<story><title>Haskell Web Development: A Freely Available Book</title><url>https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/haskell-web-development-a-freely-available-book#/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>jasode</author><text>John Resig (of JQuery fame) got a $7500 advance[1] for a Javascript book.  I think it&amp;#x27;s reasonable to assume that a Javascript book would be 100x (or even 1000x) more popular than a Haskell book.  To this day, I don&amp;#x27;t believe he&amp;#x27;s made much beyond that advance.  I doubt he&amp;#x27;s reached $20k since 2007.&lt;p&gt;If the author can crowdsource $20k, more power to her.  On the other hand, maybe the monetary threshold needs a reality check.    EDIT ADD:  I looked again and noticed that the $20k is a &amp;quot;flexible goal&amp;quot; so presumably, the author will write the book even without reaching that amount; therefore, the author already understands market forces at work that might prevent a $20k payout.&lt;p&gt;(Of course it&amp;#x27;s possible that the Haskell book market can charge a premium because of a uniquely enthusiastic audience .  E.g., doctors pay $500 for a book that shows surgical procedures and the volume of sales is only in the hundreds.)&lt;p&gt;In the economics of books, the big money is fiction.  (50 Shades, Harry Potter, etc).  To a lesser extent, you have some non-fiction titles making a decent amount of money (Chicken Soup for the Soul, Eat Pray Love, etc).  Way down on the totem pole are the trade publications like computer books.  The economics on that level basically dictate that you slave away writing &amp;quot;Java for Dummies&amp;quot; for less than minimum wage.  You then use it as a &lt;i&gt;business calling card&lt;/i&gt; and let it open doors to speaking engagements at conferences and attract consulting gigs.&lt;p&gt;[1]&amp;gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;ejohn.org&amp;#x2F;blog&amp;#x2F;programming-book-profits&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;ejohn.org&amp;#x2F;blog&amp;#x2F;programming-book-profits&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Haskell Web Development: A Freely Available Book</title><url>https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/haskell-web-development-a-freely-available-book#/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>brbsix</author><text>For anyone interested, I found the author&amp;#x27;s Patreon page here: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.patreon.com&amp;#x2F;user.php?v=queertypes&amp;amp;ty=h&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.patreon.com&amp;#x2F;user.php?v=queertypes&amp;amp;ty=h&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Cost of living is listed as $5k&amp;#x2F;mo on this page, which contrasts with the $6.6k&amp;#x2F;mo listed on the IndieGogo campaign.&lt;p&gt;The author is a self-described anti-capitalist but this campaign looks an awful lot like free-market economics at work. Rather than simply writing the book for free and accepting donations, the author has simply stated a price ($20k) for a product (an open source book).&lt;p&gt;I also found a blog post here &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;blog.cppcabrera.com&amp;#x2F;posts&amp;#x2F;53-announcing-queer-types.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;blog.cppcabrera.com&amp;#x2F;posts&amp;#x2F;53-announcing-queer-types....&lt;/a&gt; where the author goes into more personal detail about the project. Apparently the $20k would cover in excess of 3 months living, whatever that means. There was even mention of releasing additional books if funding reached $60k+. Sounds pretty far-fetched.</text></comment>