37signals to publish a new book | Hacker News Reader

37signals to publish a new book

37signals.com

38 pointsedu32 comments

Is it just me, or do we hear more from 37signals about "How to do it", than about their products?

What do you want to know?

Some cool stories about technology, scaling, performance, building products, improving products, new features, cool hacks, etc would be what I would find interesting.

It just seems that a lot of the "business advice" is a bit nothingy - Not just 37signals, but Seth Godin, etc. Often it seems like having a "life coach" who used to work at Hallmark telling you things you already know in a slightly sermonistic way.

We share this stuff on our blog almost every day. Keep an eye on Signal vs. Noise (http://www.37signals.com/svn) and the Product Blog (http://productblog.37signals.com) and you'll see all sorts of posts about building products, performance, improving, new features, tips and tricks, case studies, etc.

"... What do you want to know? ..."

Is the book being pitched as a 'business' book, an alternative way to tackle business? Or is this another tech-related book? I suspect the former as the article makes numerous hints to a popular rather than technical audience.

Just an extra data point for you, but I would find some sort of chronological history of 37signals, the development process behind each product, the whole way things have come together, with useful tips and insights interspersed, an absolute must buy.

As much as I like the general advice, I think a slightly more narrative piece would be an excellent read.

I'd second that. Biographies are really interesting. I'm half way through "Founders at work" at the moment - really good.

Yes, it bugs me a lot; they are writing about their experiences of creating successful products, even though they became popular because of Rails, and they have kept themselves in the limelight by writing about why they are successful.

Don't get me wrong, some of their products are great — but without rails, they'd just be another startup.

That's not true at all. They were standing out from the crowd going back into the late 90s. http://www.37signals.com/manifesto.html They did client work, wrote books on web design, and did other stuff for years before becoming a product company with Basecamp, Rails, and everything else.

I'd love to get some real data on the who, what, when, and how much, although I'm not sure they'd want to share that. Without that, it's easy to speculate, but hard to say anything with any degree of certainty.

Did anyone else find the irony in calling a book UnConform and getting it published by a regular publisher, when the previous book was called Getting Real; and David/37s were in large part responsible for technical books being published in various incremental beta stages?

Given that they were big fans of not publishing books the old fashioned way in the past, I'd be interested in understanding what made them change their minds.

Here,

Even though we had tremendous success self-publishing Getting Real, we decided that this time we wanted to write a best seller. We want to sell hundreds of thousands or millions of copies. We couldn’t do this on our own, so we decided to work with a traditional publisher.

AKA Greed.

Not that I have a problem with it, but it flies in the face of the 'on-demand' self-publishing mantra that is preached daily on the web.

And people wonder why pop stars continue to sign with the major labels.

It's likely we could have made more money self-publishing than going with a traditional publisher. We made north of $400K self-publishing our first book -- and that was in 2006. Today we have a much larger audience, roughly 4x the customer base, a blog that is read by roughly 7x more people, etc. So if this was purely about greed, self-publishing would be the right way down that road. We'd make an awful lot and get to keep every penny to ourselves.

But we don't just want to reach the audience we can reach on our own. We want to reach a much broader audience. We want to reach every entrepreneur, small business owner, or small team member. We want to take our message mainstream. We believe working with a traditional publisher will give us a much better chance to reach these people. That's why we're working with a traditional publisher and that's why we believe we can sell hundreds of thousands or millions of copies of this book.

Good luck! I am looking forward to your new book. I am also looking forward to when you guys do an analysis of Getting Real vs. UnConform in terms of self-publishing vs. traditional publisher.

I was not inferring that the money made would be direct.

If a new music artist signs with a major record label, it isn't because of the great % they are offering, it's the large exposure, which results in money down the road (from concerts, their 'second' deal etc.) Same with your book deal.

Making money isn't bad, I just feel it's a change in strategy from a company all about 'getting real'.

We (as hackers) all 'rage against the machine' when we're young and poor, but once we all have some success and wisdom most take the opportunity presented by 'the man'. Maybe I'm naive in thinking 37signals was different.

Did you simply just ignore Jason's point about reaching a broader audience? That seems like quite a legitimate reason to use an established publisher.

If you feel that making money is a change in strategy from "getting real", that's a sign that you have misunderstood the concept at a fundamental level.

Will you be making a free online version available, as with Getting Real?

This book will fail because Godin already has the market on made up words cornered.

The byline should be "how to write a blog telling people how to startup, even though your startup has like 8 customers, until your blog is way more popular than your startup."

It's more likely to be "how to work four days a week at your decade-old profitable company while still having people insist on referring to you as a startup".

I'm pretty familiar with their general messaging and way of doing things - I wonder if the book we'll offer anything new. I abandoned "Getting Real" after coming across countless points recycled from their blog.

My understanding was that essentially the entire "Getting Real" book was compiled from posts off their blog. This was no secret, and an easy to find out fact before deciding to buy the book or not.

I bet it'll be a good candidate for Squeezed Books if "Getting Real" was anything to go by.

Even though we had tremendous success self-publishing Getting Real, we decided that this time we wanted to write a best seller.

Is preemptively saying "I'm going to write a best seller" ambitious, or arrogant?

I think it's far more viable to say "We want to appeal to a larger audience and make a deeper impact" than saying "we want a book that's going to fly off the shelves", given the perception many people already have about a company that runs around touting their own experiences as the golden standard for how web startups 'should' be run.

It'll probably be a good book, but I feel as if this will be recycled information haphazardly put together and marketed excessively.

In any case: Good luck breaching the wall of physical publications of business advice.

Read the sentence again. It is a justification of their choice as being a practical one, not a statement about the quality of the book. They're saying that while "Getting Real" is the 4th best seller on Lulu, that's kinda like the old joke about "What's better than winning a gold medal at the Special Olympics?" To even have a hope of reaching "real" best seller status requires the resources of a traditional publisher, so that's what they did. Whether they actually achieve that status is another question, one which they make no claims about. That's why the next sentence reads "We want to sell hundreds of thousands or millions of copies." not "We will sell hundreds of thousands or millions of copies."

Maybe they'll decide to unconform by foregoing the descriptive subtitle.

The 37 Signals guys are brilliant!

This is great marketing for their products, and they are getting paid to do it.

Awesome! Another book that I'm not going to read.

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