blog/data/2016-08-05-free-culture-sales.txt

   1 Title: Sales number for the Free Culture translation, first half of 2016
   2 Tags: english, docbook, freeculture
   3 Date: 2016-08-05 22:45
   4
   5 <p>As my regular readers probably remember, the last year I published
   6 a French and Norwegian translation of the classic
   7 <a href="http://www.free-culture.cc/">Free Culture book</a> by the
   8 founder of the Creative Commons movement, Lawrence Lessig.  A bit less
   9 known is the fact that due to the way I created the translations,
  10 using docbook and po4a, I also recreated the English original.  And
  11 because I already had created a new the PDF edition, I published it
  12 too.  The revenue from the books are sent to the Creative Commons
  13 Corporation.  In other words, I do not earn any money from this
  14 project, I just earn the warm fuzzy feeling that the text is available
  15 for a wider audience and more people can learn why the Creative
  16 Commons is needed.</p>
  17
  18 <p>Today, just for fun, I had a look at the sales number over at
  19 Lulu.com, which take care of payment, printing and shipping.  Much to
  20 my surprise, the English edition is selling better than both the
  21 French and Norwegian edition, despite the fact that it has been
  22 available in English since it was first published.  In total, 24 paper
  23 books was sold for USD $19.99 between 2016-01-01 and 2016-07-31:</p>
  24
  25 <table border="0">
  26 <tr><th>Title / language</th><th>Quantity</th></tr>
  27 <tr><td><a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/culture-libre/paperback/product-22645082.html">Culture Libre / French</a></td><td align="right">3</td></tr>
  28 <tr><td><a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/fri-kultur/paperback/product-22441576.html">Fri kultur / Norwegian</a></td><td align="right">7</td></tr>
  29 <tr><td><a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/free-culture/paperback/product-22440520.html">Free Culture / English</a></td><td align="right">14</td></tr>
  30 </table>
  31
  32 <p>The books are available both from Lulu.com and from large book
  33 stores like Amazon and Barnes&Noble.  Most revenue, around $10 per
  34 book, is sent to the Creative Commons project when the book is sold
  35 directly by Lulu.com.  The other channels give less revenue.  The
  36 summary from Lulu tell me 10 books was sold via the Amazon channel, 10
  37 via Ingram (what is this?) and 4 directly by Lulu.  And Lulu.com tells
  38 me that the revenue sent so far this year is USD $101.42.  No idea
  39 what kind of sales numbers to expect, so I do not know if that is a
  40 good amount of sales for a 10 year old book or not.  But it make me
  41 happy that the buyers find the book, and I hope they enjoy reading it
  42 as much as I did.</p>
  43
  44 <p>The ebook edition is available for free from
  45 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">Github</a>.</p>
  46
  47 <p>If you would like to translate and publish the book in your native
  48 language, I would be happy to help make it happen.  Please get in
  49 touch.</p>