
Getting Real book is now free PDF - nyrb
http://gettingreal.37signals.com/?freepdf
======
petercooper
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 building a list using free content without disclosing a
subscription up front. Till now I've avoided this technique but I imagine it
could convert like crazy and build a good list if done right.

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

~~~
basil
I just use a temporary mail service (e.g. <http://10minutemail.com>).

~~~
gulbrandr
Or <http://www.jetable.org/en/index>

~~~
irfan
or <http://mailinator.com>

~~~
LoneWolf
while we are at it here is the one I used to download (didn't open the
comments first) <http://guerrillamail.com>

------
tferris
For those who haven't read the book: it's a great experience and gives you
confidence in bootstrapping: that you can get things done just by starting and
doing it yourself and not waiting for some coding talent or VC money. So, it's
definitely very motivating and I recommend to skim it instantly if you haven't
done it before.

But at the same time it's pretty old now and if you read HN for more than 3
months then the book won't offer any surprise. And though it's not very much
about Rails or programming it still transports a specific and opinionated
mindset about how life and in particular entrepreneurship has to work. From
37signals' point of view it's the _only_ way how entrepreneurship should be
approached while heavily despising other ways, as recently seen in DHH last
post about players like Pinterest, Instagram or Quora. So, it's pretty much
like Rails—there is only _one_ way and no other—and thus, you should take some
messages of the book with a grain of salt and be aware that it's aged and to
some extent just a leverage for email Marketing for 37signals (also aging)
products.

~~~
jasonfried
"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 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.

~~~
tferris
> 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 but less opinionated—so blogging, reading
and posting to HN should transport knowledge very effectively, maybe easier
than reading cumbersome PDFs and that's what I'd recommend for getting into
startups. People get here the wide variety of different approaches.

Don't get me wrong: I still highly recommend Get Real— _again for all people
here: it's a great book, it was groundbreaking, go, get it, provide your email
adress to 37signals and read it, it's worth_ —but its content is not so
outstanding as it was 5 yrs ago and for some more experienced ones maybe just
a little tiny bit too opinionated. And that's all I wanted to say.

------
unreal37
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.

~~~
jmonegro
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.

~~~
gouranga
Wget brings me permanency :)

~~~
anthonyb
Specifically

    
    
        wget -m -k -nH <http://site.url/>

------
dudurocha
This is wonderful. One of the best reality checks for a
developer/entrepreneur.

Not to be a dick, but I would appreciate a mobi version of it.

~~~
solutionyogi
If you have a Kindle with WiFi, you can send the PDF to your personalized
Kindle email address with word 'Convert' in the subject and it will convert
the PDF to the appropriate format for your Kindle. It works beautifully.

~~~
alatkins
It work kind of okay, but formatting tends to get screwed up when doing this.
Conversion with something like Calibre can give better results, but typically
nothing's as good as a well-prepared epub or mobi.

------
nadam
I like this book, very inspirational.

About 'Less features' I've mixed feelings. In lots of markets (for example I
am building a markdown editor for windows) you have lots of free competition,
and one of the most important competitive advantages of paid applications is
feature-completeness. Just too much people build 'minimal' free applications
nowadays. 'Minimal' can get in the way of monetization easily.

Also 'Build software for yourself' is a good idea, but if you are a
programmer, and all your ideas are developer tools be extremely careful
because you will have an extreme amount of (mostly free) competition and a
crazily hardly monetizable user base.

But still, there are very good thoughts in this book, and of course I try to
not put any unnecessary features or options into my product.

~~~
davidw
A company of mine has been competing very successfully with 37 signals by
doing significantly less than they do:

