Note: I'm not going to bury the lede: If you have $5 and want a non-DRM PDF copy of Sunken Treasure, you can buy it here and have it in just a few minutes.
Now, here's the story behind my decision to offer this format…
I took some time on Saturday afternoon to answer a bunch of e-mail, including a brief interview about my experience with Lulu and the release of Sunken Treasure (short version: it's been awesome. Longer version coming later this week.)
While I did this, I had Twitteriffic open, and was doing my silly Twitter thing, which, as many of you know, was the style at the time.
At 1:38pm, I sent the following message to Twitter: "Hey Twitterverse: how would you feel about a digital version of Sunken Treasure for about $5?"
I expected that a dozen or so people would be interested, but I hoped for more. Within ten minutes, over 100 different people said they were not only interested, but wanted it RIGHT NOW PLZ KTHX.
"Wow," I thought. "That was a more positive and emphatic response than I was expecting!"
I told Twitter: "Wow, so it
appears that quite a lot of you want PDF versions of this book for $5.
I didn't think it would be so many, honestly. Hmmm…"
Responses continued to pour in. I started making hash marks on a note pad.
A lot of people were asking about Kindle versions, Sony eReader versions, and other versions. I made a lot more hash marks on my note pad, and noticed that the page was almost filled.
I looked around the Lulu publishing options and told Twitter: "Many questions
about other formats for digital versions of my books. Short answer: all
I can do at the moment on my own is PDF. Still want?"
Short answer: Yes. A whole lot of people wanted it, even if it was in a PDF format.
I've always wanted to do digital versions of my books, but I've never
had a way to do it that doesn't involve me manually accepting payments
and sending out links or something equally complicated. My POD experience with Lulu has completely changed that. I logged into my Lulu account, clicked a couple of buttons, filled in one box with $5.00, and I was done.
I took a deep breath and told Twitter: "Okay, Twitterverse! You asked for it, so here it is. Sunken Treasure in DRM-free PDF for $5: http://tinyurl.com/sunkenpdf"
I admit that I had a brief flash of doubt. "Did I just screw myself? Did I just sell one and end up giving away a hundred?"
"No," I reminded myself. "People who will steal from me were never going to support my work, anyway. You're doing the right thing. You're making it available to people at a really fair price, in a super portable format. And maybe people will like it and want a paper copy for themselves or to give as gifts."
I hoped that PDF sales would be solid … well, they were solid, for about ten minutes, and then they exploded. In less than an hour, the total PDFs sold exceed 1/5 of the total print copies sold. People were e-mailing positive feedback, people were Twittering positive feedback, and people were starting to talk about it on their blogs.
"Okay, this is awesome," I thought. "I definitely did the right thing."
Over the next 24 hours, I checked sales every hour or so (hey, can you blame me?) and I watched total PDF sales close the gap with print sales, but something really awesome was also happening: the print sales, which had slowed to about 2 a day a month after release, suddenly picked up! It wasn't a ton, and I'm still not getting rich off of this effort, but it was still pretty remarkable. Feedback from buyers suggested that a lot of people read the PDF, liked it, and wanted a physical copy of their own as a result. Any doubts I had about the demand for this format, or the wisdom of trusting my instincts and releasing a DRM-free PDF at a reasonable price point vanished. I started thinking about other work of mine, and how cool it would be to offer digital versions in a similar manner.
I noticed that, coincidentally, Just A Geek had become available on O'Reilly's Safari Bookshelf. I also noticed that Just A Geek and Dancing Barefoot's sales rankings on Amazon had climbed by several thousand points in just a day. Also a coincidence? I'm not sure, but I'd like to believe it wasn't.
I just checked, and as of 10:00 this morning, not quite 48 hours after I announced it, PDF sales of Sunken Treasure have nearly caught 4 weeks of print sales (PDF is 17 sales short of overtaking print sales, so if you get it now, you could be part of, um, history!) Print sales in the last 48 hours have been better than print sales in the last 5 days. I'm not getting rich off of this, but it's certainly answered any questions I had about publishing this way.
The best part of all of this (well, other than the surprisingly enthusiastic response) is how easy it was for me to do it. Because I already had the PDF uploaded for printing, making the PDF itself available was simply a matter of making a choice and investing about 40 seconds of effort to throw the switch.
