
What are the most indispensable books for indie hackers? - ChanningAllen
https://www.indiehackers.com/post/what-are-the-most-indispensable-books-for-indie-hackers-e2ec3a13e9
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peatfreak
Doing your own research, _visiting libraries_ , reading reviews, etc. These
are the best way to find books that you never would have found otherwise.

Otherwise you're going to end up with the same old stuff (SICP, Release It!,
GEB, Code Complete, blah blah blah). Those books are actually good but they
are on every single list and even worse, some "modern classics" are actually
complete dreck. You might impress your developer friends but you won't advance
yourself.

For example when I was studying for my PhD in signal processing and machine
learning (before machine learning became popular again) I had to learn a lot
about functional analysis. I also needed to learn a small amount of measure
theory; and to go appreciably deeper in to time-frequency analysis,
probability, and statistics, than I had before.

I discovered many masterpieces of my own accord. I never would have seen them
because one lesson I learned during my literature review and actually doing
research is that very few people actually read the books and articles they
cite. They merely copy bibliographies from one ancestor article to another
without knowing why.

~~~
balfirevic
> Those books are actually good but they are on every single list and even
> worse, some "modern classics" are actually complete dreck. You might impress
> your developer friends but you won't advance yourself.

I don't get it. If these are good books and you have not read them, how will
you not advance yourself by reading them?

~~~
atroche
I think he means if you read the ones that are vaunted but bad you won't
advance yourself, not that you can't advance yourself by reading classics.

------
tomcam
“The Mom Test” by Rob Fitzpatrick is in my mind the most revolutionary and
essential business book for indie hackers in the last 20 years. It would have
saved me $1.4 million in my attempt to beat craigslist at its own game a
decade ago.

It illustrates in the most logical progression a set of easily implementable
steps to ensure that your own confirmation bias doesn’t sink your company.

~~~
coderheed
I was surprised that one didn't make the list.

~~~
czue
Agreed! I had listed it as an "honorable mention" on my response, but I think
they only wanted one book per person.

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zachruss92
I just want to recommend a service called eReaderIQ. It's a price tracking
service for eBooks. Basically any book you've wanted to read has been
available for $3 or less in the past year. I've saved a ton of money with this
service.

\- [https://www.ereaderiq.com/](https://www.ereaderiq.com/)

You're welcome :)

~~~
arthurcolle
Or just use LibGen like a true Internet patriot.

~~~
Yajirobe
That's illegal.

~~~
mandelbrott
On that note, I'd just like to add this thread from academia stack exchange.

[https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/112509/legality...](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/112509/legality-
of-downloading-books-from-websites-such-as-library-genesis)

~~~
_grep_
Even if the company suing you will have a tough time proving their case, they
can still bury you in legal fees.

------
poulsbohemian
Here's another vote for The E-Myth. I would recommend it to everyone working
in any business. For example, if you are considering joining a company, you
can use the principles described in the book as a way to evaluate that
company. If you are starting something or a business owner trying to grow, it
describes accurately the mistakes you might make and a path forward.

~~~
tagawa
In a similar vein, Built To Sell (John Warrillow) was eye-opening for me when
I first read it, focusing on building processes and systems so that you can
remove yourself as a roadblock to increase chances of success. Almost an “if
you love them, set them free” philosophy and written in a very readable style.

~~~
dahx4Eev
Do you recommend reading the newer books by John Warrillow? Or should I just
read the classic Built to Sell?

------
WA
One option no one mentioned: No book. Do first, read later. Experience trumps
reading every time. At least I think that many people just started to work on
something instead of reading first.

My favorites, which I read only after I launched a product:

Rework. About improving a product.

"This is Marketing" from Seth Godin. To get the right mindset about who the
audience is.

------
siquick
Start Small, Stay Small - by Rob Walling and Mike Taber

"Great how-to guide about being a micropreneur: an entrepreneur running many
small but profitable businesses."

Here's a Sivers summary of the book

[https://sivers.org/book/StartSmallStaySmall](https://sivers.org/book/StartSmallStaySmall)

~~~
jf22
I think a new edition of this book is coming out soon.

~~~
rwalling
Except I still haven’t started working on it :grimacing:

I’ve been meaning to update this for years but hard to find the time. Right
now MicroConf and TinySeed are keeping me busy, but it continues to be on my
long-term list.

------
factsaresacred
The Dip by Seth Godin is perhaps the essential book for an 'indie hacker'.

It's about identifying the difference between dips (good business ideas facing
inevitable challenges) and cul-de-sacs (poor ideas that are not going
anywhere).