<http://73primenumbers.com/>

------
neilkelty
You know you've created a following of customers that love you when you upload
a PDF file full of content that was published years ago to the Internet and it
hits the top of Hacker News.

~~~
patio11
_PDF file full of content that was published years ago to the Internet_

I strongly suggest that everyone write down this sentence-fragment and analyze
it carefully, because it describes the borked way many people perceive value
for things and _you should specifically avoid framing things you write for
your business such that they align with this value system_.

For example, for a similar offer, I might have gone with microcopy like "Get
the New York Times best-seller" [enter your email address] Button: "Send me my
copy."

NYT best-seller turns the "It's old!" objection on its head: it is now social
proof of its value. (This depends on whether its a NYT best-seller, which I
don't know off the top of my head. If it isn't technically, there are other
ways to phrase that: sold X00,000 copies, etc.)

"Get" is (testably!) a stronger verb that "Download" because people have
positive associations with _possession_ and non-positive associations with
bits, particularly people who expect their bits to be free.

"My copy" activates those covetous neuroreceptors that really like exclusive
ownership of things. People really like that, even the same folks who will yak
your ear off that data cannot be owned: for example, almost all of them will
beam with pride when saying "my favorite band" as if they have a particular
claim to feudal loyalty from the people whose music they most frequently don't
pay for.

But the point is much, much broader than microcopy on particular pages. It
informs how you'd go about executing on a "content strategy" -- for example,
if you just take the date off stuff you put into WordPress and stop calling
them "blog posts" and start calling them "comprehensive guides to X written by
our experts" customer perceived value will go _through the roof_. Seriously,
this is testable.

I will publish more extensive commentary on the strategic implications of this
for software businesses later. (Notice how much better that sounds than "I
will blog about this.")

~~~
Poiesis
_for example, if you just take the date off stuff you put into WordPress and
stop calling them "blog posts"_

Man, I hate it when people do this. No offense to you, of course--and I'm sure
your advice is backed by good data and provably worth quite a bit of money--
but _man_ do I hate it.

I can't tell you how many times I've been looking at a post and tried to find
the date, whether to figure out what version of a product someone was likely
talking about, or to cross reference against some other post, or to consider
the post in light of other events at the time.

I realize why it's done, and I realize that this is another one of those "you
are not the typical user" issues, and all that. But it's still frustrating.

~~~
tptacek
The point is _not writing blog posts at all_. He's suggesting that you can
continue to use WordPress behind the scenes, as an implementation detail, if
that makes you happiest --- but to _stop blogging_.

------
fierarul
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.

~~~
killercup
What always surprised me: Amazon sells a (pretty nice) Kindle version, but all
you get from 37Signals is this lame PDF.

(Maybe they want you to print it on really large paper and use it as your
office wallpaper? That's a completely different strategy…)

~~~
fierarul
Perhaps they don't own the rights to redistribute the Kindle version?

Anyhow, I would have preferred a simple text file. I don't see what PDF gives
me except extra work to convert it to something else. Which is probably why,
most likely, I'm not even going to read the thing.

~~~
billpatrianakos
You won't read their free book that you would have otherwise liked to have
read because they don't distribute it in your preferred format but instead in
2 very ubiquitous formats that are easily converted? Really? This is not a
personal attack but it is a criticism and I think it applies to a lot of
people, really.

There seems to be this really weird trend where people seem to think they're
entitled to free stuff when and how they want it. They don't quite come out
and demand it but the subtext is clear as day. Your comment and much of the
others exemplify this. You basically just said "I'm not reading it because it
doesn't come in my preferred format" which isn't far from "they should release
it in the format I desire". (it's not _what_ you say but how you say it). Then
there's that direct download link and the complaints about giving an email to
get a PDF. That's entitlement. It seems the beggars believe they can also be
choosers. Someone is giving something at no cost but people still feel they
should be able to circumvent simply giving an email which they can unsubscribe
from later quite easily. Imagine if 37Signals set up a booth on a public
street corner and gave away hard copies of their book and then people went
around saying "I shouldn't have to walk to the booth and say hi to Jason and
DHH, they should just ship it to me". Its really not that big of a stretch!