Let me close by answering a few FAQs (which I'm going to update throughout the day, so check back if I don't answer you in comments):
Q: I have all your other stuff already because I'm awesome like that. Is there enough new stuff in this to justify the purchase?
A: Dude, thank you for supporting my work! That is totally awesome, and so are you. Now, someone who is not me is probably more qualified to answer this, but here's what I think: there are some small excerpts from Just a Geek and Dancing Barefoot, but that only makes up a tiny portion of the book. It's mostly outtakes from Happiest Days (that may or may not make it into the Subterranean Press edition), various things that I've written in my blog, and an unreleased sketch that I wrote for a show at ACME. I also reformatted and rewrote my Criminal Minds production diary.
If I paid five bucks for this, and I'd already read Just a Geek and Dancing Barefoot, I don't think I'd be unhappy about it, but I'm not as objective as I'd like to be. Hopefully, someone will address this in comments, and I can link to it.
Q: I see there's a World and a US edition. What's the difference?
A: The World edition is a slightly larger format, due to legacy printing issues. There is no difference in content.
Q: So why did you make two different digital editions available?
A: So people who use direct links instead of visiting the storefront would see that there's a $5 PDF available.
Q: Oh, that's nice of you.
A: That wasn't a question, but thanks.
Q: Can I even read it on my iPhone?
A: Yeah, it's a regular old PDF file, so it will totally work on your iPhone.
Q:How will it look on my iPhone, though?
A: I don't own an iPhone, so I can't say from firsthand experience, but I've heard from a lot of people who have read it on their iPhones, and they were very happy with the experience.
Q: What about other formats?
A: I'm looking into it. I know lots of people want it for [DEVICE THEY OWN] and I'm working on making those formats available. I can't tell for sure if Lulu makes it possible for me to sell a digital version in a non-PDF format, though, so that may be a non-starter.
Q: Why not just sell it through Amazon for the Kindle?
A: I may eventually do that, but right now I don't know if I can sell enough copies to make up for the massive cut of revenue I'd have to give Amazon. I'm happy as hell to be selling in the hundreds, but if I went that way, I'd have to either increase the price significantly, or hope to sell in the thousands. I'm not sure that there are thousands of people who a) want to read this and b) also own Kindles.
Q: If I buy this, can I convert it to a different format?
A: Sure. You can use calibre to convert it to a ton of different formats. Calibre is free (speech and beer) by the way. Incidentally, if you're one of the Kindle owners, you can use calibre to convert the PDF to a Kindle format. I've seen screenshots from some people who have done that, and it looks cool.
Q: I already bought the print version. Can I get a copy of the digital version?
A: Sure you can. It's just five bucks.
Q: I see what you did there.
A: Again, not a question, but thanks.
Q: Can I give this to my friend/husband/wife/mom/girl or boy I'm trying to impress?
A: Once you have it, I can't stop you from doing whatever you want with it, and I certainly wouldn't expect you to treat it any differently than you would a paper book. However, I hope that we all understand the difference between sharing with our friends/spouses/famies and "sharing" with an entire forum, or hundreds of people simultaneously. I'm not trying to be a dick about this, and I'd rather people read it than not, but it's only $5, you know?
Q: If I buy this, can I make my own print copy?
A: As long as you don't sell it, absolutely. If a print shop doesn't want to print it for you, show them this: I give you permission to make a print copy of this book for personal, non-commercial use.
Q: If I make my own print copy and bring it to a con, will you sign it for me?
A: Hells yes I will. That'd be pretty cool, actually.
Q: So, this is awesome and I want it now, but I'm not interested in scrolling back to the top of this entry. How do I get it again?
A: I'm so glad you asked. If you have $5 and want a non-DRM PDF copy of Sunken Treasure, you can buy it here and have it in just a few minutes.
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Wil,
This is standaloneSA from twitter. Thanks for the reply. Bought the ebook, and I’m hoping to have time to start it tonight. Thanks for having faith in the electronic format!
–Matt Simmons
So pleased to hear about the positive result. I’ve been around the publishing business long enough to be thrilled to see this Real Life Case Study. You have to be someone like Neil Gaiman to get the big publishers to trust you to do something like this.
