The Kindness of Strangers
I just thought I'd give a little update on my Painless... books since I set the minimum price to $0, or “free-ninety-nine” as one of my friends always says. Which doesn't make sense, because that sounds like “free plus 99¢” which isn't what he meant at all. But I digress.
Anyway, I made all three of my tech books free when the world went into lockdown, and unsurprisingly, and gratifyingly, a number of people have taken me up on that offer in the meantime. But here's what's interesting:
Since I made the books free the number of paid sales has gone down. This isn't a surprise. The surprise is that the amount people pay has gone up significantly. In the past I would see a few sales a day, all at the minimum price, so $14.99 for the “trilogy” and around $5 for each individual book.
Now I'm only seeing a few paid sales a week, but a lot of people are paying my “recommended” price of $14.99 per book or more.
I'm touched, honestly. I recognize that there are a lot of things going on in the world right now that require us all to be careful with our resources. But there are people out there who feel they have sufficient to toss me some money simply because they are kind.
I've said this before on Twitter, but I'll say it again here:
Thank you.
Leanpub quite rightly doesn't give me any information on the people who buy my books. Each sale is anonymized and even though they keep track so I can email people with updates they never show me email addresses. So I don't know who you are, but thank you.
If you want to pick up my books on Vim, Tmux, and Git, they are available here, for free:
The Painless Productivity Trilogy
I hope you find them useful!