

Give HN: My latest book on entrepreneurship - wj
http://personalopz.com/books/execution_and_other_lessons.html

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bhudman
I can imagine what the author feels - "I did all this work and people are
complaining about the colors!" :)

The comments about the colors are valid.

I once worked on a fairly complicated hardware (video encoder) that took over
a year to develop, and during an important demo, the most comments I got was
something about color of one of the LEDs. It was annoying to hear those
comments back then, but it has made me wiser about looks being an important
aspect of a product. Aesthetics are important (at least for others :)).

~~~
wj
I agree the comments are valid. They are all constructive criticism rather
than plain criticism and I appreciate people taking the time to make them.

I hope people do look past the cover (which I will work on improving) and read
a few of the chapters. And ultimately even listen to the lectures which I have
found to be a very inspirational resource. Thanks again to Stanford for
providing it.

~~~
seferphier
Merry Christmas and thank you for the book.

:) Great attitude towards feedback. Work on the colors!

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nationcrafting
Congratulations on finishing the book.

I would definitely redesign the cover if I were you. It's not just that it's
illegible, it also looks like blood splattered on a wall.

Now, I know this is how you meant it to be, because of the word "execution",
etc. but it is the design equivalent of a pun. Puns aren't necessarily bad by
definition, they just usually are because they apply intelligence to the wrong
problem.

The other point to make is that, funnily enough, the pun's idea is itself
badly executed. It really does look like you did the cover yourself in
MacPaint. If you're still keen on using this pun, there are other ways to
execute the same idea. For example, you could just have the word Execution in
blood on the wall, but the other lines on a non-patterned background, in a
more legible typeface.

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frakkingcylons
You might want to think about redesigning the cover, the title isn't legible.

Looks interesting though, I'll be reading it later this week. Congrats on
writing a book.

~~~
wj
This is only my second time trying to do a cover completely on my own. I agree
with your comment on the smaller size. It is a bit better in the PDF version
where it is larger.

~~~
frakkingcylons
It has less to do with the size, and more to do with the color of the
background and foreground text.

~~~
wj
Ahh. Maybe I'll try to lighten up the background when I get some time later
today.

Thanks for the tip.

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donutdan4114
The book looks like it has a lot of good content!

As others have said the cover is pretty bad. It is hard to read. It looks
childish. Have a professional design your covers and you'll probably see more
sales.

Regardless, if it's good and gets good reviews it probably won't matter :) But
for those early adopters, it matters.

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mandeepj
I like to appreciate you on your work and giving this for free to community. I
think people are right with their complaints about cover. The way paint is
shown getting dropped from text on the front cover - it reminds me about
beginning of a horror movie. A simple black color font on white cover could
have also done the job.

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peacemaker
Thanks for the free book, looking forward to reading it! If you want to get
the cover fixed cheap you can always check out Fiverr. I've had a few book
covers done on there and they come out quite professional most of the time.
Good luck with it!

