My eyes are still seeing lime green when I blink...
the faster you buy it the less you have to look at the site. :-P
xoxo ngauthier
Recipes with Backbone.js
41–47 of 47 posts
Re: Recipes with Backbone.js
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
I looked at the excerpt. The typesetting is terrible for a book priced at $24. See the side by shot of rails recipes and your book. Also in your book the code is not syntax highlighted making it quite difficult to read. The code is also formatted such a way that the codeblock splits into two pages for just a closing brace (page 44 - collection view) For $24 I expect better typesetting. Right now it looks like a pirat…
I agree that the PDF formatting leaves something to be desired. We are using the OSS git-scribe ( https://github.com/schacon/git-scribe ) toolchain for producing PDF, Mobi, and ePub. I have already put a ton of work into the toolchain to make it better ( http://japhr.blogspot.com/search/label/git-scribe ). Most of that work, however, was to help get the Mobi and ePub versions up to snuff. I plan to take a week or so…
Forgot to link the comparison screenshot - https://img.skitch.com/20111216-d3fajpw313y3e4f3cgs74einr1.j...
As an open source user, I appreciate that you have improved the tools. But as a potential reader of your book, I want you to use whatever tools necessary to get it to look good.
Even when compared against a non-professionally converted pro Git PDF, this books does not fare that well. https://img.skitch.com/20111216-enxfwjcgkgsu2pcndkcaimd3q.jp... The code block has no padding. In general the typography is not pleasant. If you look at the git book, the italics do not stand out as much as in this book.
Backbone documentation is presented beautifully. So when you are aiming to compliment it, the bar is also a bit high :) (Granted it is HTML but I do think a lot can be done to make this book more pleasant to look at)
Re: Recipes with Backbone.js
#43I bought it a couple of months ago while it was half price during the beta. It is not a tutorial. I think it's really nice after you've built at least one small-medium app with backbone. It's at that point where you'll have hit some of the pain points those recipes are meant to solve.
Re: Recipes with Backbone.js
#44Uninformed suggestion:
Offer a money-back guarantee. If you don't feel you got your money's worth within 30/60 days, we'll give you your money back. I know that this encourages me to buy, and I can't recall ever using it. $24 is enough money that I think twice about it, but not enough that I'm concerned about being "scammed."
Re: Recipes with Backbone.js
#45Uninformed suggestion:
Offer a money-back guarantee. If you don't feel you got your money's worth within 30/60 days, we'll give you your money back. I know that this encourages me to buy, and I can't recall ever using it. $24 is enough money that I think twice about it, but not enough that I'm concerned about being "scammed."
Re: Recipes with Backbone.js
#46After building a few toy Backbone.js apps and recently a "medium-sized" app I bought the book and was pleasantly surprised. There's similarities to the approach peepcode and other screencasts take in that there's a lot of material that is covered fairly quickly.
This is not a book for beginners, but if you've already got some backbone chops it's worth investigating as there are a number of chapters that have great insight into things you only learn after building a few apps with backbone.
Recommended :)
Re: Recipes with Backbone.js
#47I'm not sure they have the right price point. Many people will impulse buy something of interest for under $10 - psychologically, that's a small amount of money. I bought Louis C.K.'s comedy show for $5, as it's an amount of money I don't mind wasting - it's a small risk. However at $24, you'll get a number of keen backbone fans - but you won't get all the folks who are interested in backbone, and spine, and ember, a…
Hey korny, I totally agree with you that we're outside the impulse-buy price range and we'd sell more copies if we charged less money. However, our goal from the start was not to make a tutorial for people interested in backbone. Our goal was to make a more in-depth collection of great patterns for intermediate to advanced backbone developers. Hackers are smart, they can read the docs and figure out the basics. We wa…
I'm currently writing an eBook teaching Backbone.js in CoffeeScript, of about the same length as Recipes with Backbone. I'm still mulling over how to price it. Does anyone want to make a guess about the potential size of the market? Am I correct to think, the bigger the market, the more cheaply I can price it and still make a bit more than minimum wage for the time I'm putting in? Any further comments or suggestions about pricing are welcome.