Anonymous Coward 28 Sep 05

$7.50 for a 10 page PDF file?!?! No thanks.

JF 28 Sep 05

$7.50 for a 10 page PDF file?!?! No thanks.

Sure, why not? It’s value, not pages, you’re paying for. Man, I’d jump at the chance to only have to pay $7.50 to learn something new that I need to know RIGHT NOW, and I suspect plenty of other people would too.

Rich (aka Anonymous) 28 Sep 05

But how would you determine it has exactly what you needed to know until after you have paid for it and read it? I suppose a system of reader reviews would make it easier. Still, the price point seems a little high. $5, maybe.

Elliott Rosenthal 28 Sep 05

$7.50 for one chapter makes it a $75.00 book? That seems a bit steep.

Like the name. Its Quirky.

Jesper 28 Sep 05

What DRM Do We Use? The PDFs we send out are unrestricted. You can download, print, archive, and so on. We like to think we can trust our readers not to publish our work to others.

You’ll find that when you receive the PDF, each page has your name in the footer. It’s a gentle reminder that this PDF is yours, and that you shouldn’t give it to others. We also encode a small amount of identification information into the structure of the PDF—-this contains no personal details, but it lets us know who ordered a PDF should it ever escape into the wild.

Very smart, and very friendly.

Dan Boland 28 Sep 05

The price only seems steep because of the fact that it’s not a book (hence no physical production costs that are inherent with purchasing an actual book). But come on, $7.50? That’s not exactly going to break the bank. And JF is right, if it’s info that helps you tremendously, the price may turn out to be a steal. As long as the preview is sufficient, I see no problems.

Well, other than that name. It makes me think of pieces of flair, if you know what I’m saying.

James 28 Sep 05

It actually looks like the first Friday is 90 pages, and priced at $8.50. That’s not all that bad, assuming the value is there.

Dan Boland 28 Sep 05

James, that one isn’t a Friday.

JF 28 Sep 05

You�ll find that when you receive the PDF, each page has your name in the footer. It�s a gentle reminder that this PDF is yours, and that you shouldn�t give it to others.

We did this as well with our original E-Commerce Search Report back in 2003 and it worked really well. People are careful with things when there’s accountability tied to it.

Anonymous Coward 28 Sep 05

Maybe if you’re a hobbyist, you’d rather not spend 7 or 8 bucks. But if you’re a business $8 vs. 1 hour of additional research is an easy choice.

Anonymous Coward 28 Sep 05

It never amazes me how fucking cheap people can be. People are complaining about buying knowledge for a ONE TIME FEE of $7.50? JESUS H.

David Heinemeier Hansson 28 Sep 05

Getting the notion of value vs cost is a pretty hard mental model for a lot of people to grasp. But if you’re on the clock making just $40/hour, a Friday at $7.50 have to save you 12 minutes to be worth it.

However, if you don’t put a price on your time, then $7.50 is just seven dollars and fifty cents.

chris sivori 28 Sep 05

Seriously, it is actually a good idea. I would do it, if I could come up with something helpful to write about.

pwb 28 Sep 05

I have to admit that $7.50 sounded a bit steep for a PDF of unknown quality but after reviewing the sample (which indicates at least 50 pages), it made more sense.

Rationalizing this based on how much you value your time is a bit obnoxious. First, few people actually do this. Second, there are alternatives which may be less expensive and/or better.

It reminded me of buying magazine articles for $3.95 when the magazine itself costed about the same.

Don Wilson 28 Sep 05

Very cleaver naming.

Chris D 28 Sep 05

James is right, it is a Friday. And it is 90 pages long. And it does cost 8.50$.

Compared to O’Reillys’ at 40$ for an average of 400 pages, 8.50$ for 90 pages is cheap.

Plus I’m in Montreal up in Canada, with winter coming, not having to go out or waiting for a mail delivery does count for something.

I think they are into something…

ward andrews 28 Sep 05

it’s well worth the price for direct, immediate access to specific information you need. you could spend hours, even days trying to find this information. let’s assume it took you a modest 4 hours to collect the thoughts and data from other sources for ‘free’, you are then working for $1.87 an hour to acquire the information. or say you tried to acquire it from a friend. it would still cost you and hour of calling, IMs or emails (not to mention the ill-will and bad karma) to gian access.

that’s a far greater price than the $7.50. this fee gives you the information and supports the authors, who in turn will contunue to produce more quality information.

ek 28 Sep 05

I have to admit that $7.50 sounded a bit steep for a PDF of unknown quality but after reviewing the sample (which indicates at least 50 pages), it made more sense.

