Practical Vim is a best-seller!
One year ago today, Practical Vim was released as a beta book. I’m thrilled with how the book has been received and I’d like to thank everybody who has purchased a copy. After a year of sales, I’m happy to report that Practical Vim is a best-seller!
I’ll cut straight to the numbers. To date, we’ve sold a total of 9611 copies. That breaks down as 6347 ebooks and 3264 paperbacks (roughly 2 to 1). The ebook figure is bang up to date, but the true number of paperbacks sold is higher. That data comes in from Amazon and other vendors with a delay of a month or two. I’d hoped to sell 10k copies of Practical Vim in its first year. I thought that was an ambitious target, but it turns out to have been a good guess!
The Pragmatic Bookshelf offer a great deal for their authors: I get 50% of the profits from each sale. The combined total from my 4 royalty cheques so far is $68,978. That averages out at roughly $7 in my pocket for each sale. I get considerably less than that for each sale made through Amazon, but I get more than that for each direct sale through Pragmatic Bookshelf. Thanks again to those of you who bought from my publisher.
From start to finish, it took me 18 months to complete the book. I was working on other things as well during most of that time, but I was able to work full time on the book for several months. When I set out to write the book, I estimated that it would take me 4 months. Writing a book is harder than I expected!
Each month, the PragPub magazine issues a list of what’s hot in the Pragmatic Bookshelf catalog. Since Practical Vim was released, it has never left the top 10! Practical Vim was #1 in April, #2 in May, #4 in June, #4 in July, #7 in August, #3 in September, #1 in October, #2 in November, #5 in December, #9 in January, #8 in February, #7 in March. The two occasions when Practical Vim hit the number #1 spot followed the announcements of the beta release on 18 April 2012 and the final release on 26 September 2012.
Critical acclaim
The reviews of Practical Vim have been terrific. Linux Format Magazine rated it 9/10. To date, Practical Vim has 32 reviews on Amazon.com as well as 7 reviews on the UK version of the site. 5 stars!
If you’ve read Practical Vim, please take a moment to review it on Amazon. It really makes a difference. As Johan Aulin said:
Decided I want a Vim book for my birthday. Based on Amazon reviews, I settled on Practical Vim by @nelstrom as the best choice.
I’m so grateful to all of you who have reviewed my book or recommended it by word of mouth. Thanks again.
