congrats on the launch Poornima! excited to dig in. A couple q's:
1) if you only had a couple sentences to explain to someone the philosophy present in your book, what would it be?
2) What was your thought process in self-publishing and how did you market your book?
@eriktorenberg I chose the self-published because I wanted to get it out there ASAP. Regular publishing can take 18 months, that doesn't work for this fast femgineer :D Basically applied what I knew about launching software products to book publishing. Also chose the self-published route to retain all royalties. I have a Lean Product Development course that is based off of it, and want to be able to cross reference the two without asking for permission. Finally, the book is part cookbook + anecdotes from my life and other founders. I wanted to have full freedom to have an authentic voice. I wanted it to be more personable than what's out there. Being new to self-publishing I learned everything I could from @NathanBarry, Nathalie Arbel, and @shiran_sanjeewa :)
@eriktorenberg The book is heavily based on lean methodologies, but it goes a step further by giving you exercises for how to validate an idea, and explores other concepts like recruiting a technical team and fundraising. I kept hearing from my students and others that they were struggling with the question of what to do next and when to do it. So I decided that I wanted to write a book that was little more practical from what's on the market today plus add a dose of fun with personal anecdotes!
I taught in @poornima's Lean Product Development course β which this book is based upon β and her insights into product development have been incredibly useful for my own business! They have really helped me think with more focus on serving the right target customer with the right target need, without wasting time and energy.
@kadavy Thanks a lot David for the kind mention! I've also included some of your teachings on design positioning and evaluating the competition's design into the book to help people figure out how to differentiate their product.
I'm super interested in how people are marketing quality non-fiction books these days. Think Tim Ferris's work over the past decade has been a huge catalyst. Obviously the way Nir and Ryan have marketed Hooked as a "product" is another example.
Interesting to see authors innovate not just on their book content and writing style, but complimentary content, forums, mailing lists, torrents, etc.
Oh yeah, and this book looks awesome !
@amyjokim Thanks a lot! Right now I'm offering it as a self-study video course with exercises and it's one of the packages listed here: http://femgineer.com/transform-i... The course is mainly for designers, engineers, product managers, and entrepreneurs who want more guidance from experts like @kadavy@noahkagan@sarahdoody. The live course is taught 1-2 times a year and you can find info for it here: http://femgineer.com/learn/lean-... Happy to answer any other questions you have about it.