

37signals to publish a new book - edu
http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1441-announcing-our-new-book-deal

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axod
Is it just me, or do we hear more from 37signals about "How to do it", than
about their products?

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jasonfried
What do you want to know?

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axod
Some cool stories about technology, scaling, performance, building products,
improving products, new features, cool hacks, etc would be what I would find
interesting.

It just seems that a lot of the "business advice" is a bit nothingy - Not just
37signals, but Seth Godin, etc. Often it seems like having a "life coach" who
used to work at Hallmark telling you things you already know in a slightly
sermonistic way.

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jasonfried
We share this stuff on our blog almost every day. Keep an eye on Signal vs.
Noise (<http://www.37signals.com/svn>) and the Product Blog
(<http://productblog.37signals.com>) and you'll see all sorts of posts about
building products, performance, improving, new features, tips and tricks, case
studies, etc.

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prakash
Did anyone else find the irony in calling a book _UnConform_ and getting it
published by a _regular_ publisher, when the previous book was called _Getting
Real_ ; and David/37s were in large part responsible for technical books being
published in various incremental _beta_ stages?

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run4yourlives
Given that they were big fans of not publishing books the old fashioned way in
the past, I'd be interested in understanding what made them change their
minds.

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dchest
Here,

 _Even though we had tremendous success self-publishing Getting Real, we
decided that this time we wanted to write a best seller. We want to sell
hundreds of thousands or millions of copies. We couldn’t do this on our own,
so we decided to work with a traditional publisher._

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josefresco
AKA Greed.

Not that I have a problem with it, but it flies in the face of the 'on-demand'
self-publishing mantra that is preached daily on the web.

And people wonder why pop stars continue to sign with the major labels.

~~~
jasonfried
It's likely we could have made more money self-publishing than going with a
traditional publisher. We made north of $400K self-publishing our first book
-- and that was in 2006. Today we have a much larger audience, roughly 4x the
customer base, a blog that is read by roughly 7x more people, etc. So if this
was purely about greed, self-publishing would be the right way down that road.
We'd make an awful lot and get to keep every penny to ourselves.

But we don't just want to reach the audience we can reach on our own. We want
to reach a much broader audience. We want to reach every entrepreneur, small
business owner, or small team member. We want to take our message mainstream.
We believe working with a traditional publisher will give us a much better
chance to reach these people. That's why we're working with a traditional
publisher and that's why we believe we can sell hundreds of thousands or
millions of copies of this book.

~~~
josefresco
I was not inferring that the money made would be direct.

If a new music artist signs with a major record label, it isn't because of the
great % they are offering, it's the large exposure, which results in money
down the road (from concerts, their 'second' deal etc.) Same with your book
deal.

Making money isn't bad, I just feel it's a change in strategy from a company
all about 'getting real'.

We (as hackers) all 'rage against the machine' when we're young and poor, but
once we all have some success and wisdom most take the opportunity presented
by 'the man'. Maybe I'm naive in thinking 37signals was different.

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neilc
Did you simply just ignore Jason's point about reaching a broader audience?
That seems like quite a legitimate reason to use an established publisher.

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tdavis
This book will fail because Godin already has the market on made up words
cornered.

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mattmaroon
The byline should be "how to write a blog telling people how to startup, even
though your startup has like 8 customers, until your blog is way more popular
than your startup."

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GHFigs
It's more likely to be "how to work four days a week at your decade-old
profitable company while still having people insist on referring to you as a
startup".

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antidaily
I'm pretty familiar with their general messaging and way of doing things - I
wonder if the book we'll offer anything new. I abandoned "Getting Real" after
coming across countless points recycled from their blog.

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jonny_noog
My understanding was that essentially the entire "Getting Real" book was
compiled from posts off their blog. This was no secret, and an easy to find
out fact before deciding to buy the book or not.

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davidw
I bet it'll be a good candidate for Squeezed Books if "Getting Real" was
anything to go by.

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iamdave
_Even though we had tremendous success self-publishing Getting Real, we
decided that this time we wanted to write a best seller._

Is preemptively saying "I'm going to write a best seller" ambitious, or
arrogant?

I think it's far more viable to say "We want to appeal to a larger audience
and make a deeper impact" than saying "we want a book that's going to fly off
the shelves", given the perception many people _already_ have about a company
that runs around touting their own experiences as the golden standard for how
web startups 'should' be run.

It'll probably be a good book, but I feel as if this will be recycled
information haphazardly put together and marketed excessively.

In any case: Good luck breaching the wall of physical publications of business
advice.

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GHFigs
Read the sentence again. It is a justification of their choice as being a
practical one, not a statement about the quality of the book. They're saying
that while "Getting Real" is the 4th best seller on Lulu, that's kinda like
the old joke about "What's better than winning a gold medal at the Special
Olympics?" To even have a hope of reaching "real" best seller status
_requires_ the resources of a traditional publisher, so that's what they did.
Whether they actually achieve that status is another question, one which they
make no claims about. That's why the next sentence reads "We want to sell
hundreds of thousands or millions of copies." not "We _will_ sell hundreds of
thousands or millions of copies."

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justindz
Maybe they'll decide to unconform by foregoing the descriptive subtitle.

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dawie
The 37 Signals guys are brilliant!

This is great marketing for their products, and they are getting paid to do
it.

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jonursenbach
Awesome! Another book that I'm not going to read.