(Oh, and mobipocket is another software that converts for Kindle.)
Congrats!
If I meet you next week in a dark, shadowy corner of Los Angeles, will you sign my regular, non-home-produced copy? How about a well-lit streetcorner, with lots of shops and bustling pedestrians? How about if I buy you lunch at LA Mill Coffee? I’ll even teach you how to play Dominion at no additional cost!
(note that only some of the offers above are tongue-in-cheek.. you’ve got me wanting to visit LA Mill Coffee now….)
Oh, and of course, congratulations on the across-the-board increase in sales!! The more people exposed to your writing, the better off the world in general is, I’d wager.
Oh Wil, you’re my hero.
Although now, I’m starting to look forward to your tweets to see what cool shit is flowing from the mind of Wheaton to satiate our capitalistic needs.
(That, and it’s hella easier to smuggle in a .pdf than it is to walk into a meeting carrying a book that I’m going to read during a dull and dreary presentation. Yay.)
I actually just wanted to thank you for sharing your writing/publishing experiences so openly. There are a lot of us writers out there who are still trying to figure all of this out. Do you ever feel like the Moses leading the way for the geeks? Well, you should.
Wil – I haven’t got the PDF version (though tempted for the novelty value, I have no money!) but am reading an extra story from the print edition every night before bed at the moment and thoroughly enjoying it. The best thing about it is how genuinely HAPPY you seem to be in life and how well you communicate that. As a result, I feel a bit better! LAME but true. Oh yes.
Anyway, in other happy news, and we all love happiness, my partner may be getting some actual money at some point ( a job! amazing!) and if we can both scrape up enough we are going to try and get a month in America this Summer. California is utterly high on our agenda, so hopefully it will tie in with some event you’re doing, and I’ll be the envy of possibly some people if I got my copy signed (and my Just a Geek too? Why not?).
Anyway, good work, keep it up!
John (Birmingham, UK)
Another successful experiment, Herr Doctor.
So… does anyone have a copy downloaded yet that they want to send me?
…
what?
…
😛
Ordered. Thanks, Wil! Now I can read it on my iPhone!
Thanks Wil! This is sweet. I just got an iPod touch for this exact reason.
I lied to you Wil. Said I didn’t need a digital copy. But I guess I lied and I downloaded it today. Also, I had every intention of reading it yesterday, but Kill Bill was on, then I went to an Oscar party. But I’m really excited to read it this week.
That is so great to hear!! I didn’t reply to your twitter but I saw it when it came on and I was excited to hear what would happen. I got my print copy on Saturday and I will be starting it today at work. I was so sad when I finished Just a Geek cause…well…I was finished. I can’t wait till the re-release of Happiest Days since I only have the audio book of it. I want something I can put on my shelf too! I will be loaning your books that I have to a friend and I think I am going to order the PDF for her as well. Thank you for all of your hard work and trust in your fans. Also, I love your FAQ, they always crack me up!
Thoughts from my experience:
The PDF book finished on pg. 84 with the final article being your production diary on Criminal Minds. Correct? I just wanted to be sure I didn’t miss out on anything.
Was driven, nay, COMPELLED to seek out and watch your CM episode after reading the diary. Is it bad that I watched it all on some bootleg Asian website?
Will the cover artwork be included in any of the PDFs that follow this work? I found myself missing it in this copy.
Can. not. wait. for. TNG. commentaries. PLEASE release these soon!
Your first ficlet. Very well done. I am amazed at how quickly you managed to create a mood and build up tension with only 1024 characters to work with. I REALLY hope you write some sci-fi/horror short stories soon, I’m interested to see what you’d come up with.
All in all, I give the book 3 out of 4 stars. I only give it 3 due to the fact that you are like Colonel Sanders before he went tits up. You put an addictive chemical in your books that make people crave them fort-nightly, smartass! NEED MOAR NAO!
Great job, Wil. I look forward to seeing what else you’ve got in store for us this year. Gratz on the success of your PDF.
Bought the ebook late last night, thought “I know I’ll read a few pages of it on the computer before I transfer it to my N810”
Whoops.
1:30am came along as I looked up from the last page. Oh well, one short night of sleep was well worth it, especially for the Criminal Minds blog entries at the end.
