
I made $40,000 this year with my eBook and you (probably) can, too - jeremymcanally
http://omgbloglol.com/post/2336867402/holy-crap-i-made-40-000-this-year-with-my-ebook
======
bl4k
I don't think anybody should jump and start writing an e-book purely for
monetary purposes. You may be setting yourself up for dissapointment.

If, however, you are looking for a way to establish your name in a given
community, gain consulting work, etc. then it may be a good idea.

Even then, I would begin with writing long-form blog posts about the topic as
a lead-in to a larger book that you can sell.

I am always suspicious of authors who promote a book where I can't find any
other content from the author anywhere online (or even any mention of their
name).

~~~
jeremymcanally
Yeah, definitely agreed with you there. An eBook should simply be an extension
of work you're already doing, not something you're generating just for cash. I
get hives looking at other "WRITE EBOOKS NOW" eBooks because they advocate
this whole "write it in 3 days, SEO it out the butt, make currency" approach.
Not something I advocate at all.

------
riffraff
so, what is the proper english term for "exploiting former one off success to
promote yourself/get rich with X that shows how to X" such as book on writing
books, screencast on making screencast, (time management,issue tracking) app
for helping you build own app.

I'd love to know it so I can use it to more easily mentally flag urls like
this when I see them "oh it's another post-one-off-metapromotionalism
website".

~~~
jeremymcanally
Uhm, this is my 4th book, and they've all been fairly successful. I've just
compressed all the stuff I've learned into this one so people don't have to
waste all the time and energy I did.

Of course, you can flag it if you want; you're entitled to be offended by my
efforts. But trying to tag me as some sort of stupid huckster who's showing up
just to make some cash is really quite ridiculous.

~~~
tomjen3
What you say is no doubt true, but there is no need to chew the poor guys head
of like that. If you believe it is relevant, ask yourself why you didn't put
that isn't in blogpost.

For what it's worth, I agree with him and I don't think I am the only one.
Since it's business to communicate, you may want to look into that.

~~~
jeremymcanally
Perhaps I was a bit harsh (and you're right about adding info on my other
books; updating entry now...), but my frustration comes from a fairly
pervasive attitude that anyone who's making money is inherently a scheming,
dishonest person who is just trying to squeeze Poor Joe Web Browser for the
extra buck.

It's really grating, especially, when I see that attitude here on HN where I
think most of us are all going for the same thing: making awesome stuff and
hopefully getting paid to do it.

~~~
mbyrne
No, you weren't being harsh at all. But there is a certain percentage of
readers who are like Smokey from the Big Lebowski:

DUDE: Walter, you can't do that. These guys're like me, they're pacificists.
Smokey was a conscientious objector.

WALTER: You know Dude, I myself dabbled with pacifism at one point. Not in
Nam, of course--

DUDE: And you know Smokey has emotional problems!

WALTER: You mean--beyond pacifism?

DUDE: He's fragile, man! He's very fragile!

WALTER: Huh. I did not know that. Well, it's water under the bridge.

When you comment, remember, Smokey is here reading too, and he's fragile, man,
he's very fragile.

------
IgorPartola
Would anyone buy "Custom Debian repositories as a way to organize your
deployment"? How about "Django deployment best practices"? Or "Leap from PHP
to Django"?

~~~
xd
PHP is a scripting language and Django is a python web framework. PHP to
Python would make more sense.

~~~
IgorPartola
In some sense, yes. However, PHP is a language + a giant standard library
geared towards web development. In some sense it is a web framework or at
least is often used that way. Since as a web framework, PHP's standard library
falls short, things like CakePHP and CodeIgniter were created, but have their
own shortcomings. But I consider Django a better framework than either PHP's
standard offering or things built on top of it. However, the transition from
developing web applications in PHP to using Python/Django is not as
straightforward and I think a nice guide could be in order.

~~~
xd
PHP is NOT in any sense a framework. A framework is an abstraction built up
USING a programming language, like PHP.

In what way does PHP's standard library fall short that Python overcomes?

~~~
IgorPartola
PHP's standard library provides function likes parse_str, headers and
setcookie. It provides language constructs such as $_GET, $_POST, $_FILES,
$_COOKIES, $_SESSION which are web specific. Its standard library comes geared
towards outputting HTML and it provides a FastCGI process manager. I think
most importantly, it provides a templating capability (albeit a very poor
one), that is geared towards embedding dynamic content in HTML. It is by all
means at least an attempt at a web framework.

In what ways does PHP's standard library fall short of Python's? I was never
comparing the two. I have always found that both could get the job done,
except PHP's uses a very weak naming convention/has none at all.

I _was_ comparing PHP's standard library features with those of Django. Here,
Django wins hands down. If you are not familiar with either, I recommend
trying reading through their tutorials and seeing which one comes out with a
more complete product in which one feels less messy.

Lastly, implying that PHP's standard library is not a framework because it is
not built in PHP ("A framework is an abstraction built up USING a programming
language, like PHP.") is just plain wrong. If I decided to speed up Django by
re-writing every line of its code in C and making it an extension to Python
rather than a Python module, without breaking any function signatures, would
Django cease being a web framework? What would it become then? What if instead
of C I chose Visual Basic, or Common Lisp, or F#, or even _PHP_ (assuming I
found a decent way to compile it to a binary)? A framework is collection of
code that abstracts certain functionality. See
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_framework> for further information.

EDIT: I am not at all talking about PHP the language vs Python. The two are
different and both have some very interesting features. PHP 5 has grown up to
be a pretty interesting general purpose dynamic language. I am specifically
talking about using PHP on the web.

~~~
xd
I'm not sure where to begin with all this. It's late and been a long day so I
will try and follow up most of this tomorrow morning. However, to your first
set of points ..

Where you call pre-populated global variables "language constructs". They are
not. PHP calls them "super globals". These are global variables mapped from
the GET/POST/Cookie client headers into the server environment by the PHP
SAPI, for instance the Apache SAPI. PHP has many SAPIs, including a command
line one, which doesn't populate these globals for obvious reasons. Oh and
FastCGI for PHP is provided by a SAPI as well (nothing to do with the standard
library).

Oh and quickly - "I was comparing PHP's standard library features with those
of Django." Can I pick a PHP framework of choice and start comparing it to
Python?

------
flyosity
I've been working on a series of tutorial to teach designers how to code iOS
apps and it's always exciting to see people doing something similar and being
very successful.

------
polynomial
Isn't this just a variation on an old scheme, ads for which used to appear in
magazine and newspapers (in both full-page and classified listing formats)?

The product toted was usually a small pamphlet instructing you how to make
surprising sums of money by writing a pamphlet instructing others how to make
surprising sums of money by writing pamphlets.

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose…

------
jrnkntl
Yes, nice try and proving your point for the new book by doing this.

