Monday, February 14, 2011

EBS Install Guide - The eBook

A mutual friend of John and I suggested we do an eBook. The very first thing I thought of was John's EBS Install Guide (Part I, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4). If you've read here with any frequency, you'll know that John pretty much took over my site with his guide, occupying many of the top spots...all time. Jerk. This is my 675th post, John has 4. John has 4 of the top 30 spots over the 40+ months I have been blogging in just under 14 months. Jerk. To illustrate:



OK, so 2 of the top 5 spots (not including the root directory). Yikes. Or is it jerk?

Of course John is not a jerk, as much as I would like to paint him as such. He's a great guy and now real-life friend (he didn't kill me after OOW after 4 days). John's guide not only proved useful to me, but has proven useful to many others in the community as well.

Aforementioned friend also suggested that this should be a "for Kate" kind of thing too. You know, to guilt those suckers who may have gotten hold of it without paying into paying.

What's in it?

Well, it's a PDF. It has bookmarks.



It was created using OpenOffice (if it matters). It is 49 pages long and includes a foreword from both John and I.

All 8 posts are contained within this one single document. The 4 hosted here and the 4 hosted on John's site. One stop shopping.

So, if you are about to venture down the (crazy) path of installing EBS for fun (super crazy) or for education (somewhat crazy), this is a great place to start. I know the guide works because even I could install the entire thing, even if it did take me over a month.

Finally, the super cool PayPal buttons:

If there is enough interest, we may port it over to the Kindle, Apple or Lulu. For now, once your order is placed, your "success" page will be the PDF.
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8 comments:

  1. OskiFebruary 14, 2011 at 5:35 PM

    I can not *BELIEVE* what you guys are charging for this book! Well-written, hard-earned, years-of-experience content for less than a single issue of most magazines? What are you guys, a bunch of socialists? ;)

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  2. oraclenerdFebruary 14, 2011 at 8:27 PM

    That was a tough decision. I don't either John or I are very aggressive in that regard.

    Actually, it wasn't a tough decision, just picked a number and ran with it. The above statement still holds true...at least I know I'm the worst negotiator ever, John is probably better at it than me. But he didn't complain. :)

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  3. jpiwowarFebruary 14, 2011 at 10:59 PM

    Hey, I live in Canada, but I haven't become a socialist yet...

    Chet, we totally should've engaged Chris/Oski to write our marketing material. Thanks for the compliments! :-)

    $5 was probably the most I would have been willing to charge for the value-add or repackaging content that we'd already made available for free in another form, so Chet hit just the right level.

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  4. NiallFebruary 15, 2011 at 11:51 AM

    The biggest recommendation for me is the # of people who likely stuck with it. You have say 6000 reads for Part 1. You still have 1500 reads (yeah this is Niall Math where pi=3.2 see http://tinyurl.com/25x84n
    ) at Part 4. So 25% of people likely stuck with you and finished the install. Or laughed a lot. Or both. That says good writing given the somewhat dry nature of the actual subject.

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  5. effendiFebruary 15, 2011 at 2:07 PM

    I bought it just so I could donate towards Kate. Hope all goes well.

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  6. oraclenerdFebruary 15, 2011 at 2:12 PM

    thank you jay!

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  7. Dan NorrisFebruary 15, 2011 at 2:41 PM

    Where's the option to buy a bunch of copies and have them gift wrapped for my friends as presents? I only see that I can buy one copy? WTF? THINK BIGGER!

    ReplyDelete
  8. jpiwowarFebruary 16, 2011 at 12:29 AM

    Niall: I'm going with "laughed a lot." ;-) Thanks for the compliment.

    Jay: You rock, thanks!

    Dan: Awesome idea. Hopefully the shopkeeper is able to act on this piece of customer feedback...

    ReplyDelete