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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

#31

Post by rhnoble »

thudfactor wrote: post #11
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.

Same here. I'll pay $5 for almost anything, and I'm certain that if it's half way decent I'll get a lot more than $5 worth of value out of it.

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

#32

Post by whiletruefork »

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 would be great to have the ability to post-pay. I can imagine finishing the book and realizing that it was worth $20, and wanting to pay more. In this case if I come back to LeanPub there would be a list of books I selected to postpay, so after I finished reading them I could judge the true value and pay that (or add to what I have already paid).

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

#33

Post by [deleted] »

peterarmstrong wrote: post #28
Mz wrote: post #17

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.

We just doubled our number of web servers to handle the massive HN traffic today, so please try again. If you have any issues downloading please email hello@leanpub.com.

[deleted]

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

#34

Post by edw519 »

This is great! Raganwald is already one of my favorites, here and on twitter. I love to see stuff like this. I guess I know what I'll be doing for the next hour or two.

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

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

#35

Post by peterarmstrong »

whiletruefork wrote: post #32
peterarmstrong wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 would be great to have the ability to post-pay. I can imagine finishing the book and realizing that it was worth $20, and wanting to pay more. In this case if I come back to LeanPub there would be a list of books I selected to postpay, so after I finished reading them I could judge the true value and pay that (or add to what I have already paid).

That's a really good feature; we'll add this to our queue. Thanks!

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

#36

Post by muhfuhkuh »

kabuks wrote: post #27

My favorite quote: "The single most important thing you must do to improve your programming career is improve your ability to communicate." Anybody have tips on how I can improve my communication?

The exercises I've suggested for others applies universally, I reckon.

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.

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

#37

Post by billpatrianakos »

brd wrote: post #3
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 agree with you on the guilt evoked by the site design. 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, de…

If I were you I wouldn't be feeling guilty. Its not the design that made me feel guilty. It was knowing that the author deserved to get paid for the work while not paying. So in my case I got something valuable for free. I think it's great to be able to get it, read a bit, then decide its not worth money and not pay if you don't find it valuable. But while this is great, I think there's danger on both sides. The author is giving it for free, allowing you to preview and decide the worth. Awesome. But if you've gotten it already for free and decide its worth your money, like in my case, what's to stop you from never going back to pay. You have to find the link again (which admittedly is super easy to remember -good job) then go through the payment process. There's not much of a barrier to paying after the fact but there still is one. I promised to pay but how will anyone ever know?

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.

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

#38

Post by Mz »

kabuks wrote: post #27

My favorite quote: "The single most important thing you must do to improve your programming career is improve your ability to communicate." Anybody have tips on how I can improve my communication?

I get told fairly often that I write/communicate well. I learned a lot of that by participating in online discussions. Trying to say something clearly so it is not wildly misinterpretted is really challenging. Having the chance to clarify when it has been wildly misinterpretted is a valuable growth experience. I suggest you start posting a lot more than you do currently, if not here than elsewhere.

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

#39

Post by SonicSoul »

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 have not heard about Roganwald until this thread, and feel this is a great opportunity to learn about him. I will check out the book for free, and if it offers value for me (teach me stuff i did not already know), i will happily go back and make a contribution.

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

#40

Post by tjoff »

whiletruefork wrote: post #32
peterarmstrong wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 would be great to have the ability to post-pay. I can imagine finishing the book and realizing that it was worth $20, and wanting to pay more. In this case if I come back to LeanPub there would be a list of books I selected to postpay, so after I finished reading them I could judge the true value and pay that (or add to what I have already paid).

Not sure how well that would work in practice but it resonates well with me. What hooked me was the title and the word free, the advantage with free is that I don't have to make up my mind on how much it is worth. My first reaction was that I could, since it was free, just grab it and see what it was.

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).

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