Why We Are Self-Publishing the Aviary Cookbook

The heart of this piece is the author&#x27;s realization that (relative to their cover price) glossy, expensive cookbooks don&#x27;t actually cost that much to print:<p>&quot;Until one-day I got lucky. Just by chance I spoke to the print broker who actually worked on the exact bid for that famous book. And he told me precisely: that super amazing cookbook that I truly loved, which at the time retailed for $50 and had won every award imaginable, cost $3.83 per book to print, shrink wrap, and ship to the US. I thought he must be mistaken and I said so. “No way.” He replied, “well that was the first edition, I’m sure the cost has gone down since then.” He thought I was implying that $3.83 per book was too high!&quot;<p>One implication of this is that the cost difference between digital and physical publishing is probably much less than most people think. While a weighty tome may literally feel like it&#x27;s worth a hefty premium, this is due more to consumer psychology than anything inherent to cost of production.

The publishing industry is slowly going to unravel.<p>If you write a very successful book with traditional publishing cut you might make 30-40k. Average is lower. There are power laws at play, but as few as 5% make it past six figures.<p>So when I wrote a book about step-by-step user acquisition (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;secretsaucenow.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;secretsaucenow.com</a>) I self-published. Made $60,000-ish in presales, sold another $60,000 while I was finishing the book. And now pull in 4-8k&#x2F;month.<p>If I signed a deal with a publishing company selling the same number of books I would have made ~10k. Instead I found a freelance editor and typesetter ($400), printed the first 100 ($700), and sell the vast majority as eBooks. It&#x27;s done well, but not earth shatteringly well, and I&#x27;m up above $140k in profit.<p>There is very little reason nowadays, IMO, to not self-publish.

Great writeup on the under-belly of publishing!<p>The first 11 books I wrote were published by mainstream publishers (McGraw-Hill, J. Riley, Springer-Verlag, Morgan Kaufman). While I am grateful for the advance monies paid and great support in writing, I eventually decided that I wanted the freedom to write on whatever topics I wanted and all my new stuff is self published, first through lulu.com and now through leanpub.com.<p>I encourage people to write a book (or books). It is a really fun process. I would suggest using a publisher for a book and then also try self publishing using leanpub.com or some other platform. Decide for yourself with you prefer.

Always exciting to get something up on the hacker news board... weekly reader here for a long time.<p>Happy to answer any questions you may have.<p>-- Nick

I&#x27;m in the process of writing a book about FinTech industry holistically and I&#x27;m interested to know if someone has any tip of publishing business-technology book. My target readers are students, professionals either in tech or finance, entrepreneurs and investors.<p>If anyone could share a bit more about the cost of self publishing would be great.<p>For some reason, I&#x27;m more worried about the copy editing at this point than anything else.

I&#x27;m actually surprised that printed cookbooks are still economically viable using <i>any</i> kind of publishing model.<p>They remind me of those books from the 1980s filled with printed copies of the source code for computer programs. You would input the text from the book using your keyboard, and compile&#x2F;interpret the program. That was how many programs were distributed, because a printed book on a truck had higher bandwidth than any other readily-available channel. And then there were also books about <i>learning to write your own programs</i> that may also have included some source code. I think that cookbooks filled with recipes are like the former, and books about <i>learning to make your own recipes</i> are like the latter.<p>Those recipe books simply became obsolete with ubiquitous Internet access. Countless recipes are open source and freely available. Barely anything in a recipe book is eligible for copyright protection. You can basically rewrite instructions in your own words and make your own drawings or photographs, if any, and that boxed spaghetti with canned marinara recipe is now printable as part of your own cookbook.<p>So it is very smart to--as with the book in the article--load up all your recipes with copyright-protected photographs, rather than leaving them out to cut print costs. But even so, that book as described seemed more about trademarks and brands than content. It might be useful for franchisees or for professional imitators. When I am cooking at home, I rarely even refer to a recipe, and when I do, it is just one of the thousands of results from an Internet search.<p>Does anyone here still bother buying cookbooks? Would it not be more useful to simply learn how to cook without referring to recipes? Who needs that level of restaurant-style uniformity and consistency in their own kitchen?

Kind of off-topic on-topic: I went to that restaurant&#x2F;bar in Chicago to try their cocktails and it was one of the best experience I went through there. Way better than the Milk room (haven&#x27;t tried Violet hours though). I wish there was an Aviary where I live now :(<p>They do &quot;experimental&quot; cocktails (or artistic cocktails). Cocktail in a bag, Smokey cocktail, bubble tea cocktail, cocktail in a tea pot, ... and they taste amazing as well.<p>If you read that blogpost I suggest googling or checking on TripAdvisor&#x2F;Yelp for some visual pictures :)

Had a chance to do the kitchen table at the Aviary.<p>Pretty unforgettable experience despite how much booze they give you. I&#x27;m definitely more interesting in this cookbook knowing it was self-published.

Mr OT here. IMO the best cookbook ever written was the one my mother had in secondary school. I don&#x27;t know the name of it and I&#x27;m sure it&#x27;s long out of print. She swore by it, used it all her life and was a marvellous cook.

Why We Are Self-Publishing the Aviary Cookbook?<p>too many birds ...