Raganwald's "How to Do What You Love" is free today
leanpub.com
leanpub.com
Just a reminder, my ebook is free, too:
html on my blog: http://edweissman.com/53640595
Or if you prefer a pdf, someone I don't even know (thank you, whoever you are) was kind enough to put one here: http://v25media.s3.amazonaws.com/edw519_mod.pdf
I also made a slightly reformatted HTML version here http://static.v25media.com/edw519_mod.html - I just added anchor links so it was easier to navigate the sections and such.
Thanks for putting that all together, it's been an inspiration. Looking forward to Raganwald's as well.
There might be people who like those formats :)
http://www.mediafire.com/?b736ucvz8rn7phu
PS: I read the book and gave it to a few friends too. Really good advices for life there. I think it's a must read for young, new programmers.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2329397
Getting Mr Braithwaite to publish at Leanpub.com is also a sign of success.
When we launched we were based on a hacked up version of WordPress MU. We've pivoted a couple times, and Leanpub today is based on writing your book in Markdown on your own computer (or iPad), and syncing with Leanpub using Dropbox.
Along the way we had a brief period where we used GitHub instead of Dropbox, but we felt that limited us to only highly technical authors. (We do use Git internally still, but Dropbox is a lot more accessible and it makes our publish workflow really nice.)
I guess a year ago we were slightly ahead in our timing, or my post was too long, or (probably) I didn't emphasize Eric Ries and Venture Hacks enough...
http://hnpickup.appspot.com/hnpickup_ratio_visual_analysis.p...
More to come. Probably, this week I will get around publishing something on the "karma growth effect".
BTW, I've sent an email to "help@leanpub.com" about latex math support. So far I haven't heard back.
The short answer is that we don't support it. We could if we were just using LaTeX => PDF (which we do), but then things would blow up when doing epub and mobi.
I'll take this as another vote for the feature, though :).
However, the publisher has not done its job here. I'm reading the Mobi version on Kindle for iPhone, and the constant formatting errors make it difficult to follow the text. This includes missing punctuation, missing indentation on blockquotes that make it impossible to see where the quote ends, random font changes in and out of a monospace font, random spacing around headers, and the lack of a table of contents.
If you want to call a collection of blog posts a "book" and ask for money for it, you need to at least proofread your output files and make sure basic standards of copy-editing hold. As it stands I will avoid buying from Leanpub in the future.
We'll look into the formatting issues in the Mobi version. A couple things:
1. Leanpub is not a "publisher" in the sense of having proofreaders, editors, etc. We're a website that authors can use to self-publish ebooks, including in-progress ebooks. Self-publishing an in-progress ebook lets you iterate based on feedback like this.
2. We have an unconditional 100% refund policy. So if you're unhappy with your purchase for any reason just email your PayPal receipt to hello@leanpub.com and we'll refund your money, no questions asked.
Thanks!
Peter (Leanpub co-founder)
This is especially true since we're a self-publishing website and we exercise virtually no control over what we sell.
In terms of numbers, we've had thousands of purchases and only a handful of refunds. I think we've had about 10 or 15 refunds in total. (I do the refunds myself, manually, via PayPal's web interface.)
In terms of how we handle refunds with respect to the author: we subtract them from royalties. We pay royalties quarterly so we don't have issues about whether the author gets paid before a refund is requested -- if someone wants a refund they usually ask for it within a day of purchasing!
Now, we may be lucky here, in that the quality of books sold on Leanpub is pretty high, even though almost all the books are in-progress books that the author is iterating on. As we grow we may have more of an issue; who knows, someday we may even need to automate the refund process...
Anybody have tips on how I can improve my communication?
1) Oral communication: Advertise your office/skype/mobile phone number in your sig or any comms with colleagues. Then solicit them to phone you for any reason. You will get calls. Then talk to them instead of letting it go to voicemail.
2) Written: Prefer e-mail over twitter/sms/irc. Never write one word or sentence rattles unless it is a response in kind. If someone has written a thoughtfully written, detailled and professional email to you, return the favor.
3) When it is more convenient to fire off a quick email or text to someone sitting across the hall, get up and go talk to them instead. This is even more important if you don't know them personally. Introduce yourself, engage in conversation.
