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Well, I'm not really a first-time author. I have 450 pages of a JavaScript book I wrote for O'Reilly, just sitting on my hard drive. But (long story short) they

Well, I'm not really a first-time author. I have 450 pages of a JavaScript book I wrote for O'Reilly, just sitting on my hard drive. But (long story short) they are blowhards so I canceled on them. Furthermore, I'm pretty famous for my teaching skillz. My blog has 7000 readers. My Scriptaculous cheat sheet, for example, has been downloaded about 500k times. I can't tell you how many big important people in the Rails community have come up to me and told me that they have my ActiveRecord cheat sheet hanging in their cube. (Or did.) I gave a 3-hour tutorial at OSCON on JavaScript and I've given normal-length talks on Prototype there as well. And my coauthor, my husband, wrote the Script.aculo.us framework and is one of the top 10 people in the world for this very topic. Why would I charge $10 for a 150 page book? :) Plus the DOM Monster tool, which will save our customers hours of work. Many geeks undercharge because they don't know what creates value. I do know what creates value, and I do it - I write so anyone can understand, I make people laugh, I format the book in a beautiful and screen-friendly way, I make excellent diagrams, and I am incredibly picky about quality. All those things, and the content is in-depth and detailed to a degree you cannot find anywhere else. I don't undercharge. :) I could have easily charged more. And what I'm really interested in, a few steps down the line, is teaching others to do this. I think that the stranglehold book publishers have is an illusory one. I think that there are tons of people right here on HN who could make good money and help people, rather than dreaming of writing a paper book where they get 10% of the discounted price at Amazon.

bprater 17y ago
It's safe to ignore anyone complaining on the topic of price. Those of us that spend thousands of dollars every year to keep our education up for our section of the technical playground aren't going to hesitate at paying $30 for good information. I'm confident you've put at least $30 of value into every book, if not thousands more. My first ebook on software design sold for $97 starting in 2001 and that's when nobody had even heard of ebooks. I made six-figures several times over with the product. Amy, I would suggest spending more time on the sales page. I don't think it's driving home just how valuable the book can be. Put yourself in my shoes as a developer and hear all the silly questions I'm asking about the book and the problems I'm having with my code in which your book will help out. For sure, you shouldn't have your bios hanging out on the side of the page. Drop them in the middle and really allow yourselves to shine. I'm not even sure if the best angle to spin the guide is as a "is your app slow?" type of book. Some of us want to produce high-quality code and want to see useful techniques for improvements across the board. "Supercharge your Javascript" resonates more strongly with me than "Do you fall asleep waiting while your apps are running?" Feel free to ping me if you'd like some additional advice. For sure, add a box to the webpage for folks to sign up for updates. Get a cheap account at aweber.com. Regularly mail updates out about the guide. Often, it takes 7-10 impressions of a product to make the sale. And once you have thousands of folks on your list, selling the second guide you write will be much easier!
- ahoyhere 17y ago
  Hiya, bprater. Thanks for... actually, anything I try here sounds silly - support, sharing, etc., etc. But, in any case, thanks. Re: the sales page, you're right. This is the beta sales page. When I ship the final version (next weekish), the sales page will change. I didn't think it made sense to work on the sales page again before the book was done. :) I'm always looking for more advice so I will definitely ping you. Nice to see another geek doing this stuff, not just sleazy "I make $102,221.392 repeating on Google Adsense every picosecond!" people. :)
- ahoyhere 17y ago
  Speaking of pinging you... you're a hard man to track down. Is your email address bprater @ BFL (abbrvd)? Or is there a better way? You can email me @ amy at slash (number) 7 dot com :)
kragen 17y ago
My Scriptaculous cheat sheet, for example, has been downloaded about 500k times. That's amazing. Does that mean there are on the order of 500k programmers in the world using Scriptaculous? How many programmers are there, anyway? (In this case, discounting non-procedural languages like Excel.)
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
- ahoyhere 17y ago
  I have no idea. I'm just reporting raw numbers. :)

bprater 17y ago

It's safe to ignore anyone complaining on the topic of price. Those of us that spend thousands of dollars every year to keep our education up for our section of the technical playground aren't going to hesitate at paying $30 for good information. I'm confident you've put at least $30 of value into every book, if not thousands more. My first ebook on software design sold for $97 starting in 2001 and that's when nobody had even heard of ebooks. I made six-figures several times over with the product. Amy, I would suggest spending more time on the sales page. I don't think it's driving home just how valuable the book can be. Put yourself in my shoes as a developer and hear all the silly questions I'm asking about the book and the problems I'm having with my code in which your book will help out. For sure, you shouldn't have your bios hanging out on the side of the page. Drop them in the middle and really allow yourselves to shine. I'm not even sure if the best angle to spin the guide is as a "is your app slow?" type of book. Some of us want to produce high-quality code and want to see useful techniques for improvements across the board. "Supercharge your Javascript" resonates more strongly with me than "Do you fall asleep waiting while your apps are running?" Feel free to ping me if you'd like some additional advice. For sure, add a box to the webpage for folks to sign up for updates. Get a cheap account at aweber.com. Regularly mail updates out about the guide. Often, it takes 7-10 impressions of a product to make the sale. And once you have thousands of folks on your list, selling the second guide you write will be much easier!

ahoyhere 17y ago
Hiya, bprater. Thanks for... actually, anything I try here sounds silly - support, sharing, etc., etc. But, in any case, thanks. Re: the sales page, you're right. This is the beta sales page. When I ship the final version (next weekish), the sales page will change. I didn't think it made sense to work on the sales page again before the book was done. :) I'm always looking for more advice so I will definitely ping you. Nice to see another geek doing this stuff, not just sleazy "I make $102,221.392 repeating on Google Adsense every picosecond!" people. :)
ahoyhere 17y ago
Speaking of pinging you... you're a hard man to track down. Is your email address bprater @ BFL (abbrvd)? Or is there a better way? You can email me @ amy at slash (number) 7 dot com :)

kragen 17y ago

My Scriptaculous cheat sheet, for example, has been downloaded about 500k times. That's amazing. Does that mean there are on the order of 500k programmers in the world using Scriptaculous? How many programmers are there, anyway? (In this case, discounting non-procedural languages like Excel.)

deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
ahoyhere 17y ago
I have no idea. I'm just reporting raw numbers. :)