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Getting Real book is now free PDF

gettingreal.37signals.com

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Re: Getting Real book is now free PDF

#41
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"From 37signals' point of view it's the only way how entrepreneurship should be approached while heavily despising other ways" Nope. It's not the only way. It's one way. There are lots of ways to build a product and run a business. Getting Real is what we've learned. Same with REWORK - it's our experience and advice in book form. Neither book pretends to be the only way. If you have your own unique approach, and you…

> Nope. It's not the only way. It's one way. I don't know if DHH agrees on that—maybe you should check his latest post. > If you have your own unique approach, and you think your experience can be valuable to those who haven't had your experience, take the time to write it up and share it with the world. Good idea, thanks, but I won't write a book. Reading HN for some months gives starters the same full experience bu…

Another point just came to my mind:

I am not a fanboy of Graham but as an example I do find Grahams essays more appealing, much closer to reality and thus more helpful, maybe not always that thrilling and motivating as Get Real was 5 yrs ago, but much more precise and expressive when describing startup business and what's really about. I remember one essay which discussed single versus multiple founder startups and I've never read before such an accurate picture of this topic. Motivational books like Get Real are good to just get started but I am afraid that that's enough to be successful and to finish in the long run.

Their cookie-cutting black'n'white reality tells you, yeah everything is great, just do it, yes, you can. Then you start happily (which is great) but stop 3 days later without having a clue why things doesn't work out, grabbing the next cheerful self-help book and think it must be your fault because 37signals is 'so' successful and they must know how it works—no you just didn't get the full picture, essential building block were omitted. Besides: success is relative, just compare success stories from Dropbox, Airbnb and Basecamp, really different beasts and way of thinkings behind them (with good reason). When I read Get Real yrs ago I tried it like they said and I wasn't a fraction of that successful of what I was after reading 5 months HN.

Re: Getting Real book is now free PDF

#42
Awesome! Whatever their motives* this is a great resource. If you object to the email address I am sure you can unsubscribe later.

Oddily many paid ebooks are available free via the authors blogs. LeanPub and others make it really easy to roll up your blog into an ebook and then easily sell it via the usual channels.[1]

*Motives - boost awareness of brand to extend userbase, collect email addresses for future marketing campaigns, getting ready to release a paid version of a new or existing book, generosity etc

[1] - Podcast that talks about lean publishing... http://www.leanblog.org/2012/02/podcast-140-leanpub-com-part...

Re: Getting Real book is now free PDF

#45
post #8

This book has always been free right? It started life as a free HTML version and they only added the pay-for-PDF later when it became successful. http://gettingreal.37signals.com/toc.php Kudos for making the whole thing free. But it wasn't that big a leap.

True, but a lot of people bought the PDF for its benefits over the online version (portability, offline, permanency). I already read it but downloaded it to my dropbox anyways for those reasons.

Wget brings me permanency :)

Re: Getting Real book is now free PDF

#47
I wonder why the PDF looks that way? It seems designed not to be printed.

And there's also no ebook available, just the PDF, so if you want it on the Kindle you have to convert it yourself.

It's like they try to nudge you towards buying the thing. Which, of course, isn't a bad thing but I wonder if it's intentional.

It's a pretty old book though so I doubt this strategy will work but I might be mistaken.

Re: Getting Real book is now free PDF

#48
post #6

The 'enter your e-mail address to get X' approach is spreading! Unsurprising.. because it works like gangbusters :-) In this case, you get an e-mail that says: "Periodically we'll drop you a line if we have something interesting to share." (There's also an unsubscribe link.) They'll get to build up an incredible list with this. I'm happy to see 37signals using this approach as it helps legitimize the technique of bui…

I have a list of email adresses I use just for these fake subscriptions..

This is where the email+3ysignals@gmail.com email syntax comes in handy.
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