4) Nerves are for the nervous. If you aren't nervous in front of friends, relatives, or complete strangers at the grocery store, you shouldn't be nervous in front of your colleagues or bosses. They cut and bleed just as readily as the rest of those you know.
Now that I've read the first 3 pages I want to pay for it. Is there a way of doing this from the site itself, or do I need to "re-buy" the book?
>Your résumé would look better on top of a funding proposal than under a cover letter.
Simply because it allows me to pay with something I'll always have handy, my user credentials. At any given point, I might or might not have a credit card close by. (Yes, I read HN in bed :)
Amazon > Google = Stripe (I haven't used Stripe before and would be interested in the opportunity to try it out)
Like a lot of people I'm vaguely uncomfortable with giving credit card details to companies I haven't heard of before & whilst I have a Paypal ID, I only use it for those places insist on Paypal (eBay mainly), so I can never remember the password and have to look it up. (Yeah, yeah, KeePass et al, I know, I'll get round to it at some point...) I use Amazon and Google often enough that logging in to them in order to make a payment isn't such a hurdle.
It's a nice touch, but honestly, it just reminds me to use a wildcard.
Also, the site creating a "profile" for me when all I did was download a book makes me feel "sucked in" a little. I know, rationally, that there's really no downside to it for me, but I still can't shake the feeling that this is more than I agreed to.
This motivated me to publish a book I'm finishing under the same model.
This page contains the following errors:
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Update: PDF works, but requires a lot of scrolling on the iphone.
Also, it's a 40 page "book".
We'll look into this issue. Which generation iPad do you have?
All Leanpub books include free lifetime updates, so when it's resolved you'll have a free update. (You also get free updates if the author updates the book for any reason, like adding new content, etc. We believe in self-publishing in-progress ebooks, so that you can iterate on your book like you would a startup. We call this idea lean publishing.)
Also, we have an unconditional 100% refund policy, so if you're unhappy for any reason just forward your PayPal receipt to hello@leanpub.com and we'll refund your money.
Thanks!
Peter, Leanpub co-founder
Do my other freeloaders feel guilty? Or are there none? Or are there some but don't feel bad at all?
Edit: Just read the "Why You Need a Degree to Work at BigCo" section and already it's worth a lot more than the asking price.
I immediately second guessed whether or not it was worth downloading and ultimately decided I would be willing to pay if it proved valuable. I reviewed the table of contents and saw the chapter "The single most important thing you must do to improve your programming career" so I decided to download it. I skimmed the chapter, decided it wasn't worth my money, deleted the pdf, immediately unsubscribed from the website, and then came back to HN and wrote this comment.
Is the design good because it urges a person to pay? Probably. Is the design dangerous because of the violent reaction people, like myself, get from the feeling of guilt it triggers? Probably.
What we were going for was more of a "little nudge", if you have the disposable income. That's why the slider goes from a pastel green to a neutral "meh" grey (instead of a red, which would make you feel bad) when you go lower, and to a nicer, darker green as you go higher.
On second thought, I guess if we wanted to be evil about this we could have some graphic where you have a dinner plate full of food, and as you lower the slider you're removing side dishes (and say if you go free then the entree goes too), and if you raise the slider you add say a glass of wine, a dessert, etc -- now that would be a fun design to A/B test :)
So what's the best thing to do? Give it away free and hope the honor system works or force payment and have unhappy customers? I don't see a best answer here, unfortunately.
They also feel as other people have a moral obligation to comport their business affairs to the specifications of the pathological customer, and this is a very nonreciprocal obligation, because pathological customers will do absolutely nothing to change their desired behaviors as a result of a business relationship.
I'd say what you should do though, now that you got the thing for free - is actually read it - then leave feedback.
This is a book I’ve already written, so it’s a sunk cost for me... It’s all blog posts that others have found useful or meaningful in their search for decent work with decent people at a decent wage. The more people find good work, the more we all benefit. If you’re out of work, you can’t click through ads to buy stuff, you can’t employ others, you can’t subscribe to services.
Helping you be healthy, happy, and financially secure is a win for us all.
