Here's how I have created the beginnings of a profitable Kindle formatting and conversion service,
LiberWriter, from scratch.
Last Winter, I read one of the best business books I have read in a long time,
Rob Walling's Start Small, Stay Small:
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Rather than being a "big idea" book that includes one big idea and lots of stories to support it, it's a very practical book on how to go about creating a small online business. I've always been someone who loves to build things, from various open source projects, to diverse web sites that people have found valuable. However, I am not a "business guy". I'm not that good at making money, so the simple approach in the book is really better for people like me: make something and sell it. Advertising can certainly work, but it's so much harder to figure out the numbers compared with a product, where you can compare the cost of providing the product to the price people will pay for it. And that's just one thing; the book has tons of ideas about practical ways of going about putting together a profitable small online business. It's not a "get rich quick" book - part of the idea is that if you are looking at a niche that is fairly small, it will simply not be of interest to larger companies, so you aren't going to get outspent and outcompeted by them.
In any event, though, at about the same time I read the book, I was poking around looking at Amazon's KDP, which allows you to self publish for the Kindle, and noticing how difficult the process is. The native format of Amazon's books is HTML with several XML files thrown in for good measure. Now, for someone technical, that's certainly not an insurmountable obstacle, but for many authors, it's a very unpleasant prospect. Granted, you can also manipulate a Word file to make it suitable for the KDP, but even that is something that many people dont' find to be a productive use of their time. They're authors, and they want to write.
Having spotted a niche that looked interesting - I love to read, and I like the idea of helping out authors - I discarded the book idea I was looking at myself and did some writing of my own: source code for a project that would automate the process of converting and formatting Kindle books.
The core of the system was a fun evenings/weekends project, and soon it was able to produce pretty good books. After "inflicting" the beta version of the system on several people, such as Rich Bowen (thanks again, Rich!), I got it beat into shape and started accepting the first paying customers. It's very exciting to have those first few people pay for something you made - it's a great feeling!
Initially, my thought was to sell it as a way to write books directly for the Kindle, however, it soon became evident that 99% of people have already written their books with Microsoft Word, so what they were really interested in was a conversion and formatting system that would take a Word document, poke and prod, stitch and stretch it some, and output a nice looking book for the Kindle.
One of the lessons from Rob's book was that stuff doesn't have to be perfect if it works. Initially, I had people putting their word documents into LiberWriter not with the smooth(ish) upload process we have now, but by cutting and pasting in their documents! As a computer guy, doing things in a hacky way is sometimes very unpleasant, but you know what? It worked, and it was easy for people to handle, so I ran with it until a better system was in place.
Writing code was the easy part, and definitely within my "comfort zone". Some of the other things I've had to do have been much more difficult, and as a consequence, more of a learning experience.
For instance, I realized early on that the process would never be 100% automatic, so I'd have to get some people to work on the books, with the idea being to provide them tools to make the process as simple, quick, and easy as possible. I'm always on the lookout for new things to script within the system.
However, need people it does, and finding them and engaging them has been a difficult process. As per the book's suggestion, I've primarily used oDesk to find contractors, and have grardually begun to find some people who work really well. It has taken time, and has not been easy, though. I'm not an introvert, but in some ways I'm happiest when doing my own thing. Being the 'boss' is new. One of the tricky aspects of oDesk is that pretty much any job posting gets tons of responses, some of them from people who appear to have barely read the posting. One trick I learned is to request that the potential contractor creates an account with LiberWriter. Very simple and not a waste of time, and yet a majority of applicants ignored the request.
Through most of the spring and summer, LiberWriter remained something strictly for the evenings and weekends, as I was busy with client work during the days, and with my daughter during the afternoons, but as August rolled around, I found some more time on my hands, and really started investing more energy in LiberWriter. It has been very rewarding to see a corresponding increase in the number of customers. We (at this point, between myself and the contractors, LiberWriter is a group, and no longer "I") also raised prices - another valuable piece of advice from the book, and... pretty much anyone who writes for people jumping into online businesses. As tech people, we often tend to aim low in terms of prices. Indeed, soonish, prices will likely go up again.
