Show HN: DevBooks – Help Developers find indy books

by simon-holdorf • 6 years ago

124 32 6 years ago

boffinism• 6 years ago

How heavily are submissions curated? What % of submissions do you reject, and what are your criteria for acceptance?

The problem with indy books is huge quality variability, and without indicators of quality like reviews and testimonials, I'd only want to see a big catalogue of them if that catalogue was very carefully selected.

simon-holdorf8• 6 years ago

We try our best to only accept books that we think are worth recommending. That said, I'm working on new implementations regarding your points, like votes, testimonials, ratings...

AlchemistCamp4• 6 years ago

I'll throw my "Learn Elixir by building 5 games" book into the ring:

https://alchemist.camp/little-potions

It's still in pre-release (and discounted to $15) but but the reception has been good so far. I don't have a testimonial page for it yet or much marketing behind it, but but you can find comments on it on Twitter and some of my YT videos.

simon-holdorf8• 6 years ago

Thanks, looking forward to your submission!

AlchemistCamp4• 6 years ago

I submitted it before commenting here.

Did you receive it or was there some issue with the form on the site?

I'm not sure, but possibly manually entering "Elixir" as a category along with "Programming" could have caused it to break.

hawkweed• 6 years ago

I've just bought it. At the first glance it's very basic. Hope, that you will ehnance it with some real world example. The way it is... it looks like five ways to write Hello World program.

AlchemistCamp4• 6 years ago

It's explicitly aimed at people with zero Elixir experience, as the description says. Every project is a game, also as the description says.

If you'd like a refund, just reply to the welcome email.

geraldbauer2• 6 years ago

Great initiative. FYI: I help devs find indy (and regular) books on ruby @ http://planetruby.github.io/books

PS: The website source and data is public domain / open. Fork away for other languages / topics more than welcome :-).

geraldbauer2• 6 years ago

Great initiative: FYI: I help devs find indy (and regular) books on crypto (programming). The good books @ https://openblockchains.github.io/crypto-books/ The bad and ugly @ https://openblockchains.github.io/bitcon-books/

PS: Again the website sources and data are public domain / open. Fork aways for other languages / topics more than welcome :-).

asicsp• 6 years ago

Suggestions:

* provide a way for including both free and paid versions

* multiple links for paid version

My ebooks are free to read online [0] and PDF/EPUB versions can be purchased. I've submitted the free version for now for one of the books.

[0] https://github.com/learnbyexample/scripting_course#ebooks

simon-holdorf8• 6 years ago

Thanks for comment, I will add that to the roadmap!

DataCrayon2• 6 years ago

It's a great idea. I've submitted two of my books:

- Data Analysis with Rust Notebooks (https://datacrayon.com/shop/product/data-analysis-with-rust-...)

- Practical Evolutionary Algorithms (https://datacrayon.com/shop/product/practical-evolutionary-a...)

I hope they fit in!

simon-holdorf8• 6 years ago

Thank you, will look at them asap!

simon-holdorf8• 6 years ago

Thanks for your submissions, books are up :)

DataCrayon2• 6 years ago

Very cool - thank you for adding them!

de_nied3• 6 years ago

Looking at the site, I think there should be a strict open-source education model. Pretty much all of the books I've seen look no different than your average blog post, and not interesting or good ones at that. The only book I saw that I thought might actually be worth any time is "The Case of IBM 386 PC: A Detective Story for Techies."

"Indy books" should be about indie subjects. Topics that have little public information on them, but that can be interesting, valuable, or in some way beneficial. Yet all I see are books that hold the equivalent of 2010's Buzzfeed titles. Indie books could even be from indie authors, in the regard of creative writing (as my example above). But listing books on how to do something that's been discussed, and I don't think I'm exaggerating here, millions of times, doesn't seem like you're "helping developers find indie books."

