I'm Laksman (@Laksman on twitter), author of SideProject book. I put together this project over many months with the help of the 37 participants. Launch has been pretty hectic but is going well, so far the feedback has been positive and I'm implemented a lot of changes suggested here. Also, feel free to shoot me an email personally if you have any questions, firstname at gmail.com. Hope you guys enjoy the book.
Laksman
(this is Eric from Domainr, p18 in the book)
If we expect a standard introduction / conclusion to the book, then I expect the average number of pages per example would be even less.
Looking at the sample on his site, it doesn't exactly go that in depth with the questioning.
I think the key attraction to this book and many other 'self help / get rich / be successful' style books, is that people get drawn in by the 'examples' and hope that somewhere in the pages there is the answer that they've been looking for, the golden piece of information that's going to guarantee them success. However, their time may have been better used trying to execute their idea, rather than just trying to read things which reiterate the success of others.
- If this was $12 I would have not been so negative, but for $34 it just seems steep considering the potential lack of real value it will give.
Sometimes you don't make it up on volume, but on profit.
I'm launching my first book next month (http://doubleyourfreelancingrate.com), which, like SideProjects, is based on many, many lot of conversations I've had with the freelancers/consultants who use my SaaS product.
The idea that developers don't pay for things - including infoproducts - is bunk. My book has netted just over $2,000 in prepurchase sales in the last week.
Kudos to the author for putting this together (the list of people you've interviewed is OUTSTANDING)
If your book does what it says, it's going to mitigate some of the risk of deciding what path to go down when starting a startup. That's potentially weeks/months/years that you might be saving me from chasing after an idea.
That's worth a lot more than $15 (and especially $3.75)
I'm selling my new book for $39 - and that's a discounted, prepurchase rate! But the value proposition is "if you read this book, and do what it says, and happen to raise your rates by even a $1 - that's another $2k in your pocket this year." Emphasize that your book will help people not waste time chasing the white rabbit, and you can charge a premium.
For the side projects book it would be nice to know who is behind it. There is plenty of information about the content, but who wrote it? Otherwise looks like a solid book!
My own book on app design comes out next month (http://nathanbarry.com/app-design-handbook) so I am trying to learn everything I can about other people's experiences.
Thanks Nathan! Really excited about the book launch - it's coming together very nicely, and I've got some great case studies that I'm still working on adding.
Also, Good Dog (the script font) is barely readable in Webkit Mac. -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; helps, but I think it's better if you change it for something more legible.
Otherwise looks interesting. I'll wait on what others say before committing the $25.
Also, if we purchase the PDF today, are we guaranteed the mobi/epub when its released in the future?
I absolutely hate any format that is not a pdf file. It puts way too much limitation on the content. Just as an example: I use three "systems" most of the time, one windows, one ubuntu, one android tablet. Pdf works with each one out of the box, I can hight text or copy/past it, edit them, heck even open them in some graphic editing software and extract illustrations as vectors, save it in different formats. In contrast to that, for epub/mobi I don't even know what their native editing tool is so I can convert them into pdfs.
The redirect domain, sideprojects.com, is owned by one "Houtan Fanisalek", but it's unclear if Houtan is the author of the book.
Hey, before I pay $34 for your book, can you make sure its edited for grammar? If this is in the sample, I'm afraid of what the rest of the book will contain.
"Hey, I'm doing a book and would like to feature you. Do you have 15 minutes to answer 6 questions?" You're going to get a 90% hit rate for side-project founders I bet.
Just ask.
Seriously.
I am sure author has put a lot of work into it, yet still the price feels way too high.
So, poor interviewer? Or was that not meant to be as backhanded as it reads??
I figured even if I only learn 1 thing from this, it's money well spent.
Thanks!
Looks interesting to say the least.
I have no way to read a long form PDF.
