Rework: The new business book from 37signals | Hacker News Reader

Rework: The new business book from 37signals

37signals.com

43 pointsnreece20 comments

I wish I could market a product as well as these guys can market a part-time book project.

You just need to turn your "security for Startups" presentation into a nice set of 20 separate blog posts over the course of three months. Don't blog about your products; blog about your expertise and let people find your products. (There's a reason they keep a separate product blog to SvN.)

They'll probably write a bit about that, I'm guessing. (Though I expect that they'll probably elide one key detail: great marketing for the product you release next starts about six years ago.)

Jason is going to do a live audience interview about it on Mixergy soon. Hit me up if you have idea for how I can make the program more useful for you.

Try and get some interesting numbers out of him :-)

If there's anyone that can pull some numbers out of Jason, I think it's Andrew. Look forward to the interview on Mixergy!

Thanks guys. Last time he came to Mixergy he gave some numbers, but not as many as I tried to get.

This time, I'll work a little harder to convince him.

Comes with its own scratch & sniff axe body spray cover.

I wonder if the black background on their book's icon at the bottom is supposed to be there or not. Since it's a PNG and everything else has a transparent background I am guessing it is a mistake. Silly little detail..I know...but I am a designer so this stuff jumps out at me. I can't wait to read the book though.

http://37signals.com/images/icon-crumple.png

What's the problem you see? Looks fine to me.

He is probably using ipad and saw the blue flash icon.

The background of the icon is #000 but the footer background is slightly >#000, something like #111 or #222.

Interesting they decided to take the route of going through a publisher instead of the self-publish route as they did the first time around.

Possible reason: They didn't want to deal with publishers insisting they're "unproven" with their first book; better to do it on your own if you're sure about your fan base etc. Now, they have proven success and can demand much better terms.

There's also the alternate argument of doing it yourself the first time just to help build your community, then once you've pushed that as far as it can go, use mainstream media to help push you to the next level, since they have connections you likely can't get in any sane amount of time.

They said wanted to write a best-seller, so they literally sold out. :-)

More here: http://37signals.com/svn/posts/1441-announcing-our-new-book-...

What do they mean by "pick a fight"?

They mean you should read the book to find out. Making bold and outlandish claims is a typical way to get people to look at your product.

It's probably a variation on 'opinionated software,' if I had to guess.

http://gettingreal.37signals.com/ch04_Make_Opinionated_Softw...

They mean drawing inspiration from the competition by taking a strong stance about what they're doing wrong; make their approach your enemy: http://gettingreal.37signals.com/ch02_Have_an_Enemy.php

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