

You Should Launch with Less - MrMcDowall
https://leanpub.com/you-should-launch-with-less

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mladenkovacevic
I'd always wondered about the "send email and we'll let you know when it's
ready" approach. I hope it's working for you.

Also the title made me think that this is about LESS, the CSS framework, but
maybe that's not a common association.

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MrMcDowall
I'm happy to be open about it: So far 31 people have signed up to be notified
and given a price, which is working out as a mean of $20.

Yeah I thought about that too, but the audience I'm going after didn't make
that association so readily.

Edit: I opened the page for registration at 4pm EST yesterday (1st May).

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mladenkovacevic
That's not bad at all for not even 24 hours. I'm sorry I might have brought
down your average by a buck or so. I see that you're from T.O too so let's
just call it a "neighbour discount".

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nhance
I'm definitely not a fan of letting your customers choose the price,
especially in a book like this that could be far far more valuable.

Price is a way to send a signal about what you should expect from the book and
can have an impact in how much attention is paid to the advice in the book.

Take me for an example. I have hired a coach to help me grow my business, but
I'm also attending SCORE meetings. SCORE is free, and the coach is far from
it. Sometimes, they both provide similar advice, but when they differ.. guess
which one I trust more?

Your job as the author is to set up the expectations so that when I read this
book I can have a sense of what it's worth to me to read. If I can take the
knowledge from this to save $25,000, it's worth a whole lot more to me than
$20.

The price should be based on the value I can expect from the book, not because
other people thought of a number that sounded good. In practical terms, what
everyone thinks is useless. The results are what determine the value of what
you're sharing.

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MrMcDowall
Hey Nick, it's John here :P

Neither am I, and the Customers aren't choosing the price here. They are
signalling how much they think they would pay - there's nothing that
guarantees they'll get it for that price.

I didn't choose that page layout - it's what Leanpub provides for an
unpublished book. I only consider the price that customers signal as an
interesting reflection on how much value the book title and subtitle convey on
first reading.

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nhance
Great way to look at it! Figured this was a good a place for this discussion
as any. ;)

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bradddd
It looks like a great collection of experiences and stories.

I also latched onto the Lean Startup genre and didn't immediately understand
the programmer/web architecture distinction. Also, in the subtitle blurb you
say, "Startup Founders Open Up About Web Architectures In The Early Days."
That made more sense to me after I read the rest of the page, but it might be
helpful to point out they're discussing "their web architectures." At first, I
thought the book was about the history of web architectures.

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MrMcDowall
That's great feedback - thanks for taking the time!

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MrMcDowall
Hello! I'm the author of this book - if you'd like to be in it just tweet me
@MrMcDowall.

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_halcyon_
So...Lean Startup for...programmers? Hasn't this already been done before?

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MrMcDowall
It's not an instruction manual.