Choice quotes:

> _Strategic quitting is the secret of successful organizations_

> _Extraordinary benefits also accrue to the tiny majority with the guts to
> quit early and refocus their efforts on something new_

> _Quit the wrong stuff. Stick with the right stuff. Have the guts to do one
> or the other....the opportunity cost of investing your life in something
> that’s not going to get better is just too high_

~~~
IfOnlyYouKnew
A bunch of hollow cliché phrases, like everything else by Seth Godin.

------
andreyazimov
For me most interesting are autobiography books where author is sharing his
path from the start, instead of giving "10 rules of success" (which is his
subjective insights summary of what worked for him).

The beauty of autobiography books is that we need to aggregate (generalize)
these key insights based on the raw story ("subjectively raw" of-course) and
our current situation.

The most valuable part for me is about overcoming hard problems.

The #1 book in my list is "Shoe Dog" by Phil Knight (The Founder of Nike).
There is also an audiobook where Phil himself is read the first chapter.

------
devicetray0
This title is a clever way of avoiding the stereotypical "Top X books for Y"
that always seem to be an affiliate-mill article (anecdotally).

~~~
throwaway2048
This article is listicle blog spam trash. Additionally offensive is it
conflates "hacker" with "startup founder" (said with irony on "hacker news").

~~~
ardme
Indie hackers is well known and these guys are legit they don't put out
affiliates spam.

~~~
ngngngng
They're also owned by Stripe which helps, since they don't really need the
money that comes with being affiliate spam.

------
dejv
My favorite from the list is Traction. It is quite short and it clearly fit
the type of person that I am: Developer who like to sit down and create some
products, but haven't really thought about channels and distribution
systematically before.

------
t0mislav
MAKE Book by Pieter Levels

This guy is productive and successful, and likes to share knowledge and ideas.

------
losthobbies
The Hard Thing About Hard Things is supposed to a good book for start
ups/indie hackers. I listen to a lot of podcasts in this area and it's
mentioned quite a lot.

[http://hardthings.bhorowitz.com/](http://hardthings.bhorowitz.com/)

~~~
varshithr
If you don't mind me asking, what kind of podcasts do you listen to?

~~~
losthobbies
Startup grind

Indie Hackers

Build Your Saas

Founder Quest

Y Combinator

ReWork

Product Hunt Radio

Start Ups for the Rest of Us

Everyone Hates Marketers

The Art of Product

Masters of Scale

------
skadamat
The book: Small Giants.

This entire book is literally about companies that focus on deliberately
growing but still staying excellent. Many were profitable and didn't raise a
lot of outside funding. Many also were strongly owned by employees.

[https://www.amazon.com/Small-Giants-Companies-
Instead-10th-A...](https://www.amazon.com/Small-Giants-Companies-Instead-10th-
Anniversary/dp/014310960X)

------
walshemj
These are all MBA business books whist I could see some business books being
useful.

Having 100% make me think the target audience are MBA students and not
"hackers"

~~~
coderheed
Keep in mind that IH'ers are trying to start their own independent internet-
based bootstrapped businesses. Having joined the IH community recently, I can
attest that the business side of things is where most IH'ers are lacking in
terms of achieving that goal (myself included). Their technical skills tend to
be "good enough". Hence the value placed on these types of books. Hope that
helps to explain.

~~~
walshemj
It does but not in they way I think you thought it did

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prepend
I think some of the classic tech business books are also good for “indie
hackers”:

Andrew Grove’s High Output Management

John Brooks’ Business Adventures

Brad Felds and Jason Mendelson’s Venture Deals

Antifragile is on the list, but Fooled by Randomness is better I think as it’s
shorter and contains almost all the ideas.

------
SiaMohajer
If you liked E-myth, the Road Less Stupid is a great one for small companies
or startups especially if you're struggling to move from an operator to an
owner role

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smcg
Wait, this isn't about hacking at all. Disappointing.

------
breakerbox
Not super familiar with the space, but ReWork by Jason Fried and DHH, founders
of BaseCamp (DHH made Ruby on Rails), was pretty good. They provide a very
different take on business and startups than typical on HN. They are almost
anti VC, and really have some good points when it comes to making something
and running a company differently than typical enterprise and startups do.

------
mikorym
There should be a disclaimer that these are mostly self-help books. I don't
personally find these books useful.

~~~
donquichotte
I wonder why this is being downvoted.

The War of Art is undoubtedly a self-help book, and so is How to Make Friends
and Influence people. Both contain little more than trivial platitudes IMO. I
have not read the other books, but from the abstracts it looks like several
more can be considered self-help books.

I was hoping for hands-on books like "The Art of Electronics" by Horowitz &
Hill or similar.

~~~
mikorym
Or at least something like _The C Programming Language_. Or at least
_Introduction to Linear Algebra_ by Gilbert Strang. Or at least _The Theory of
Relational Databases_ by David Maier.

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HNLurker2
Saw antifragile in the pic. Didn't see it In the post dissapointed

~~~
prepend
Its the fifth in the list. I tried to direct link to it within the article but
couldn’t from my phone.

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OptionX
What exactly is a indie hacker?

~~~
PaulRobinson
[http://letmegooglethat.com/?q=What+exactly+is+a+indie+hacker...](http://letmegooglethat.com/?q=What+exactly+is+a+indie+hacker%3F)

~~~
OptionX
That was the first thing I tried, but since the only relevant hit is the
indiehackers side leads me to believe its s made up term and not actually a
thing, and I wanted to confirm that. But thank you for your informative reply
nonetheless, obvious you put a lot of effort in it!

