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I made $40,000 this year with my eBook and you (probably) can, too
- IgorPartola 16y agoWould anyone buy "Custom Debian repositories as a way to organize your deployment"? How about "Django deployment best practices"? Or "Leap from PHP to Django"?
- getonit 16y agoI would have thought the answers were obvious from the book titles...
- IgorPartola 16y agoWell, they wouldn't try to convince you to do it, they would show you how.
- achille 16y agoNo, but I would suggest you write a book that informs others how to write ebooks and make money. Seems like you could be making 40K or so in sales.
- gsmaverick 16y agoThe $40k he made was off his Rails ebook.
- uptown 16y agoThe $40k he allegedly made was off his Rails ebook.
- jeremymcanally 16y agoDo you want me to send you a sales report? I don't think there's any reason to cast doubts on my integrity.
- brianmwang 16y ago+1 for "Django deployment best practices".
- endtime 16y agoNot sure if I'd really buy a book on this - Lincoln Loop's wiki section gets you most of the way there: http://lincolnloop.com/django-best-practices/deployment/index.html http://lincolnloop.com/django-best-practices/deployment/inde...
- JeanPierre 16y agoI can see "Leap from PHP to Django" as a success, as that has a wider audience than the two others. "Django deployment best practices" sounds like a list of items to check or not check (Have I done Y? Check/Uncheck) , so I would personally not buy "X best practices" because I from experience find best practices after some time of playing with X anyway.
- xd 16y agoPHP is a scripting language and Django is a python web framework. PHP to Python would make more sense.
- IgorPartola 16y agoIn some sense, yes. However, PHP is a language + a giant standard library geared towards web development. In some sense it is a web framework or at least is often used that way. Since as a web framework, PHP's standard library falls short, things like CakePHP and CodeIgniter were created, but have their own shortcomings. But I consider Django a better framework than either PHP's standard offering or things built on top of it. However, the transition from developing web applications in PHP to using Python/Django is not as straightforward and I think a nice guide could be in order.
- xd 16y agoPHP is NOT in any sense a framework. A framework is an abstraction built up USING a programming language, like PHP. In what way does PHP's standard library fall short that Python overcomes?
- IgorPartola 16y agoPHP's standard library provides function likes parse_str, headers and setcookie. It provides language constructs such as $_GET, $_POST, $_FILES, $_COOKIES, $_SESSION which are web specific. Its standard library comes geared towards outputting HTML and it provides a FastCGI process manager. I think most importantly, it provides a templating capability (albeit a very poor one), that is geared towards embedding dynamic content in HTML. It is by all means at least an attempt at a web framework. In what ways does PHP's standard library fall short of Python's? I was never comparing the two. I have always found that both could get the job done, except PHP's uses a very weak naming convention/has none at all. I was comparing PHP's standard library features with those of Django. Here, Django wins hands down. If you are not familiar with either, I recommend trying reading through their tutorials and seeing which one comes out with a more complete product in which one feels less messy. Lastly, implying that PHP's standard library is not a framework because it is not built in PHP ("A framework is an abstraction built up USING a programming language, like PHP.") is just plain wrong. If I decided to speed up Django by re-writing every line of its code in C and making it an extension to Python rather than a Python module, without breaking any function signatures, would Django cease being a web framework? What would it become then? What if instead of C I chose Visual Basic, or Common Lisp, or F#, or even PHP (assuming I found a decent way to compile it to a binary)? A framework is collection of code that abstracts certain functionality. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_framework http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_framework for further information. EDIT: I am not at all talking about PHP the language vs Python. The two are different and both have some very interesting features. PHP 5 has grown up to be a pretty interesting general purpose dynamic language. I am specifically talking about using PHP on the web.
- beagledude 16y agoI'd be interested in the Debian one if it had useful info.
- regularfry 16y agoDebian: YES. I have been looking for precisely this for a while.
- berntb 16y agoSecond vote. Edit: I might add, at half the price I'd buy the advertised book in this article as presents for a couple of friends. I just don't have the language talent to write well myself.
- iuguy 16y agoDebian repositories - possibly. PHP to Django sounds like an awesome idea. I'd say Django deployment best practices sounds more like a chapter in PHP to Django.
- drewp 16y agoDon't ask this, _advertise_ each of those titles. Run a few text link ads, have them lead to a "thanks for your interest- sign up here if you want to know when I write that book". I forget who I learned this trick from :(
- jrnkntl 16y agoYes, nice try and proving your point for the new book by doing this.
- flyosity 16y agoI've been working on a series of tutorial to teach designers how to code iOS apps and it's always exciting to see people doing something similar and being very successful.
- bl4k 16y agoI don't think anybody should jump and start writing an e-book purely for monetary purposes. You may be setting yourself up for dissapointment. If, however, you are looking for a way to establish your name in a given community, gain consulting work, etc. then it may be a good idea. Even then, I would begin with writing long-form blog posts about the topic as a lead-in to a larger book that you can sell. I am always suspicious of authors who promote a book where I can't find any other content from the author anywhere online (or even any mention of their name).
- jeremymcanally 16y agoYeah, definitely agreed with you there. An eBook should simply be an extension of work you're already doing, not something you're generating just for cash. I get hives looking at other "WRITE EBOOKS NOW" eBooks because they advocate this whole "write it in 3 days, SEO it out the butt, make currency" approach. Not something I advocate at all.
- HannibalLecter 16y agoI positively concur. Anyone who does things primarily for monetary profit, is not considering the whole picture. There has to be a passion for whatever it is you're doing. Now if you're passionate about something -- enough to write a book about it -- then by all means, my hat is off to you!
- riffraff 16y agoso, what is the proper english term for "exploiting former one off success to promote yourself/get rich with X that shows how to X" such as book on writing books, screencast on making screencast, (time management,issue tracking) app for helping you build own app. I'd love to know it so I can use it to more easily mentally flag urls like this when I see them "oh it's another post-one-off-metapromotionalism website".
- jeremymcanally 16y agoUhm, this is my 4th book, and they've all been fairly successful. I've just compressed all the stuff I've learned into this one so people don't have to waste all the time and energy I did. Of course, you can flag it if you want; you're entitled to be offended by my efforts. But trying to tag me as some sort of stupid huckster who's showing up just to make some cash is really quite ridiculous.
- tomjen3 16y agoWhat you say is no doubt true, but there is no need to chew the poor guys head of like that. If you believe it is relevant, ask yourself why you didn't put that isn't in blogpost. For what it's worth, I agree with him and I don't think I am the only one. Since it's business to communicate, you may want to look into that.
- jeremymcanally 16y agoPerhaps I was a bit harsh (and you're right about adding info on my other books; updating entry now...), but my frustration comes from a fairly pervasive attitude that anyone who's making money is inherently a scheming, dishonest person who is just trying to squeeze Poor Joe Web Browser for the extra buck. It's really grating, especially, when I see that attitude here on HN where I think most of us are all going for the same thing: making awesome stuff and hopefully getting paid to do it.
- mbyrne 16y ago
- polynomial 16y agoIsn't this just a variation on an old scheme, ads for which used to appear in magazine and newspapers (in both full-page and classified listing formats)? The product toted was usually a small pamphlet instructing you how to make surprising sums of money by writing a pamphlet instructing others how to make surprising sums of money by writing pamphlets. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose…