Getting Real
March 2, 2006 | Products & Opportunites | Software
37signals has released their new eBook on web application development, Getting Real.
Getting Real details the business, design, programming, and marketing principles of 37signals. The book is packed with keep-it-simple insights, contrarian points of view, and unconventional approaches to software design. This is not a technical book or a design tutorial, it's a book of ideas.
I've bought a copy, and I'm sure I'll agree with a lot of it. $19.
Also, continuing to break out of the box, they have new business cards. Weird-shaped business cards are cool, and they make a great first impression, but having experimented with this, and having received many non-standard business cards over the years, I think the humble standard card is the best long-term approach. Odd-shaped cards are easy to lose, hard to store, and soon end up looking dated.
Comments
One might, were one feeling snarky, point out that it's a hair ironic to write a book on Getting Real and then not, in fact, actually make it a real book...
Posted by: cboone at March 2, 2006 10:00 AM
Yeah. I'm just pimping for them. I assume they'll sell 20,000 copies (or 100,000) and then get a sweet book deal for a second edition (a la Paul Graham). This is a revised take on how the Cluetrain Manifesto started as a web page, was reviewed in the WSJ, and turned into a big-advance book. In this case you could say 37s is putting more out there up front than the Cluetrain guys. But really it just feeds their PR machine, driving subscription sales of the products. The techies are no longer the target audience - they've been moving toward the SOHO market for a while now. Sunrise will solidfy that trend, big time.
Posted by: Michael J. at March 2, 2006 11:08 AM
But they already wrote a book. A good one. From a good publisher. That was well received.
Dunno.
Posted by: cboone at March 2, 2006 06:47 PM
Yeah, but they didn't earn $19 a copy. And now they're famous, so they can promote and distribute it themselves. They have 350,000 registered users (of unknown price-points, including free). If they sell 50,000 copies it's a million dollars. There are zero tech authors making a million bucks on a 50K sell-through. Ture, 50K is a big number, but I think their capacity is potentially up to 100K buyers. Even at 10K buyers they do better than virtually all tech authors. (I've heard that a good tech author deal is $6 per copy.)
Posted by: Michael J. at March 2, 2006 10:13 PM
This morning they said the first-day sales were 1,750. So my estimate of 100K is probably way too high. But even 10K sales beats the traditional publishing route for author earnings – if you have the marketing/following to get the word out.
Posted by: Michael J. at March 3, 2006 09:58 AM
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