Writing the Redux book
This is the story of making money from a FREE book on Redux (http://redux-book.com/)
It started 3 years ago.
What was supposed to be a 4 month project, stretched to a year of writing, editing, rewriting, adding code, removing code and rewriting.
After deciding not to use the regular publishing houses, we set out on our own with Leanpub’s self publishing-tools (best decision we ever made). We hired a professional editor and managed to push out the first edition towards Redux’s birthday.
Outselling J.K. Rowling
Well, that didn’t happen. Actually very little happened when we set for a humble price of $19 for the book. Some good twitter noise and the interest began to die.
It took us a few months to really think about our goals. And making money off the book — was never a major one. After a lot of consulting and work on projects — we really wanted to show how large and complex applications can be built with Redux. Exposure was our main goal.
And so on a faithful day, we moved the price to the left.. all the way to $0.
Free is profitable
It worked beyond all belief. The free — donation based- book took of!
4 Months at $19 price point: $400
16 Months at FREE price point: $12,000
But mainly, the exposure skyrocketed. From the original ~90 downloads (discounts, gifts, etc). The total readers reached +21,000.
What is next
After a few months of hard work — we are happy to announce the 2nd edition!
Many improvements in the Middleware, Tests and State management chapters we have done. And we hope the book truly shows how to best use Redux in 2018.
And of course, it’s FREE.
Please download and enjoy!