Gumroad Blog

Hello... this is a topic I'm interested in, because I'd like to write one day. Anyway, I thought you might find these resources useful:

1. Nathan Barry has written extensively about his success with self-publishing. Essentially, his method (I'm simplifying here) is to 1. position yourself as an expert in your field via blogging, then 2. directly market to your audience via email using a 3. tiered pricing model (i.e., multiple packages at increasing price-points). He wrote a book about his methodology entitled "Authority."

Authority:

http://nathanbarry.com/authority

Nathan Barry’s Lessons Learned Selling $355,759 on Gumroad:

http://blog.gumroad.com/post/73421524134/nathan-barrys-lessons-learned-selling-355759-on

2. Bob Nystrom has written about his experience writing and marketing "Game Programming Patterns."

http://journal.stuffwithstuff.com/2014/04/22/zero-to-95688-how-i-wrote-game-programming-patterns

http://journal.stuffwithstuff.com/2014/11/20/how-my-book-launch-went

A comment he wrote regarding publishing:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13878280

3. Advice and insight on the topic of traditional publishing from Patrick McKenzie:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12118914

4. Thread entitled "Ask HN: Has anyone here self-published a book? Any advice?"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6052075

5. Self-publishing success comment involving multiple pricing tiers:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13878266

6. Self-publishing success story…

It probably depends on what the product or service is, and how it's sold. Coursera already provides some courses for free, and even those attract some high maintenance types from what I've seen in the forums. Does providing a pay-what-you-want option increase the number of nasties or the degree of nastiness, for example, inviting legal risks? I don't really know. But I feel Coursera should atleast experiment and gather the data before deciding, instead of missing out on all that data.

Leanpub and Gumroad are two services that follow this strategy. I don't know if they are successful ventures, but I notice they have maintained this pricing strategy since their inception and never changed or stopped it.

Leanpub says "...the pattern we have seen with multiple books, about a third of people will pay the suggested price, a third will pay the minimum price and a third will pay somewhere in between. Finally, the odd person will pay more than the suggested price" [1]. Some anecdotal experiences of individual authors [2],[3],[4] support it.

[1]: https://leanpub.com/help/author_faq
[2]: http://blather.michaelwlucas.com/archives/1626
[3]: http://blog.ppenev.com/2013/07/16/what-i-have-learned-from-leanpub.html
[4]: http://blog.gumroad.com/post/75707736685/is-pay-what-you-want-pricing-for-you

Gumroad handles VAT-EU for you[0] but I didn't tried it. If anyone worked with them, here are some questions I have:

- do they send one monthly payment? If so, from which country?

- is VAT-EU number needed?

- if I don't register for VAT (don't reach yearly selling threshold), do I get full payout? Are clients charged for VAT in such scenario?

- what documents do I get from them, in case of tax office review?

- is 3.5% + $0.30 fee applicable to EU customers or is there some additional cost (I assume not, but I ask just to be sure)?

- if I sell digital product, what should I do about e.g. Canadian/Indian/Japanese/whatever sell taxes?

[0] http://blog.gumroad.com/post/110080508463/vat

Gumroad has a feature called PDF stamping [1] that puts the buyer's email address on the PDF. It's not perfect security, anyone who wants to ignore your copy rights probably will, but it might deter unthoughtful sharing.

Also consider a team/company license priced at some multiple (15x?) that will allow a manager or lead to buy your book for their company/team without having to worry about violating copyrights or managing buying the book for every employee.

[1] - http://blog.gumroad.com/post/40614820182/introducing-pdf-stamping