I like the concept, but I'm not a fan of the execution. Of course, I'm a bit biased in the manner as I think anything beyond using the manual, Google, Discord/IRC, and forum, is generally a complete waste of time. Want to know anything? Manual > Google > Discord/IRC > forum post.

kowlo2• 6 years ago

Do you think Indie Games should also only be about indie subjects?

de_nied3• 6 years ago

I'm confused as to what your point is. The title had to do with indie books, not indie games. The two aren't really comparable in this scenario because indie games rely on the creativity of the people making them. The reason they're called indie is because people can't afford a large budget because they're not from or related to a major company.

If we take the same definition, as you did, and apply it to books written for developers, then I'm afraid an "indie book" in your context would be literally anything written by anyone on the internet.

My definition was that indie implied a sort of "unknown," as indie games often are.

mtlynch• 6 years ago

But listing books on how to do something that's been discussed, and I don't think I'm exaggerating here, millions of times, doesn't seem like you're "helping developers find indie books."

Why shouldn't there be indie books about subjects that are discussed frequently?

If something has been discussed millions of times, it means that the good information is scattered across several different sources and a lay person has no way of distinguishing between good and bad advice.

I've happily paid for indie books in the past few years from authors I trust because I want to read their perspective and information that they've curated.

Two I'll mention in particular:

Hello Web App by Tracy Osborn - This is a book about web design, which is discussed in millions of places, but Tracy's book gathers together high-quality information in a concise book.

Starting & Sustaining by Garrett Dimon - This is about running a small SaaS app. Another topic discussed in tons of places online, but Garrett is telling it from the context of his personal experience running a successful SaaS app for several years.

codazoda• 6 years ago

I ready "indy" as Independent. To me, that just means self published without a publishers backing.

I plan to submit Splash of Code, which teaches brand new developers JavaScript by creating art. It's designed like the books I grew up on where you simply copy the authors code and then run it, plus it includes additional explanations.

https://splashofcode.com

I don't know any definition of "indy" that means "little public information".

Maybe a voting mechanism would float the good stuff to the top and maybe that's planned if the site catches on. Bravo to the builder.

agbell• 6 years ago

Great list! I wish there were a term like novella for non-fiction.

Many of these, I suspect are not book length but more essay or novella length (< 30,000 words ).

That is fine, I don't need people to pad out a book, but I'd like to understand the length a bit before hand.

mooreds2• 6 years ago

I too have a book that is on this list: https://letterstoanewdeveloper.com/the-book/

I love the idea of highlighting overlooked books. But when I submitted, maybe I misunderstood the list. From what I read here, it seems like the list maintainers are looking to promote self published books. Or those published by someone other than an non big tech publisher (O'Reilly, APress, Manning)? It's a bit unclear to me.

My book was published by APress. I'm proud of it, but maybe it doesn't belong on this list?

simon-holdorf8• 6 years ago

You should be proud of that and you should be on the list :)

If APress, or any comparable company wpuld suggest adding all their books, I will happily decline that. This is an experiment. I don't know if things work out as expected but I follow the inspect and adapt pattern here. As long as this is not getting abused, everythings fine for me.

mooreds2• 6 years ago

Ah, fair enough, thanks for clarifying! Thanks for promoting the hard work of other authors.

petr25102018• 6 years ago

Nice initiative!

I will publish my own book this year so it is great to see some love for indie publishing :-)

I would also be very much interested in finding some reviewers that would be willing to help review say 2-3 chapters of my book in exchange for getting the final version. Is anybody here interested in that or do you know of a place where I could get some interested beta-readers?

binarynate• 6 years ago

indie = independent

indy = Indianapolis

lrossi• 6 years ago

The website looks really slick! Clean and fast. Is it built with tailwind by any chance?

Anyway, I submitted my self-published book on dynamic programming: https://sw46.github.io/pip-book/ Hoping that it may be approved.

Many thanks for making a website to showcase indy books. We need all the visibility we can get.

Show HN: DevBooks – Help Developers find indy books

Related Stories