Comment by jmduke | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jmduke | Hacker News Reader

First off, congrats! I can only imagine what a good feeling it is to publish a book (let alone two, as it appears you wrote a Ruby book as well.)

I'm going to offer some friendly criticism on marketing. (I can't really comment on the content of the book, given that I haven't read it.)

- Invest $50 and buy a nice Wordpress theme off of ThemeForest, because junior software engineers are picky folk. If it nets you two more sales, then it's already paid itself off.

- The table of contents tells me what I'm going to learn from this book, not why I want to learn them. Often, the answer to "why" is either "to make a lot more money" or "to build a lot of cool things I wouldn't otherwise." The three points you outline underneath the ToC hit those aspects much more strongly, so I'd move those above the fold.

- Throwing up an email list where you send me some snippets and then try to upsell me is advised. I haven't heard of you before, so I'd prefer some credentials before I commit to a purchase (remember, I'm a junior software engineer, so both time and money are scarce resources.) Testimonials would also be helpful here.

- There's nothing wrong with a second call to action at the bottom of the page.

I'm a designer who periodically works with ThemeForest themes for my clients. The problem with most of the themes is that they look good but you realize how badly they really work only when you attempt to adapt a site to them.

I believe the author's current design is clean, functional, and honest. It won't win any awards, sure. There are some immediate issues with design elements needing a bit more space in which to live. But IMO the most improvement the author can make right now is to improve the book cover. That is practically lost territory compared to the rest of the site's large text and easily-followed bullet points. I recognized the image to the left as a book cover only on my third website view.

> I'm a designer who periodically works with ThemeForest themes for my clients. The problem with most of the themes is that they look good but you realize how badly they really work only when you attempt to adapt a site to them.

Completely agree. They (and themes from other sites, and rather too many open source themes) have been designed with no thought of customising beyond the options on the "Options" page, have badly structured templates and CSS, and rely on graphics in such a way that changing the look of one part has a knock-on effect on others, and needs extensive CSS rewrites.

Rant over. TLDR: themes are great if you use them as-is.

Good comments! And congratulations as well.

> Invest $50 and buy a nice Wordpress theme off of ThemeForest, because junior software engineers are picky folk. If it nets you two more sales, then it's already paid itself off.

Second this! Being a software engineer is so much more than writing efficient algorithms. It's also about beautiful design in many ways. Average website design gives a feeling it could correlate to average design in other fields.

Average website design gives a feeling it could correlate to average design in other fields.

I couldn't disagree more. I personally see no correlation between the design of his site and his software engineering ability. It's like saying you don't trust that engineer to design a bridge because the ring he's wearing is all jagged along the edges. What?

While I agree that there isn't necessarily an actual correlation, better visual design can make the content seem more trustworthy.

Yes, I would get that feeling, if I knew that the ring was designed by the same engineer designing the bridge. If you set out to do a book well, you also want to promote it as best as you can. Average website here raises the question why it's average.

There isn't necessarily a correlation. I am talking about the feeling the website gives.

One of the primary traits of a good developer is a strong desire for excellence. If a developer is willing to settle for a mediocre and boring design, then that is some (perhaps small) evidence that the book may contain mediocre and boring content.

Anecdotally: At the TechWeek Chicago job fair, there was a very high correlation between booths with good logos and graphic design and interesting people behind the booth. All of my good conversations were with people at the well designed booths.

EDIT: This is especially true since we are expected to pay for the book before we get access to it. This means that we cannot judge its quality in any holistic way, but must do our best to pre-judge its quality through various social signals.

I tend to agree with you, but it's possible the places with budgets to allow for high-quality graphic design and production (let alone conference attendance) also have budgets that allow for the salaries high-quality people often demand.

I personally go for things that have bad design. Like slackware linux. I associate bad graphic design with great software. I love seeing a great science fiction novel wrapped in a generic illustrated cover. It seems more quirky and personal to me. I think good design can be bought, so I distrust it. I really hate it when the packaging is slick, with a perfect logo, and a perfect website, but the product is terrible. Like you were fooled into buying it. It happens more often to me these days because good graphic design can be bought, or copy-pasted.

The ring an engineer wears is supposed to be be jagged along the edges, for a very specific reason. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Ring#Material_and_design

Are you implying some connection? How is an at best average website design related/justified? I don't get it.

(I actually don't really mind the design...with a few changes/simplifications on fonts, and some padding for extra whitespace on a bunch of elements, I think it could pull off a nice, clean, simple look)

Agree I could care less about marketing. The less the better, I'd rather have basic 1990s html than obviously purchased templates which are needed to peddle snake oil. It's like when I see a site that uses those standard images of business suits pointing at a screen or models pretending to be tech support I don't use them.

The only way to be sure is to conduct an experiment such as an A/B test.

I'd say generally, yes, design is disconnected from software engineering. However, there's also the human element to it -- we all have unconscious biases and preferences, which creative designs can play off of.

To put it another way, I don't think less of anyone for having bad design (unless it's defectively bad), but a good design will naturally draw me and endear me to the content without me even reading a word.

GitHub pages provides free hosting for something like this, some templates, and with some fairly simple changes in Markdown and CSS you could have this up relatively quickly.

Beautiful design is an optimisation. It's far better to ship the book now and add the design later than it is to hold off shipping the book because the design isn't yet good enough for a subset of potential customers.

Rather than buy a (most likely) generic template on WordPress, since the site is a single page, take the first 10 or 20 sales and invest that money in paying a designer to design that single page site as good as possible for further conversions.

Also, don't link in the same tab to your blog posts, you are taking people away from the chance to purchase, and they will typically not be back (there is probably a little higher chance because the market is developers that they will remember to come back and purchase). You should at a minimum, open the links in a new tab.

I definitely second the email list, sit down and write up 52(? more/less?) short "tips" and put people that sign up on an autoresponder that emails out every week, that includes a way to come back and purchase in each email. Obviously leave a way to unsubscribe, and keep track of who purchases and put people who have purchased on a slightly different list (can still send the tips, just don't push the sale anymore).

On the other hand, it's quite annoying to have a website opening links in new tabs when you don't want it to, that would make it less likely for me to come back on the original site to purchase the book after that.

An email list is a great idea, but please don't open links in a new tab. Opening a new tab breaks the "back" button, which makes it harder to get back to your page, not easier. If people want to come back to your site they'll come back; trying to force them to keep your site open will not work and will not sell your product.

On a more positive note I liked the excerpts (especially the part on interviewing) and will likely buy the book!

Agreed on the advice for better presentation, but running WordPress for the single benefit of displaying one single landing page is overkill. He could just get a free Bootstrap theme from http://bootswatch.com/ or buy a landing page template specifically made for books/ebooks from somewhere else.

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