I happen to notice a lot of this and it really gets to me.

~~~
fierarul
You are reading too much into what I've said.

The book itself seems interesting because of all the hype about it. But if I
say I won't read it because it's not in the format I want it that suggests how
important it really is to me, ie. not much.

I'm not saying I'm entitled to their book in my format, just that it would
have been convenient.

There is only so much time available and even the "free" stuff costs, the more
hoops they make you jump through.

If Coca Cola is giving away free six-packs at the local supermarket I probably
won't drive half an hour to get there. But I also won't go to the neighborhood
small market to get a single bottle because I'll realize I never wanted a Coca
Cola to begin with, I was only curious what all the hype about the new flavor
is all about.

------
Smerity
This release gives 37Signals a number of advantages. 1) Free press towards the
37Signals brand and 2) a product that they're proud of and which indicates the
future quality a customer can expect from them.

This will benefit them far more than any lingering sales revenue might have.
37Signals seem to consistently do this sort of thing right.

------
sparknlaunch12
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...](http://www.leanblog.org/2012/02/podcast-140-leanpub-com-part-1-peter-
armstrong-scott-patten/)

------
chj
Really appreciated. pdf can't hurt, but epub version would be more friendly
for kindle.

------
zizee
First read this book about 3 years ago and immediately started telling people
about it. Really spoke to me.

With this free release I have started emailing people about it all over again.

------
tferris
?

Thought it was already free for years.

~~~
dudurocha
It was free in its html version. The pdf costed about 20$.

~~~
tferris
Hmm, a PDF isn't much better than HTML, they should provide some ebook
format—how should one read this thing conveniently on his smartphone?

~~~
pbreit
Surely your "smartphone" can read a PDF?

~~~
dredmorbius
Try this yourself.

Compare the reading experience of a PDF to that of an ePUB or other ebook-
specific format.

I've recently started using Moon-Reader on Android. And ... it's pretty
awesome. Text is legible, you can read pages without zooming/panning pages,
text fluidly fills the page, graphics are supported, navigation is very fluid,
controls are, if not "intuitive", _very_ discoverable _and_ stay out of your
face.

Plus the whole application is designed for reading _multiple_ books. There's a
bookshelf, access to local storage (if you need that), and online ePUB
libraries (OPDS format).

I've tried converting from other formats to ePUB via Calibre, and it's a bit
hit-or-miss. It seems to be broken currently in Debian/wheezy. Under Ubunto
11.10, I may or may not get something that's actually converted, and the
formatting can be really, really broken.

Oh, and in ePUB/Moon-Reader, if you leave the book or app and go back --
you're where you left off (as with a dedicated hardware eBook reader). Unlike
every PDF reader I've experience on Android, where you start off again from
page 1.

Sorry, but the mobile PDF experience is _extremely_ broken.

Actually, other than printing to paper (or previewing same), the PDF
experience is extremely broken. I'd prefer ePUB for pretty much all my
documentation these days.

~~~
pbreit
I don't read books on a phone and the PDF viewing experience on an iPad is
perfectly fine. Is there another "mobile" that I'm missing?

~~~
dredmorbius
I haven't dropped a dime on an iPad (or other tablet device) yet.

If you'll note my points, there's functionality above and beyond just plain
display that a proper eBook app has. From what I've seen, present PDF readers
lack these.

Whatever other "mobile" formats come into being, relying on a publication
format which presumes a fixed, print-based output (in any of several
internationally incompatible formats -- I've just learned of the US letter/A4
hybrid though I've also instantly forgotten its name) ... in a world in which
text displays are overwhelmingly both electronic and fluid, strikes me as very
backward.

------
EliRivers
For something that implies on the cover that it is going to get real about
build wep apps, there's very little actual building of web apps in there.

------
sutro
Compelling... Still, I've made it this far, I think I'll just continue to
Remain Fake.

------
rbanffy
"thanks _.php_ "?!

------
anhsirk
Thanks guys!

------
theone
I don't know about others, but personally it sucks when some product for which
I paid, is now available for less or even free.

Specially in case of electronics, you buy something when its new. The next
month you meet some friend with the same piece, which he got for fraction of
price. And more disturbing is that at that point of time, your piece is older
and his is new.

Here I am not talking about this case in particular, even I am happy to get
free Getting Real.

~~~
InclinedPlane
HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE PROGRESS! HOW WE ALL DESPISE THEE!

It sounds like your problem is perhaps one of envy. You hate other people
having nice things more than you enjoy having nice things for yourself. Just
relax, things are going to get cheaper, and better, and that will benefit you
just as much as it benefits the next guy. If you paid for something that's
cheaper now just chalk that up to the cost of being an early adopter or take
pride in the fact that you were able to support something in the early days
that is now so successful that it can be offered for much less.

