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?
Toastmasters?
Raganwald's "How to Do What You Love" is free today
51–60 of 88 posts
Re: Raganwald's "How to Do What You Love" is free today
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
Was happy to pay the asking price if not more - stopped as soon as I had to use PayPal - dragged the slider to zero.
As a Leanpub co-founder, can you let me know which of the following would have worked for you: a) Google Checkout b) Amazon Checkout c) Credit card (via Stripe or similar)
i would love to be able to pay with amazon checkout. google checkout would be great too. as a datapoint, one reason i didn't pay for the book was that i avoid dealing with paypal wherever possible.
Re: Raganwald's "How to Do What You Love" is free today
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
I love his type of content publishing. It works the same way as the Humble Bundles. If you give something away for free, I'll take it for free. If you give me the option to pay $0, and give me a reasonable suggested price(this book), I'll pay the suggested price. If you give me the option to pay $0, show me what others are paying(humble bundle), I'll pay the median. If you give me the option to pay $0, and give me "b…
> If you give me the option to pay $0, and give me a reasonable suggested price(this book), I'll pay the suggested price. I actually didn't download it at all because of that. A free book to throw on my Kindle and maybe look through on a slower day is great but setting the price to zero felt like ripping off someone who contributes to HN and spoiling his metrics. I bookmarked it though so there's some gain from this…
That same thought process went through my mind (kids, mortgage, cars, start up, yada yada). I decided to enter the zero, though, for two reasons:
1. Even though it isn't cash, it is a way for me to tell Raganwald that I appreciate his efforts, both the book, the blog, and the community. Of course this is not as valuable as cash and I'm really not trying to rationalize not paying, but I can only give what I've currently got.
2. If I gain some particular value from having read this, I am always free to remunerate the author in the future based on that value. I can't do that (and perhaps could have missed an opportunuty) if I'm not subjected to his ideas first.
It is interesting the psychology that goes into this kind of thing. I contrast this with the Humble Bundles, where I don't download them, because my available time for gaming is so small that I cant even claim my download is a show of appreciation for the work.
Re: Raganwald's "How to Do What You Love" is free today
#54This 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
Hi edw519 - that was me.
I also made a slightly reformatted HTML version here http://static.v25media.com/edw519_mod.html - I just added anchor links so it was easier to navigate the sections and such.
Thanks for putting that all together, it's been an inspiration. Looking forward to Raganwald's as well.
Re: Raganwald's "How to Do What You Love" is free today
#55I really appreciate Raganwald's willingness to put these essays together into a convenient format and give them away. I enjoyed and probably learned a lot from them. However, the publisher has not done its job here. I'm reading the Mobi version on Kindle for iPhone, and the constant formatting errors make it difficult to follow the text. This includes missing punctuation, missing indentation on blockquotes that make…
Hi,
We'll look into the formatting issues in the Mobi version. A couple things:
1. Leanpub is not a "publisher" in the sense of having proofreaders, editors, etc. We're a website that authors can use to self-publish ebooks, including in-progress ebooks. Self-publishing an in-progress ebook lets you iterate based on feedback like this.
2. We have an unconditional 100% refund policy. So if you're unhappy with your purchase for any reason just email your PayPal receipt to hello@leanpub.com and we'll refund your money, no questions asked.
Thanks!
Peter (Leanpub co-founder)
Re: Raganwald's "How to Do What You Love" is free today
#56I really appreciate Raganwald's willingness to put these essays together into a convenient format and give them away. I enjoyed and probably learned a lot from them. However, the publisher has not done its job here. I'm reading the Mobi version on Kindle for iPhone, and the constant formatting errors make it difficult to follow the text. This includes missing punctuation, missing indentation on blockquotes that make…
Thanks, I'll look into the .mobi version, I'll DL Kindle for iPad now. Everyone will get the update for free as usual.
Re: Raganwald's "How to Do What You Love" is free today
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
Was happy to pay the asking price if not more - stopped as soon as I had to use PayPal - dragged the slider to zero.
As a Leanpub co-founder, can you let me know which of the following would have worked for you: a) Google Checkout b) Amazon Checkout c) Credit card (via Stripe or similar)
Not the OP: Google Checkout, followed by Amazon. (Then again, I'm biased ;)
Simply because it allows me to pay with something I'll always have handy, my user credentials. At any given point, I might or might not have a credit card close by. (Yes, I read HN in bed :)
Re: Raganwald's "How to Do What You Love" is free today
#58fyi - Trying to read the epub file in ibooks and i get this error: This page contains the following errors: error on line 1 at column 1: Document is empty error on line 1 at column 1: Encoding error Update: PDF works, but requires a lot of scrolling on the iphone. Also, it's a 40 page "book".
Hi,
We'll look into this issue. Which generation iPad do you have?
All Leanpub books include free lifetime updates, so when it's resolved you'll have a free update. (You also get free updates if the author updates the book for any reason, like adding new content, etc. We believe in self-publishing in-progress ebooks, so that you can iterate on your book like you would a startup. We call this idea lean publishing.)
Also, we have an unconditional 100% refund policy, so if you're unhappy for any reason just forward your PayPal receipt to hello@leanpub.com and we'll refund your money.
Thanks!
Peter, Leanpub co-founder
Re: Raganwald's "How to Do What You Love" is free today
#59Note 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.
By the way, thanks very much for linking to that post -- you've more than tripled its karma points!
I guess a year ago we were slightly ahead in our timing, or my post was too long, or (probably) I didn't emphasize Eric Ries and Venture Hacks enough...
Re: Raganwald's "How to Do What You Love" is free today
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
I wrote a short Python tutorial (http://www.korokithakis.net/tutorials/python/) which I packaged up as a book in a few hours and put on LeanPub. I used to sell it for $2, but the LeanPub guys changed the pricing structure to minimum/recommended, so I set the recommended price at $5.
People have been buying it for $5 ever since, and I've even had some $8s and $10s. I even include a link to the tutorial right on the book page, because I don't think it's worth even $2, but apparently people do!
Anyway, I love LeanPub so much.