Another challenge has been turning it as much as possible into a "productized service". Since Kindle books are fairly simple in what you can do with them, as long as you don't get too fancy, it's possible to automate *most* things, but not everything, so it's not just a product that people buy and it works and that's that; there's a human element involved, which means more communication, and more potential for things to go off the rails. I've been investing time in automating the workflow of the system, but have a lot more to do on that front. Also, one of the things our customers love about the service is being able to deal with "real people", something that is more difficult at Amazon. That's good for us in one way, but in the future, it will be critical to document things and make them as simple as possible to avoid generating unneccessary support requests, as it can easily take up a lot of time.
Indeed, because LiberWriter does attract customers who are often not all that technical, making the user experience as easy and straightforward for them as possible (and then some) is extremely important. It can be exasperating once in a while, but I do my best to channel any frustrated energy on my part into making the site ever easier and ever more straightforward. In other words, instead of "how the heck do they not get that?!" it's "what can I do to make sure the tools and information they need are even easier for them to get?". There's lots to do on that front, but on the whole it's actually part of the project that I've grown to like a lot. Rather than dealing with other techies like myself, our customers are people who really benefit from what we offer because we can save them so much time and frustration.
Marketing the system is fun, but another area where I have a lot to learn: I'm not a natural when it comes to marketing or selling. One thing that has worked well so far is finding forums where your target users hang out, and then.... spam them as often as possible? No way! Be yourself, and provide genuine help and value to people in the forums. By being on the level, and not trying to sell! sell! sell! people are friendlier and more receptive to your message. It can be time consuming, but I suppose it's the sort of thing where taking the wrong short cut could be very detrimental over the long haul.
Without disclosing too much, I don't think I'll ever get rich from LiberWriter, but it is incredibly satisfying to have created and marketed a product of my own that goes beyond just selling my own time. LiberWriter doesn't bring in as much as consulting, yet, but it feels like much more of an investment, something that will have some momentum of its own, and of course it has been an incredible learning experience. I like programming, but being outside of my "comfort zone", doing stuff that's new and challenging is also a very positive part of the project. If things continue to grow the way they have been, I could envision depending on LiberWriter as my primary source of income in the very near future. That's a bit of a jump into the unknown in some ways, but I'd love it. I have worked very hard on it lately, and one of the things I am enjoying is always having new ideas about how to improve every aspect of the system, from customer service to the mechanics of the conversion process, to tracking the finances. In some ways it's tiring because I'm thinking about it *all* the time, but it's that "good kind of tired".
It's been a tumultous summer, and in the past few weeks we (well, my wife much more than me!) had a new baby boy, and bought a house here in Padova. To keep things interesting for the future, I applied to the
Startup Chile program with LiberWriter. I suspect they're more interested in startups with high growth potential, but I feel strongly that the approach outlined in Rob's book is one that people outside of Silicon Valley, without easy access to venture capital and the huge talent pool that area has, should consider, rather than trying to copy what makes Silicon Valley work like it does.
Whether I get accepted or not, LiberWriter will continue to grow, and, I sincerely hope, thrive. A big thanks to all our customers, and to my wife Ilenia, and children, Helen and Daniel for tollerating all the time I spend with the computer.
I wrestled a bit with writing this post, as I don't want to "jinx things", and I've only just got a small taste of "success", but I've always enjoyed reading about how "ordinary people" have managed to create their own small businesses, people like those behind
Balsamiq, "
Bingo Card Creator", and the like, and I figure that writing up my own experiences is a way of "paying it forward".
So, this story begins in January 2001, when I applied in the Debian New
Maintainer Process.
I wanted to maintain Geneweb, which I was using to publish my
genealogy research results. And I wanted to keep it up-to-date while
upstream was doing a quite fast development.
Moreover, I quickly noticed that Geneweb had big trouble in respecting
the way data is organized on a Debian system, and respect the FHS. How
to have weveral users able to publish their data on the same server
without compromizing the overall system security, etc.
Upstream development didn't really care about that. Daniel de
Rauglaudre is an excellent genealogist and developer but he was not
interested in making Geneweb clean "the Debian way". For instance, at
that time, it wasn't easy to setup a server, where genealogy databases
could be published without having to manually launch a daemon in user
mode at each reboot.
Arranging this was indeed my first contribution. I contributed a few
patches to make it easier to turn Geneweb into something
FHS-compliant...and I developed init scripts and an organization
allowing one to have shared databases after system reboots.
