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Raganwald's "How to Do What You Love" is free today

leanpub.com

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Re: Raganwald's "How to Do What You Love" is free today

#11

Post by thudfactor »

billpatrianakos wrote: post #2

I feel guilty. I just got the book for free and I feel like I need to justify it. I really respect Raganwald and I would love to pay and he deserves it. I took it free because the honest truth is that business is really, supremely bad right now. I have a total of $60 in the bank and a few grand in bills due plus some other awful things. I justify (maybe wrongly) downloading it free by assuming the book will help me a…

I fully intended to take it for free, but I paid for the book because the asking price is under my impulse-purchase threshold. Writing a book is such a time-consuming and difficult process $5 seems like a tip.

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.

Re: Raganwald's "How to Do What You Love" is free today

#12

Post by peterarmstrong »

zeratul wrote: post #5

Note to self: Leanpub.com disrupts book publishing industry, it took them just ~ 11 months (EDIT: 2 yrs - look below) to get traction. Surprisingly, their original post got just TWO karma points: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2329397 Getting Mr Braithwaite to publish at Leanpub.com is also a sign of success.

It took a bit longer than 11 months: Eric Ries was our first customer (a good first customer to have!), and his first sale was on April 21, 2010. So it took about 2 years.

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.)

Re: Raganwald's "How to Do What You Love" is free today

#13

Post by grumpycanuck »

raganwald wrote: post #6
billpatrianakos wrote: post #2

I feel guilty. I just got the book for free and I feel like I need to justify it. I really respect Raganwald and I would love to pay and he deserves it. I took it free because the honest truth is that business is really, supremely bad right now. I have a total of $60 in the bank and a few grand in bills due plus some other awful things. I justify (maybe wrongly) downloading it free by assuming the book will help me a…

I only have one vote, but I think it’s meaningful in this case :-) If you’re in no position to pay for it, I want you to have it for free, and I’m glad that you went ahead and read it. If you do find it helpful, that would make me very happy. 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 pe…

I have a book I published using Leanpub and I set the minimum to be $10. Some people pay the minimum. Some people pay the suggested price of $15. Some have even been as generous as to pay MORE than the suggested price.

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.

Re: Raganwald's "How to Do What You Love" is free today

#14

Post by [deleted] »

raganwald wrote: post #6
billpatrianakos wrote: post #2

I feel guilty. I just got the book for free and I feel like I need to justify it. I really respect Raganwald and I would love to pay and he deserves it. I took it free because the honest truth is that business is really, supremely bad right now. I have a total of $60 in the bank and a few grand in bills due plus some other awful things. I justify (maybe wrongly) downloading it free by assuming the book will help me a…

I only have one vote, but I think it’s meaningful in this case :-) If you’re in no position to pay for it, I want you to have it for free, and I’m glad that you went ahead and read it. If you do find it helpful, that would make me very happy. 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 pe…

[deleted]

Re: Raganwald's "How to Do What You Love" is free today

#15

Post by factotvm »

I probably would not have bought this book, but I did get a copy because it's free. I hope there is a way to retroactively throw some scratch to the author should I find it useful. That seems like a good model, akin to music "piracy" where I find music I love and then buy it. Or, I guess I could "buy" it again...

Re: Raganwald's "How to Do What You Love" is free today

#17

Post by Mz »

I just tried to get it. I am on a tablet and all attempts to download it have failed. I will chime in and note that I am in pretty dire straits financially (homeless and my freelance work recently fell through -- I am pretty up a creek) and was very concerned it was going to charge me. The means to request it is not very clear in that regard.

Re: Raganwald's "How to Do What You Love" is free today

#18

Post by [deleted] »

peterarmstrong wrote: post #12
zeratul wrote: post #5

Note to self: Leanpub.com disrupts book publishing industry, it took them just ~ 11 months (EDIT: 2 yrs - look below) to get traction. Surprisingly, their original post got just TWO karma points: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2329397 Getting Mr Braithwaite to publish at Leanpub.com is also a sign of success.

It took a bit longer than 11 months: Eric Ries was our first customer (a good first customer to have!), and his first sale was on April 21, 2010. So it took about 2 years. 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 w…

[deleted]

Re: Raganwald's "How to Do What You Love" is free today

#19

Post by peterarmstrong »

factotvm wrote: post #15

I probably would not have bought this book, but I did get a copy because it's free. I hope there is a way to retroactively throw some scratch to the author should I find it useful. That seems like a good model, akin to music "piracy" where I find music I love and then buy it. Or, I guess I could "buy" it again...

You can buy it again, or just overpay for one of his other Leanpub books. (He's also got the #5 and #9 selling Leanpub books.)

Re: Raganwald's "How to Do What You Love" is free today

#20

Post by billpatrianakos »

peterarmstrong wrote: post #10
billpatrianakos wrote: post #2

I feel guilty. I just got the book for free and I feel like I need to justify it. I really respect Raganwald and I would love to pay and he deserves it. I took it free because the honest truth is that business is really, supremely bad right now. I have a total of $60 in the bank and a few grand in bills due plus some other awful things. I justify (maybe wrongly) downloading it free by assuming the book will help me a…

Peter from Leanpub here. If you're down to your last $60, please don't feel guilty not paying anything! Come back later and buy the book (or one of raganwald's other books) if you want. (On the bestsellers page, his other books are currently in the #5 and #9 spots.) 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,…

It worked very well. Knowing how much the author gets and seeing it go up and down makes me feel empathetic and makes me think how I'd feel if I were the one selling. I always find that when payment pages are set up this way that I'm not being "sold" something but instead like I'm being offered something useful. It also makes the whole thing feel more human if that's the right word. Payments are almost like adversarial type situations where one party is trying to take money that you're protecting. When it's set up like this it helps break down that attitude and shows you how both you and the seller are helping each other.
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