
Ask HN: Will “book in progress” count as a show HN? - lifeisstillgood
So I am writing a book (well, two), and subject matter is HN friendly, but sticking it up and asking for (ongoing) feedback seems ... Not quite right.<p>Any opinions?
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ColinWright
If all you're doing is asking for help, then it feels a bit off, especially if
you do it more than once. Once is probably OK, especially since you say it's
an HN friendly subject. More starts to feel a bit much.

But you can turn it around and look to contribute things to HN, and only ask
for feedback as a natural extension of what you're showing us and
contributing. That's not always possible, and it's certainly not always easy,
but on those occasions when it can be done, you are contributing to HN, while
at the same time creating the opportunity for people to interact and provide
feedback.

So in parallel with writing your book(s), every time you want feedback, write
a blog post explaining the issues that make you want feedback and input on
specific sections.

We'd all win then.

~~~
gus_massa
I agree. I'll copy two comments from dang that I think that are relevant (read
the original thread to get all the context).

Answer to a question about a ShowHN for a book:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8765822](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8765822)

> _The "try out" rule is important, but adjusts to different kinds of project.
> Hardware, for example, can't be tried out as easily as software. For a book,
> I suppose a sample chapter or two would be a fair way of trying it out._

A discussion about if a normal submission of a chapter of a book is a
resubmission:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7921605](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7921605)

> _[...] In this case, both available chapters of the book have had
> significant attention [1,2], so I think a post of its home page has to count
> as a dupe. If and when Chapter 3 appears, however, that will make a nice
> non-dupey post. [...]_

~~~
lifeisstillgood
Thank you both, very useful.