That was rapidly a great introduction to Debian maintainer scripts and
even security-related challenges. And all this....because I needed it.
Basically, in 2001, the geneweb package adopted the organization it still has in Debian
and Ubuntu, 10 years later:
Continuing my 
Hot on the heels of the 
This month, I will have been with Canonical for 5 years. It s been fantastic, but I ve decided to move on. Next week, I m going to start working for Google, helping out with ChromeOS, which I m pretty excited about. I m sad to be leaving Canonical, but I comfort myself by knowing that I m not leaving Ubuntu or any other projects I m involved in. I believe in Ubuntu, I use it everywhere, and I m friends with so many of its people. And I m still core-dev, so I ll continue to break^Wsecure things as much as I can in Ubuntu, and continue working on getting similar stuff into Debian. :)
For nostalgic purposes, I dug up my first 
A bug-fix release 
Even though Enrico is not smiling on this picture, he s one of the friendliest Debian person that I know. I always enjoy his presentations because he can t refrain from inserting jokes or other funny tricks. 
That said he s serious too, there s lots of good stuff that he has developed over the years (starting with Debtags) and he has put a lot of effort in reforming the New Maintainer process. Read on to learn more about his various projects.
Raphael: Who are you?
Enrico: Hi, I m Enrico Zini, a DD from Italy. I m 35 and I work as a freelance Free Software developer. One of my historical roles in Debian is taking care of Debtags, but that is not all I do: my paid work led me to write and maintain some weather forecast related software in Debian, and recently I gained a Front Desk hat, and then a DAM hat.
Raphael: How did you start contributing to Debian?
Enrico: It was 2001, I was at uni, I was using Debian. At some point I wanted to
learn packaging so I read through the whole Policy from top to bottom.
Then I thought: why package only for myself? . There were many DDs at
my uni, and it only seemed natural to me to join Debian as well.
Evidently this was also natural for Zack [Note from editor: Stefano Zacchiroli], who had become DD 6 months
earlier and didn t hesitate to advocate me.
I found the Policy and the Developer s Reference to be very interesting
things to read, and I welcomed my AM s questions as an excuse to learn
more. I completely understand those people who have fun trying to answer
all the questions in the NM templates while they wait for an AM.
With my super DAM powers I can see that my AM report was submitted on
October 16, 2001 by my AM Martin Michlmayr, and that James Troup created
my account 9 days later, on October 25.
Raphael: You have a special interest in the New Maintainer (NM) Process
since you are a Debian Account Manager (DAM) and a member of the NM Frontdesk.
Thanks to your work the process is much less academic/bureaucratic than it
used to be. Can you remember us the main changes?
Enrico: One of the first things I noticed when I become a Front Desk member is
that there was a tendency to advocate people too early, thinking by
the time they ll get an AM, they ll know enough .
Unfortunately, this didn t always work, and once the real NM process
started it would turn into a very long and demotivating experience both
for the applicant and for the AM. So we tried 
A commentor on 
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This was the second most rainy day of the year, so far. 28 hours of solid
rain and counting. Good time to take stock of the water situation here at the
cabin after a year's experience.
The springs were as seasonal as I'd feared. After running strongly
all Spring, the main spring ebbed and died in the Summer months. By mid-July
there was no remaining source of potable water. If I had not been away so
much over the summer it would have been worse. As it was, I needed
only twenty gallons of water hauled from neighbor Lee's well.
The large cistern was filled in a single night during the most rainy period
this Spring, and provided wash water for two months of the summer, and that
only lowered it by a quarter. So I could have been less sparing with it,
and not relied so much on rain water catchment for supplimental wash water.
Today I replaced the pump, so I can use the pressure tank and have running
water in the house. I could have done this earlier, but what can I say; I
enjoy hauling buckets of water, when it doesn't involve breaking ice.
In the winter when there's firewood to haul instead, I'll enjoy the
indoor plumbing.
Also today, I may have finally fixed the pipe to the large cistern
properly, so it won't only fill at the heaviest rain times. Along with the
ability to cross-pump water from the small to the large cistern, it should
be easier to keep it filled, and I might be able to reduce the turbidity
enough that it's potable eventually. Will see.
I don't live in a dry region, but this is a relatively dry place for the
area. It's been interesting to get a taste of what it'd be like to live
somewhere where water is actually scarce.
