Week 16 progress

Hey there!

Big change of plans this week! Initially, I planned on working on part 3, but I changed my mind on Tuesday to do an experiment. Here's why.

As you know, I've already completed the first draft of two parts of the book (~200 pages), but haven't shared those with the world yet.

As you know if you've been following me, Dev Concepts will be composed of 12 complementary, but actually independent parts, each covering specific subjects: https://dev-concepts.dev/table-of-contents

Waiting until December before sharing a 1200+ pages book and hoping that people will decide to buy feels stupid to me, especially now that I'm part of the Indie Hackers community.

From the start, I had in mind to sell each part separately but didn't really know how to approach that. This week, I got the "aha" moment and decided not to wait any longer to sell the first part as a separate product.

So, instead of writing about architecture, I set out to create a new product page on Gumroad, dedicated to selling the first part separately.

This will allow me to hit the market much more quickly, and to see how people react to my content. That will certainly be a great validation step for this project.

So what did I do this week?

First, I created a visual specifically for part 1 using Photoshop, created a (draft) product page on Gumroad, describing that part, its key features, the content, etc. Then, I started proofreading part 1 of the book. I'm not done with that yet, as it is very time-intensive.

I've also worked on the build process of the book in order to be able to create the pdf/epub/etc versions of part 1 separately. Finally, I've already adapted the landing page in order to indicate that part 1 can be bought already, but haven't published those changes yet.

As soon as I'm done with proofreading, I'll upload the files on Gumroad and announce the availability of the first part.

Part 1 is ~100+ pages long, discusses many ideas about the software craft, and provides tons of practical advice for anyone willing to become a crafter: https://dev-concepts.dev/table-of-contents#software-craft. I'll share more details with the announcement, but part 1 really stands well on its own and brings a ton of value for anyone willing to become a software crafter.

For upselling, my idea is to give promo codes to anyone having bought a specific part and willing to buy one of the other editions of the book including that part. This should encourage people to buy chapters separately. I also have in mind to let people name a fair price (>= to the base price); in the hope that some will pay more than the base price of that part. We'll see if that works. Also, people buying each part separately should pay a bit more than those who choose to buy one of the editions containing multiple parts.

This week, I got more visits on the landing page (57), probably due to my announcement on Twitter, and the launch of my new Website over at https://dsebastien.net

That's it for today!

About Sébastien