Also, I’ve recently been “talking loud” about copyright cartels and the importance of being able to copy bits. Giving this “book” away is an attempt to do a little walking the walk instead of just talking the talk. I also considered creating a book solely to be distributed free on torrents. I may still do that.
p.s. Some people have gone ahead and paid for the book. Thank you! Remember that if you have a budget for books and you don’t mind doing a few extra clicks, buy one of my other books and download this one for free, you’ll get two books and I’ll be just as happy :-)
If I ever decide to give away my book for free for a limited time, I would not feel bad about people giving me $0 when they could give me whatever they want.
I am in agreement with Raganwald in that I just want people to read it and find it helpful.
People have been buying it for $5 ever since, and I've even had some $8s and $10s. I even include a link to the tutorial right on the book page, because I don't think it's worth even $2, but apparently people do!
Anyway, I love LeanPub so much.
Typically, when someone makes their creation available for free with an optional donation, I will donate a few dollars to encourage other content creators to do the same.
It is odd, though. I am not so much supporting or applauding the specific content creator, but more encouraging future ones to make their payments sliding or optional.
For instance, I buy every Humble Bundle that comes out, but have never played the games.
If you give something away for free, I'll take it for free.
If you give me the option to pay $0, and give me a reasonable suggested price(this book), I'll pay the suggested price.
If you give me the option to pay $0, show me what others are paying(humble bundle), I'll pay the median.
If you give me the option to pay $0, and give me "bonuses" at certain price breaks (kickstarter, humble bundle), I'll pay at the most attractive price break.
It actually makes a ton of sense to adopt these kind of pricing structures because people actually pay!
I actually didn't download it at all because of that. A free book to throw on my Kindle and maybe look through on a slower day is great but setting the price to zero felt like ripping off someone who contributes to HN and spoiling his metrics. I bookmarked it though so there's some gain from this tactic.
1. Even though it isn't cash, it is a way for me to tell Raganwald that I appreciate his efforts, both the book, the blog, and the community. Of course this is not as valuable as cash and I'm really not trying to rationalize not paying, but I can only give what I've currently got.
2. If I gain some particular value from having read this, I am always free to remunerate the author in the future based on that value. I can't do that (and perhaps could have missed an opportunuty) if I'm not subjected to his ideas first.
It is interesting the psychology that goes into this kind of thing. I contrast this with the Humble Bundles, where I don't download them, because my available time for gaming is so small that I cant even claim my download is a show of appreciation for the work.
The reason we did the sliders this way is to encourage people who have extra disposable income to pay more. Since the Leanpub royalty rates are so good, we felt we should show what the author gets right on the purchase page. That's why we subtly change their color as they are dragged up and down, as well as live-updating the royalty, etc. So I'm really happy since this shows that they are working as intended :)
But the instant I came to the site I felt guilty. I ended up paying the suggested price only because the suggested price was sensible (if the suggested price had been more I'd probably would have paid less) and because leanpub seems awesome (just found out about it). Since I know nothing about the book itself I didn't take that into account when buying, it could of course be worth much more.
EDIT: DRM-free and giving me multiple formats to choose from (and not forcing me to select one) is awesome and is one of the reasons I really wanted to buy it. Otherwise I would have had to strip the DRM first (I don't accept DRM on e-books that I buy, even if it makes me a criminal).
I by no means think that means everyone else needs to pay something for the book -- but I'm in a position to pay $5 today, and the book looks interesting, so it's worth the charge.
I think you have the best reason to take the author up on his offer. You cannot purchase it. He offers you a way to get it for free. That's a good match.
For me, I came to that site lead by the title. I like raganwald's contribution here and expected something like a free 'Learn Python the hard way' style thing. Or a blog-articles-in-pdf. With maybe little (publishing!) effort and just a heads-up for the people here.[1]
Seeing that it is actually a book in progress I left. I cannot pay for purely technical reasons (No credit card, this country doesn't want to give me one and my home country revoked mine when they didn't see any incoming salary for roughly a year). But I earn a pretty damn good salary here and got money in the bank. So _I_ would need to feel guilty for free-loading if I just grabbed the book.
You really shouldn't. And good luck anyway.
Edit: 1: Actually, after rereading raganwald's comment I think that is pretty much correct. But the site says 'Note: You are buying an Alpha Book. New essays will be added on a regular basis, and you will receive updates for free.' so I don't understand how this 'sunk costs' works in this case?
Thank you Regenwald!