As my regular readers probably remember, I published a French and +Norwegian translation of the classic Free Culture book by the founder +of the Creative Commons movement, Lawrence Lessig, the last year. A +bit less known is the fact that due to the way I created the +translations, using docbook and po4a, and also recreated the English +original. And because I already had created a new the PDF edition, I +published it too. The revenue from the book is sent to the Creative +Commons Corporation. So I do not earn any money from the project, I +just earn the warm fuzzy feeling that the text is available for a +wider audience and more people can learn why the Creative Commons is +needed.
+ +Today, just for fun, I had a look at the sales number over at +Lulu.com, which take care of payment, printing and shipping. Much to +my surprise, the English edition is selling better than both the +French and Norwegian edition, despite the fact that it has been +available in English since it was first published. In total, 24 paper +books was sold for USD $19.99 between 2016-01-01 and 2016-07-31:
+ +Title / language | Quantity |
---|---|
Culture Libre / French | 3 |
Fri kultur / Norwegian | 7 |
Free Culture / English | 14 |
The books are available both from Lulu.com and from large book +stores like Amazon and Barnes&Noble. Most revenue, around $10 per +book, is sent to the Creative Commons project when the book is sold +directly by Lulu.com. The summary from Lulu tell me 10 books was sold +via the Amazon channel, 10 via Ingram (what is this?) and 4 directly +by Lulu. And Lulu.com tells me that the revenue sent so far this year +is USD $101.42. No idea what kind of sales numbers to expect, so I do +not know if that is a good amount of sales for a 10 year old book or +not. But it make me happy that the buyers find the book, and I hope +they enjoy reading it as much as I did.
+ +The ebook edition is available for free from +Github.
+ +If you would like to translate and publish the book in your native +language, I would be happy to help make it happen. Please get in +touch.
+ +