Thanks for providing it in this format. Shipping to Hawaii sucks major ass 🙂
Wil,
How do you feel about a first-time writer using Lulu to distribute his work? I’ve had a few publishing credentials, but I can’t seem to “make it big.” I’m at the point where I’d rather just release my work to the masses in a form that I *might* see reasonable compensation for, as opposed to for-credit-only publications (like I have now).
Your opinion?
I’ll agree with Will Hindmarch here! I love your innovation, and your ability to size up your readership, and take a leap of faith (and almost fearlessly too).
I, happily, gave you my $6 and some cents Canadian to download the PDF version. I also have the audio version of Just a Geek and the printed version of Happiest Days… But the great thing about having the e-version of Sunken Treasures is getting to READ the entries from Just a Geek for the first time (rather than listening to the words). I find myself re-connecting to your stories and funny enough as I read the words, I still hear your voice in my head! A testament to your writing.
Congrats on your success (which, btw, isn’t always measured in $-signs. Not COMPLETELY, anyway. We DO understand that you have to pay the bills.)
So far, I give your e-formatted book: 5 d20’s outta 5.
If I was the type to program a virus to be the scourge of the internets I would title it “free_Wil_Wheaton_book_pdf.exe”. That would show those skanky thieves!
Q: Why don’t you own an iPhone?!?!
It is downloading as I type! Yay Wil!
If you find you are able to sell them through Lulu, I’d be happy to convert the book into eReader format for you. (I’m quite good at it. I’ve done conversions of Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom and Content for Cory Doctorow, and Jeffrey Carver’s four Chaos Chronicles books. It’s very easy.)
But PDFs with their rigid formatting aren’t the best source from which to start for such a conversion. If you had a Word doc version of the book for me to run through the converter, that would work best.
You might also want to see if other e-book vendors, such as BooksOnBoard, would be willing to carry it for you in addition to Lulu. I know they handle such formats as eReader.
I had a question about the content that has probably been asked.
Did you include any new TNG episode reviews or is this the same stuff that is up on TV Squad?
OH! iPhone! I could read it in CHURCH! What an idea! Now I MUST have both versions!
Kill Bill will do that do you, won’t it? Volume 1 or 2? I find that it works best when you watch them together, but man is that a lot of Kill Bill.
It was the “Datalore” review from TVSquad.
i was tempted to purchase your subpress, but since i have not yet read books written by you yet i was afraid to pay that much for the the book. subpress publishes some beautiful books. anyway. i’m gonna pick up the pdf version of Sunken Treasures. five bucs is the enxt best thing to going to the library before deciding if you like an author. i hope this doesn’t sound too silly.
I think I’ll answer all of your questions in a column later this week, but the short version is: DO IT. You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take, as the great one said, and my experience with Lulu has been fantastic.
I live in an iPhone dead zone. If you walk to my curb, or to the wall down the hill at the bottom of my back yard, it works fine, but in the house? Not so much.
Also, AT&T has a fucking NSA tap *right in the damn main office* and I can’t just ignore that.
The review I included in this book is from DATALORE. Like everything that starts online, it’s been cleaned up and edited for print, because print is different from blog.
Okey dokey. Sounds cool.
I’m just jonesing for more of those as they are really interesting and amusing overall.
I guess I was also curious about some of your impressions about working on later episodes rather than the somewhat cheesy season one eps.
All in good time I’m sure.
The non-cheesy ones are actually much harder to write, so they take longer to do, but I’ve done some already and I think they’ve come out well.
Shazzam!
That’s why you’re so awesome, Wil. Because you’re like, beyond Geek. And that’s high compliment coming from me, someone who is Not So Much Geek, or Geek Lite, if you will. (I so wanted to write if you Wil, but I thought that’d be going overboard.)
On a totally separate note, since I am mad procrastinating my work by writing inane messages on your site – aren’t the clouds outside wonderful?!!
Haha.
Sunken Treasure, the book* perfect for reading at your home, office, temple, mosque, church, synagogue, board meeting, budget proposal meeting, or nuclear weapon schematics planning meeting. Ask for it now at your local Lulu website!
*e-book version only. Neither the author nor publisher are responsible for penance, firings, bankruptcies, or thermonuclear meltdowns/wars resulting from abuse of responsibility.
