me an email at rachel@willmer.org. Don’t be shy, feel free to suggest yourself :smile:

The conference is in Edinburgh, Scotland on June 20th, headline speaker Cory Doctorow.

(We’re bootstrapping the conference, so there isn’t any money for speaker’s fees this year but there might be some scope for travel costs.)

Thanks
Rachel

1 Like
#2

@brennandunn is another great example of this publishing model. I have no idea if his schedule allows for that, though :smile:

#3

I’ve used books as paid lead gen to sell workshops, SaaS, etc. Here’s a bit more detail from my last annual report: http://planscope.io/blog/how-i-changed-the-world-in-2013/ — brought in over $300k last year using the book-first approach to sell other stuff.

@rwillmer feel free to reach out: brennan@planscope.io

(@tnorthcutt thanks for the mention!)

#4

@brennandunn thanks for connecting!

@tnorthcutt thanks for the suggestion! Brennan would be perfect, if we could make this happen…

#5

And I’m absolutely delighted to announce that Brennan Dunn will indeed be a speaker at my conference.

Thanks, @brennandunn, really looking forward to meeting you.

Here’s the details of the conference, including a discount code for any members of this forum, if any of you would like to join us in Edinburgh later this month.

Disruption in the Publishing Industry: Digital, Analytics & the Future
Friday 20th June 2014
0900-1730
Edinburgh Business School

Keynote: Cory Doctorow

If you’re involved in the publishing industry, I’d encourage you to come.

But also we have two speakers who have really useful stuff to say about
how to make money from being publishing your knowledge as a book. So if
you’ve got ideas about turning what you know into a book or course, you
really should be here.

“Productising your consulting” is how Brennan Dunn describes it; rather
than getting paid by the hour on a contracting gig to be a whizz at
javascript/python/UX design, write a book about it and have your
knowledge making money while you sleep. Or are having fun.

Brennan’s talk is entitled “How I Sell A Book for $249: the magic of
tiered pricing”

Peter Armstrong founded LeanPub.com: authors have made over $1.5m
selling their in-progress books through his site. “Publish Early,
Publish Often” is a workflow which works particularly well for
state-of-the-art tech books (similar to O’Reilly’s Early Access)

Peter’s talk is entitled “Lean Publishing: Why In-Progress Publishing is
the Future, and the Past, of Publishing”

Use this link to get the discounted price of £79

Or if you’d prefer a 2-for-1 deal, get in touch and I can fix that up.

Rachel