5 ms·

A Practical Guide to Web App Success (2011) – now free and CC licensed

112 points by spxdcz 12y ago

gabemart 12y ago
Could you talk a little about the commercial performance of the book, and what led to the decision to release it under CC? And thanks!
- spxdcz 12y ago
  Sure! Though I don't actually have much in the way of commercial performance details - it's all split between many quarters of receipts over the last few years, that I'm too lazy to aggregate... I'd guess that I didn't profit more than a couple of thousand (British) pounds (of both paper and digital sales), after all the publishing costs had been paid for. I think there's still quite a bit of paper stock; I'm still waiting to find out how much is left (though I'm unlikely to try to sell it - I'll probably give them away at conferences, etc). The parent company that owned the publishing company was acquired by Monotype, and they made the difficult decision to close down the publishing arm as part of the acquisition. The contracts with all the authors were nullified, and all rights returned. As the book was a few years old, and some of it out of date, I figured the best thing to do with it - especially as I'm 100% focused on my startup, and it was never going to make me rich - was to "give it away" to see if it could have any extra life. It's about 80,000 words and I wrote it over the course of a full year (of traveling; I was also doing some consultancy, so it wasn't full time). So I'd rather that effort was 'available' for other people to possibly use.
  - gabemart 12y ago
    Thanks very much!
  - vineet 12y ago
    Hmmm... wondering if it will be a good idea to put the book on a wiki so that the community can update it and improve it.
  - boothead 12y ago
    You might as well put a "buy the dead tree version" link on the site - it's a potentially useful resource for start ups to buy and put on the shelf, and it might make you a few extra quid? What are you working on now?
    - spxdcz 12y ago
      Yeah, that might actually be a good idea, thanks! I'm 100% on http://bipsync.com http://bipsync.com (as I have been for the last year or two), a startup initially targeted at Hedge Fund analysts and other professional investors. We were lucky enough to raise a seven figure seed round, so have had the time to go through quite a lengthy customer development phase with some reference customers to really nail the product-market fit. We'll have a public beta out later this year.
      - boothead 12y ago
        Awesome! Bip sync looks really nice, I'll keep an eye out in case I ever go back into finance :-)
notastartup 12y ago
Any particular chapters that contains the really important lessons?
- spxdcz 12y ago
  Surprisingly, at least to me, I think the chapters on marketing are some of the more interesting ones for the HN audience, and have aged pretty well. It's quite a high level book, so doesn't go into anything in TOO much detail, but instead is supposed to give an entrepreneur - even non-technical - a good understanding of most aspects of building a web app (or at least, what that consisted of a few years ago). The dev chapters probably won't hold much interest to HN visitors (as they'll know much of the advice), but the marketing ones, maybe some of the design ones, might have some new insights if you've been focusing mostly on tech in your day to day work.
  - spxdcz 12y ago
    Also, I forgot to mention, the last chapter - the marketing case study - is an interview with everyone's favorite HN user, patio11 !
  - seriocomic 12y ago
    Given the breadth of information covered, I think you did a remarkable job on providing one of the better, succinct and balanced introductions on the Search Engine Optimization chapter (#23). If I could make one suggestion - your alternate text attribute markup for the images is non-descriptive at best.
    - spxdcz 12y ago
      Ah, sorry about that - I did a fairly quick (and lazy) conversion of one of the eBook files to make the website. Thanks for letting me know!
sandywilkinscr 12y ago
Does the CC license allow me to update and sell it? The license itself isn't clear on this.
- spxdcz 12y ago
  Yes, you certainly can do that. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ You may adapt it for any purpose, including commercially. The only terms are that you need to credit the original source (the website will do) and indicate if any changes were made. There are no other restrictions. Have at it!
- quadrangle 12y ago
  The CC-BY license used is clear on this. It most definitely permits both updating and selling. Cheers
atmosx 12y ago
I read a couple of paragraphs and I liked it. Will read it, even if it's not up-to-date :-) Thanks.
chintan39 12y ago
I have just started reading it.And I am excited to read it all. Thank you @spxdcz / Don Zambonini

