If you happen to be a major company that produces a popular development framework, operating system, or even just a popular application, your product is likely a bigger business than what you see on your quarterly statements. In the computer world, where everything complicated is voodoo to those without the knowledge and those with the knowledge are constantly craving a new edge, all manner of books, tapes, videos, and other instructional sets are all the rage.

Whether it’s the latest release of .NET, a new version of Ubuntu, or a new version of Adobe Photoshop fresh off the press, the information industry is gigantic and there are people making easy money simply by knowing how to use your products.

Books

Even though the Internet makes information sharing an easy feat, books are still a huge industry. A 2007 SEC filing puts the book industry at $13.2 billion. That is definitely not small potatoes for an industry that some believed would die with the rise of the Internet.

However, if you step back and think about it for a second, for some, paper is still the one true medium for information. Books, with there physical setbacks (who wants to store 50 books on a shelf when you can store 500 on a 3.5″ drive) are still one of the most popular ways to spread information to date. This leads me to how new revisions to your software mean someone can get rich selling a book.

.NET 3.5 can serve as a good example of this. With the release of .NET 3.5, new things have been added, old things removed… its a small change in name with a big change in attitude. For people publishing books about how to use (and abuse?) .NET, its nothing more than dollar signs dancing in their head. The book racket on new software is probably one of the best I can think of to date simply because of the re-read factor.

If you produce a book on .NET 1.0 and it sells, say, two million copies. Then, at the release of .NET 2.0, publish a new book, chances are roughly ~90% of the content will be the same save the changes between 1.0 and 2.0 that need outlining in certain sections. The percentage of readers likely to repurchase a new copy of the book for these minor changes is small, but there will be sum… that’s double-dipping my friends. That’s getting someone to pay for almost the same exact product two or more times.

I won’t even talk about the racket on college students with math and science books — that’s for another post.

Video

Video can work just the same. Have you ever saw the commercial of the “video professor” guy? He isn’t getting free advertising and video commercials with sound and color are expensive as hell (think, millions). So, this guy HAS to be making money on silly video tutorials that teach you the most basic of the most basic.

Considering it works for basic programs like MS Exchange and Internet Explorer, the same concept HAS to work for complicated programs like Adobe Photoshop, Macromedia Dreamweaver, etc. There are guys out there that release new videos for new revisions of software, that are making re-buy sales on the same people that bought the old version a year or less ago.

Too easy not to make too much money.

Other

Hell, in some circumstances you don’t even need to publish a hard medium. There are sites out there that publish this information online in regularly updated intervals and charge monthly fees to browse the written or video information. These guys are truly the kingpins because they have extremely low costs and garner some percentage of guaranteed income each month provided they keep churning out solid information.

Low cost + monthly fee = BIG money

Conclusion

The information business is an industry you rarely see represented in traditional stock markets, but is a huge industry that churns billions of dollars. Now, if only I could figure out how to break into such an industry…