I have met Fabien a few times at work, he is a lovely human being. I don't want to be too presumptuous and speak for him, but I don't think he cares about making a profit from this. He just likes to write and wants people to read and enjoy his works.
I read the PDF version and donated 10 dollars a few months ago. The book is worth more than that, but given the numbers he expose I didn't even feel guilty.
This is absolutely insane. It would be cool to see a service where users could pledge cash for a book printing, then the number of pledges by the time of release determines the actual price and quality.
My partner is currently writing a book for them, and they go way beyond basic print on demand. They’re pretty stringent about what the quality they’ll publish, give loads of support in the fundraising process around things like producing the pitch video and workshops on promoting it, and once the book is done put it in front of professional editors. I can’t recommend them highly enough.
I thought I had the original idea of regenerative braking for recovering energy in cars... But it had been done.
Maybe the reason ideas come around again is because they haven't been fully exploited and people are unaware that they exist... Which could be another reason why execution matters more than the idea...
This is pretty much “running a Kickstarter with several stretch goals.” Although I guess having a one-stop shop that handles making the printing and shipping happen could be a thing.
My experience doing small press stuff via KS is that it’s probably not gonna be anywhere near worth doing until you can print at least a thousand books at once, though. There are economies of scale to deal with.
But being profitable means that at least someone is willing to pay you to do the thing.
Note that there can be market distortions that either cause profitablity where it wouldn't otherwise be (e.g., government mandates) or prevent fully realizing costs (externalities).
To improve the profit I was going to suggest Createspace, then I read the article. Then I felt embarrassed for even thinking of recommending Amazon printing to anyone ever. Unfortunately Createspace support has never been great, and the transition to Kindle Direct has lowered the level of support even further.
Their PDF restrictions are sometimes nonsensical and whether or not it gets approved seems to be blind chance. You can spend days resubmitting the same PDF like a gambler at a slot machine. Win some lose some.
I always thought it was just me, but reading the author's experiences shows this isn't the case.
the site has some pretty obvious bugs in the ordering sequence. if you click "billing address same as shipping address" before entering the shipping address the form fails; you have to check and uncheck it... when I see sloppy stuff like this, I always choose PayPal, but as that's not an option, I guess I will pass.
There was a breakdown somewhere where he compared different printers. There were cheaper options but the print quality had issues. This is the reality if you want to print a full color book.
I can't believe this site alone doesn't have 1000 doom lovers.