112 points by spxdcz 12y ago

Could you talk a little about the commercial performance of the book, and what led to the decision to release it under CC? And thanks!

spxdcz 12y ago
Sure! Though I don't actually have much in the way of commercial performance details - it's all split between many quarters of receipts over the last few years, that I'm too lazy to aggregate... I'd guess that I didn't profit more than a couple of thousand (British) pounds (of both paper and digital sales), after all the publishing costs had been paid for. I think there's still quite a bit of paper stock; I'm still waiting to find out how much is left (though I'm unlikely to try to sell it - I'll probably give them away at conferences, etc). The parent company that owned the publishing company was acquired by Monotype, and they made the difficult decision to close down the publishing arm as part of the acquisition. The contracts with all the authors were nullified, and all rights returned. As the book was a few years old, and some of it out of date, I figured the best thing to do with it - especially as I'm 100% focused on my startup, and it was never going to make me rich - was to "give it away" to see if it could have any extra life. It's about 80,000 words and I wrote it over the course of a full year (of traveling; I was also doing some consultancy, so it wasn't full time). So I'd rather that effort was 'available' for other people to possibly use.
- gabemart 12y ago
  Thanks very much!
- vineet 12y ago
  Hmmm... wondering if it will be a good idea to put the book on a wiki so that the community can update it and improve it.
- boothead 12y ago
  You might as well put a "buy the dead tree version" link on the site - it's a potentially useful resource for start ups to buy and put on the shelf, and it might make you a few extra quid? What are you working on now?
  - spxdcz 12y ago
    Yeah, that might actually be a good idea, thanks! I'm 100% on http://bipsync.com http://bipsync.com (as I have been for the last year or two), a startup initially targeted at Hedge Fund analysts and other professional investors. We were lucky enough to raise a seven figure seed round, so have had the time to go through quite a lengthy customer development phase with some reference customers to really nail the product-market fit. We'll have a public beta out later this year.
    - boothead 12y ago
      Awesome! Bip sync looks really nice, I'll keep an eye out in case I ever go back into finance :-)

notastartup 12y ago

Any particular chapters that contains the really important lessons?

spxdcz 12y ago
Surprisingly, at least to me, I think the chapters on marketing are some of the more interesting ones for the HN audience, and have aged pretty well. It's quite a high level book, so doesn't go into anything in TOO much detail, but instead is supposed to give an entrepreneur - even non-technical - a good understanding of most aspects of building a web app (or at least, what that consisted of a few years ago). The dev chapters probably won't hold much interest to HN visitors (as they'll know much of the advice), but the marketing ones, maybe some of the design ones, might have some new insights if you've been focusing mostly on tech in your day to day work.
- spxdcz 12y ago
  Also, I forgot to mention, the last chapter - the marketing case study - is an interview with everyone's favorite HN user, patio11 !
- seriocomic 12y ago
  Given the breadth of information covered, I think you did a remarkable job on providing one of the better, succinct and balanced introductions on the Search Engine Optimization chapter (#23). If I could make one suggestion - your alternate text attribute markup for the images is non-descriptive at best.
  - spxdcz 12y ago
    Ah, sorry about that - I did a fairly quick (and lazy) conversion of one of the eBook files to make the website. Thanks for letting me know!

sandywilkinscr 12y ago

Does the CC license allow me to update and sell it? The license itself isn't clear on this.

spxdcz 12y ago
Yes, you certainly can do that. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ You may adapt it for any purpose, including commercially. The only terms are that you need to credit the original source (the website will do) and indicate if any changes were made. There are no other restrictions. Have at it!
quadrangle 12y ago
The CC-BY license used is clear on this. It most definitely permits both updating and selling. Cheers

atmosx 12y ago

I read a couple of paragraphs and I liked it. Will read it, even if it's not up-to-date :-) Thanks.

chintan39 12y ago

I have just started reading it.And I am excited to read it all. Thank you @spxdcz / Don Zambonini