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Adventures in Self Publishing

petekeen.net

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Re: Adventures in Self Publishing

#51

Post by mattjaynes »

zrail wrote: post #44
mattjaynes wrote: post #42

For my technical book, I was getting frustrated with the page breaks interrupting the code sections in weird places. There's a bit of a hack you can do to create a continuous single-page PDF if you're generating your book from html/css: @page { size: 216mm 17600mm; } That tells the PDF printer to make the page 8.5 inches wide and really really long. It's dirty, but it works! Derek Sivers said this about it when I sen…

I hadn't ever thought about a continuous PDF, that's a good idea, and should be a snap with Docverter. Looks like a good book, good luck on your launch!

Thanks :) Docverter is new to me, I'll definitely check it out!

Re: Adventures in Self Publishing

#53

Post by astrodust »

MattStopa wrote: post #50
casca wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you mind telling us how long it took you to write? The impression I get is that people routinely underestimate how long good writing takes by orders of magnitude. Thanks again for publishing this.

Having written a Ruby book I would definitely agree, even though my book was very modest in size it took an order of magnitude more work than I had expected. Coming up with code examples, editing, creating a book cover, not to mention how grueling it can be to write especially after a long day of coding.

All that and not even a single link to it? Where's the shameless self-promotion slash example?

Re: Adventures in Self Publishing

#54

Post by astrodust »

mattjaynes wrote: post #42

For my technical book, I was getting frustrated with the page breaks interrupting the code sections in weird places. There's a bit of a hack you can do to create a continuous single-page PDF if you're generating your book from html/css: @page { size: 216mm 17600mm; } That tells the PDF printer to make the page 8.5 inches wide and really really long. It's dirty, but it works! Derek Sivers said this about it when I sen…

Can you use `km` as units?

Re: Adventures in Self Publishing

#55

Post by clarky07 »

nathanbarry wrote: post #45
petercooper wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sort of. I've done affiliate stuff before but I don't like the vibe it gives off. Selling the products directly in a more publisher-esque way feels more honest, although I'm not entirely sure why.

I think "affiliates" may have a bad vibe, but you could message it in a way that wouldn't. I know Gumroad is coming out with some functionality along those lines and they call it "tastemakers" or something similar. I bet you could significantly increase your revenue by working directly with authors—though if you try to republish their books it would be more work for them. Just work with one author a month, whose book…

I'm planning on releasing a book soon and have been strongly considering gumroad. I couldn't find anything about an affiliate program (now or coming soon). Do you have a link for this, or is it just from your talks with them?

Re: Adventures in Self Publishing

#56

Post by vicentereig »

astrodust wrote: post #53
MattStopa wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having written a Ruby book I would definitely agree, even though my book was very modest in size it took an order of magnitude more work than I had expected. Coming up with code examples, editing, creating a book cover, not to mention how grueling it can be to write especially after a long day of coding.

All that and not even a single link to it? Where's the shameless self-promotion slash example?

http://www.therubybook.com/

Re: Adventures in Self Publishing

#57

Post by imrehg »

Very timely, congrats, and thanks for the insights! It's quite hard core to go all the way self-published with self-built architecture.

I keep churning a couple of book ideas over in my head, and probably should put them out for testing, to see which one would work in practice. One about physics in the "Learn X the Hard Way" style, one about Facebook page/group management since that's what I was doing with a bunch of side projects, but it's a very quicksand topic. https://leanpub.com/u/imrehg

In the meantime, trying to help a friend to turn his paper-book into ebook, which comes with its own can of worms. How to Start a Business in Taiwan https://leanpub.com/startabusinessintaiwan

Re: Adventures in Self Publishing

#58

Post by MattStopa »

astrodust wrote: post #53
MattStopa wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having written a Ruby book I would definitely agree, even though my book was very modest in size it took an order of magnitude more work than I had expected. Coming up with code examples, editing, creating a book cover, not to mention how grueling it can be to write especially after a long day of coding.

All that and not even a single link to it? Where's the shameless self-promotion slash example?

Here is a link to the book. Yeah, I'm pretty shameless but haven't done much promotion yet :-)

http://www.amazon.com/The-Rapid-Rubyist-ebook/dp/B00DPQ5P24

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