
Write & Sell Your Damn Book (Paul Jarvis) - 3stripe
http://mydamnbook.com/
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noelwelsh
The most interesting thing to me is that this is sponsored by Gumroad and
Mailchimp. This suggests that self-publishing is at the end of the early
adopter phase, and perhaps on its way to becoming mainstream. Would love to
know more about the corp. involvement here.

(And yes, signed up.)

Update: By "corp. involvement" I'm not suggesting this is a shill for Gumroad
and Mailchimp, but rather it's interesting they see enough potential in this
sector to agree to sponsor this. Also it is an interesting wrinkle on the
self-publishing / info product phenomenon to get sponsors for your book.

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mb_72
Self-publishing has been around for more or less as long as there has been
books.

Personally, I hope it doesn't become 'mainstream' otherwise every Tom, Dick
and Harry who thinks they can write will be churning out their own
'masterpiece', and then wondering why no-one is interested in it. There is
something to be said for budding authors to get their 10,000 hours in in
'publishing silence', and then produce something actually worthwhile reading.

That said, if someone has produced a guide that will benefit good writers that
otherwise might flounder a bit with the self-publication process, more power
to them. And the creator of this approach does note, to his credit, that this
won't make you a better writer. I wonder how many will take serious note of
this point!

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rokhayakebe
I think EVERYONE needs to write a book, at least once. I am not entirely
convinced every book should be published, however.

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wiradikusuma
Since we're in the topic of book-writing, I want to ask HNers for opinion:

I consider myself pretty knowledgeable with Google App Engine (built 2
websites with it). I'm thinking of writing a (self-published) book on the
topic. In my dev, I use Scala and CoffeeScript+AngularJS. My questions are:

(1) Is App Engine too small to worth writing?

(2) Should I include "beginning Scala and CoffeeScript+AngularJS" (which means
will be OOT and take significantly more effort to write)?

(3) But if I don't include them, wouldn't that significantly limit my target
market? (people who use Scala and CoffeeScript+AngularJS on App Engine)

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noelwelsh
My opinion (as a Scala consultant, so biased) is the market for a good book on
Scala web dev is larger than a book on GAE.

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playing_colours
As a Scala developer I would really buy a book on Scala, which explains
advanced features. "Scala in Depth" is good, but I would want a book with a
lot of stuff on type system, FP, to the level of Scalaz, Shapeless, and
macros.

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joshaidan
One thing that bothers me about "write your book" courses and howtos is that
they rarely specify what type of book the course is geared towards. In
particular, is this course for fiction or non-fiction writers?

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pjrvs
Both. Although I am a non-fiction writer, I was careful to make sure the ideas
(and they're all general) fit for both genres.

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cliveowen
Book, that's a very broad term. Are we talking textbooks, recipe books, short-
fiction, novels, non-fiction or any of the other tens of genres?

You should rethink the whole pitch because it fails to deliver the main point.

Nice design though.

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Ju1967
Paul I've signed up - it's a no brainer not to. I will commit to completing
the course, and if you need me to publish a review or help out then let me
know my friend.

Best wishes, and thanks. Julian.

PS. So far it's super slick, and I can't wait to get started.

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pjrvs
Thanks Julian! Any help you've got, I appreciate and am humbled by.

