Six-ish Months of eBook Sales: Riak Handbook • Hacker News Board

Re: Six-ish Months of eBook Sales: Riak Handbook

#11

Post by alexknowshtml » Thu, Jul 05, 2012, 11:47 PM UTC

edwinnathaniel wrote: post #9

I'm starting to think that Amy Hoy 30x500 class will make more money than her products (^_^)

Don't forget that infoproduct (ebook & class) income is an alternative way to fund product development.

In a way, in addition to being helped to their own sustainable success, revenue from the classes supplants the need for angel or venture money in order to help fuel growth of the software products.

And in the end she owns 100% of her business, all the while fulfilling her mission to help people launch their own businesses that they can own 100% of as well.

Re: Six-ish Months of eBook Sales: Riak Handbook

#12

Post by alexangelini » Fri, Jul 06, 2012, 12:15 AM UTC

zenocon wrote: post #5

I bought the book. The reason why: there was a clear lack of documentation on Riak at the time (still is). Your book is bar none one of the best sources of material for quickly getting up to speed on Riak. I read it cover to cover several times. Your writing style, ability to explain complex topics with simple prose, and fantastic executable code snippet examples also contributed to my decision to shell out the $29 -…

Check out https://github.com/mranney/node_riak by the guys at Voxer.

Less documentation right now, but it runs in the world's biggest production deployment of Node.

(and it's not written in coffee script)

Re: Six-ish Months of eBook Sales: Riak Handbook

#13

Post by roidrage » Fri, Jul 06, 2012, 7:11 AM UTC

zenocon wrote: post #5

I bought the book. The reason why: there was a clear lack of documentation on Riak at the time (still is). Your book is bar none one of the best sources of material for quickly getting up to speed on Riak. I read it cover to cover several times. Your writing style, ability to explain complex topics with simple prose, and fantastic executable code snippet examples also contributed to my decision to shell out the $29 -…

Thank you so much for the kind words. I'm really glad you're finding the book this helpful!

Now, about the Node client. You are correct that there's been stalling over the last six or more months, but there's work on continuing the work on it, adapting it to new features in Riak and to push Frank's (original author) work on rewriting it in pure JavaScript towards the finish line.

Thanks again, your comment is very much appreciated!

Re: Six-ish Months of eBook Sales: Riak Handbook

#14

Post by roidrage » Fri, Jul 06, 2012, 7:15 AM UTC

thehickmans wrote: post #7

Did you do any validation on the book idea before you started writing? How much time did you invest before you decided to publish it?

In the article I wrote that there was no guarantee the book would be a success. The reason for that is that I didn't have any validation upfront whether the book is a good and viable product idea or not. I started work on it long before I joined the 30x500 class, and how the book came about is not exactly in the spirit of it, as it takes a whole different approach on finding audiences for products and all that.

The total time that went into the book is hard to put a number on. I'd say at least three months of dedicated writing, testing out theories in practice, editing, proof-reading and building up marketing momentum around it went into the book.