Both were on TBS and Roomie and I decided rather than watch crappy cable-edited Vol. 2 we would watch my DVD instead.
Funny note, we started the DVD after the TBS version started, we paused several times for knitting reasons and it was still shorter than the EDITED version. Commercials Suck!
So long story short, just Vol. 2 and only because it randomly crossed our path. I might have the attention span and will power of a goldfish. oo look, flakes…
I’m so happy for you with your success for Sunken Treasure. I’m been wanting to buy it but couldn’t justify the price when were struggling to keep out internet and electricity on right now. So thank you for making it available as a pdf. I just bought it and couldn’t believe how fast it came in. I’ll start reading it tonight 🙂
btw…love your blog and all your work. Especially love that you’re just you (geek and all) 🙂
I already bought (and loved) the print version so I don’t know if I’m going to pick it up but, as an eReader owner, I’m glad you chose a PDF format. It’s compatible with virtually everything, easily converted into other formats, and it lets me read stuff at work. (Only during lunch, I swear!)
I think the beauty of “Sunken Treasure” is that it really is a sampler of what you can do. Having never read anything of yours beyond the blog, it was just enough for me to get hooked on your writing. It’s a great intro to Wil Wheaton the Writer!
SATAN: So, how did YOU end up in hell?
ME: Wil Wheaton.
SATAN: Oh yea, I’ve been meaning to thank him for the population growth down here… and he was great on Criminal Minds…
Sounds good. The ones you have done so far have been great overall. No pressure or anything… 😉
Wil – Is there a vague release estimate for the Memories of the Future release? Which is a a whole collection of these TNG reviews, correct?
I think I had a look to see if you said when it was coming out but couldn’t find anything, apologies if it says in big letters at the top of your website 😉
The big question : When can we expect another ebook from you ?
I Really liked the part about Criminal Minds and the bit about the landspeeder.
If you hadn’t offered the book digitally i’d never read it.
Keep it up
thanks.
All we need is for someone to create a Wil Wheaton Text To Speech engine, then we can feed in the PDF contents and generate a pseudo-Stephen Hawking reading for us audio lovers.
Hopefully it will be out before summer, but I’m not guaranteeing that at the moment.
Funny you should ask …
Wil, glad you made this announcement on your awesome blog. I’m now the proud owner of some Sunken Treasure! So, have digital sales caught up with print sales yet? (By the way, hooray for taking the non-DRM route. If you’re ever in the NorCal area, I’d be honored if you signed my home-brew bound copy.)
Or you could get an audio version performed by me in the *very* near future. 😀
Thanks! Your blog is in my Google Reader, so I won’t miss that column. Also, in the past three days you have both left a comment on my blog and replied to a comment I left on your blog. May I start telling people that we’re friends now, because that would be really awesome.
I’m glad and totally not surprised it’s doing so well. 🙂
I bought a copy of the PDF right after you announced its availability, and, in a couple of steps, transferred it across to my OLPC XO-1. (I found out I had to upgrade the system software on that machine, too, but that’s another story.) Later, I took out the OLPC, used the Journal to open Sunken Treasure in the Reader activity, hit the “screen rotate” button, and twisted the display around into “tablet” mode. The result was a very readable E-book, that I could page through using the “game” buttons on the side of the screen, with the display in a “portrait” mode. Well done, and, if you release any more of these, I’ll likely cough up the dough for them.
I’ll also forward this blog entry to another author friend of mine who is interested in E-book publishing issues.
That is so AWESOME!
Thanks for sharing the experience, man.
Maybe I should do an “ask me whatever you want about indie publishing” thing, where we could talk all about stuff like this. Hmmm…
*Meanwhile, on a cloud overhead*
Baby Jesus: I totally told Dad at least 10 different times it was going to be a bad idea to let Satan get all the writers on his side. But nooo. “That’s nice baby Jesus. Go check on our wine supplies, I think they’re getting low.” “How about going into the kitchen and making everyone fish sandwiches and let the grownups talk.” It’s so not fair.
…. I wonder if the devil will lend me his box set of Criminal Minds though..
You’ve pretty much summed up a months worth of my “publishing and technology” class in one blog post. 🙂 It’s really nice to hear how this tech actually works for people. Way to go! And now i must find money to purchase said book…