As I wrote in a previous blog entry, you don't write computer trade books to become rich. In today's soft technical book market, there's a good chance that you'll not receive one penny of your royalty, instead just receiving whatever advance monies you agree upon with your publisher. This, at least, is the state for writing computer trade books geared toward ASP/ASP.NET developers. One thing that I've always wondered about, though, is how other types of books fare in the market. In absolute terms, as well as in royalty dollars, how does an ASP.NET book compare to one of those “Office 2003 for Dummies“-type books? Another question that had been on my mind was how ASP.NET books sold compared to PHP books, or JSP books. My initial assumption would be that there was a strong correlation between market share and book sales. That is, if there were twice as many Web developers working on PHP than JSP, a PHP-focused book would sell, roughly, twice as many copies as a comparable JSP book.
Some of these questions on sales numbers were answered for me when I stumbled across Tim O'Reilly's State of the Computer Book Market blog entry. Tim's entry, unfortunately, does not discuss why the technical book market is so soft, it merely takes a gander at some of the recent statistics from Nielsen BookScan. These statistics help answer some of the questions I addressed in the preceding paragraph.
First, Tim shows a graph (replicated below) of book sales by month, broken down into the various technical book genres.
This graph shows what I had assumed: application-focused books significantly outperform those books written for developers. This makes sense, as there are many more secretaries needing to learn the ins and outs of Word and Excel than there are developers needing to learn the latest programming language du jour. Too, Platform books are outselling software development books. I assume these are end users wanting to learn more about Windows XP, or Mac OSX. What's depressing is that software development books are virtually dead last. Yes, they're a smidgen above the Networking Admin books, but the only real distance it has above other categories of books are Unknown and Other. While it's great not to be in last place, it's a bit disheartening to say, “Well, at least we're better than Unknown and Other.”
The end of the year NetScan results for 2002 and 2003 show what all of us authors knew from our royalty statements: the technical book market shrank by nearly 11% from 2002 to 2003. While Tim doesn't share statistics pre-dating 2002, trust me - it has shrunk even more leading up to 2002.
Tim's entry shares one more interesting graph (shown below), which shows how books by platform fare. Notice that even though Windows boasts a 90%+ marketshare, only slightly more than half the books are targetted toward Windows developers or end users.
Tim notes this greater level of enthusiasm from Mac/Linux users than from Windows users, but does not venture a guess as to why Mac and Linux books sell a disproportionate number of books compared to their installed-base marketshare. Personally, I think the reason is that Windows users are less focused, on average, than Mac or Linux users. Now, I am not slighting Windows users by calling them unfocused. To see what I mean, consider the following: imagine you have a friend who says she wants a computer. You ask her what she plans do use it for. She says, “I dunno, surfing the Web, checking email. Games, maybe.” There are a lot of end users who buy a computer with no real point in mind. Maybe they get it because everyone else on the block has one, or because their kids keep bugging them to get one. The point is, what type of computer is this person going to get? One from Dell or Gateway or from Bust Buy or CompUSA. One that will come with Windows. They'll likely not fork over the dough for a Mac, and there's no way they'll have the know-how or patience to use Linux. So they end up with a Windows box.
Now, someone who did not get the computer to perform a focused task, what do they need a computer book for? They can figure out how to get online, how to chat with IM, and how to install and play a game they bought. These users aren't doing focused tasks that require an in-depth look at a particular topic. Hence, no sale here. Mac and Linux users are likely more focused. They got their computer for some very specific reason, and need to learn some very specific task very well. They won't balk at dropping $30 for a book to help them master whatever it is they are needing to accomplish.