Maybe it’s just me, but I’d sooner pay $10 for a one-page document that tells me exactly what I need to know than $5 for a 50 page document that makes me spend an hour or more hunting it down.

Are you paying for volume or knowledge?

Dan Boland 28 Sep 05

My fault, that is a Friday (I can’t be the only one who thinks that name is lame as hell). I was thrown off by the fact that the FAQ link doesn’t go to the Fridays FAQ page, and also by the fact that it’s 90 pages. Is 90 pages considered short?

Dave Glasser 28 Sep 05

Hmm. It’s a very well-written book (and certainly worth the price), but I kind of expected it to be the opposite of what it really was. The book gives you some basic background on QtRuby and a fair amount of pointers to more information, but it fails to have a single demo more complicated than “the text in the window tells you how many times you’ve clicked the button”. I feel like I understand what Qt is, but not any real idea of how I would use it to make even a simple GUI frontend or visualizer for a script.

But it’s still very well done.

Brady Joslin 28 Sep 05

How about creating relationships with Friday readers through a subscription model? Entice subsribers by offering them a discount off the regular “cover price”. Give them a free Friday to allow them to trust the value of the Friday offerings. Let these product champions send out discount coupons to their friends to spark viral marketing.

Sounds like a good revenue stream opportunity to me.

Lisa 29 Sep 05

I found it a bit difficult to find the Friday.

First, I looked around the books link and didn’t see it in there.
Then, I did a search and got no results for “Friday”.
Had I happened upon this site, I would have quit then, but since I was curious because of this write up I probed a little further.
So, I saw the little “Pragmatic Bookshelf” link/img at the bottom. Fortunately that put me in the right place.

Maybe, JF, you guys should redesign for these guys ;)

Rich (aka Anonymous) 29 Sep 05

Look, if these guys can prove over time that the quality of their short Fridays is better and more efficient than me just searching on Google for a while, I’d be all for it. If the primary of objective of the Friday authors is to save the reader time, it has great potential to be a successful idea. I’m just not convinced that they are yet.

Recent College Student 29 Sep 05

$7.50 for one chapter makes it a $75.00 book? That seems a bit steep.

Textbooks are $75 or more.

8500 29 Sep 05

I think the name is a bit too quirky. Was it released on a Friday? Will it take only one Friday to read and comprehend?

or the worst case:
Was this a quick half-assed paper written on a single Friday?

F2 29 Sep 05

Considering the number of technical manuals (from Clipper to .NET) I have sitting on my office shelves I could have saved a lot of space if I could just get certain chapters. Often I’ve found most of these authors have their own website or blog so I have a good sense of what to expect when I bought their 300 page tome. As DHH put it, 12 minutes worth of my salary is not bad. After googling the net for information if I’m not confident I have a handle on a subject I’m going to end up buying a reference anyway.

Anonymous Coward 29 Sep 05

A subscription to them would be nice as well, something along the lines of Safari bookshelf. As a student $8 can be a little hard for something that is not related to class. I do like the idea of being able to learn something in a day off.

jean zaque 29 Sep 05

for chris d above: have you looked at o’reilly’s safari service? fridays: great idea (if they deliver quality), stupid name

Anonymous Coward 29 Sep 05

What DRM Do We Use? The PDFs we send out are unrestricted. You can download, print, archive, and so on. We like to think we can trust our readers not to publish our work to others.

You�ll find that when you receive the PDF, each page has your name in the footer. It�s a gentle reminder that this PDF is yours, and that you shouldn�t give it to others. We also encode a small amount of identification information into the structure of the PDF�-this contains no personal details, but it lets us know who ordered a PDF should it ever escape into the wild.

Very smart, and very friendly.

Well, I don’t know about you, but I lend a lot of books to my friends and I borrow load of books from them as well. Nothing bad about that.

But what’s bad is they are basically tracking your book around, even if you send it to your friend, so he can read it. It’s tracked and you are watched by them. If you call that very friendly then what can I say.

dusoft 29 Sep 05

What DRM Do We Use? The PDFs we send out are unrestricted. You can download, print, archive, and so on. We like to think we can trust our readers not to publish our work to others.

You�ll find that when you receive the PDF, each page has your name in the footer. It�s a gentle reminder that this PDF is yours, and that you shouldn�t give it to others. We also encode a small amount of identification information into the structure of the PDF�-this contains no personal details, but it lets us know who ordered a PDF should it ever escape into the wild.

Very smart, and very friendly.

Well, I don’t know about you, but I lend a lot of books to my friends and I borrow load of books from them as well. Nothing bad about that.

But what’s bad is they are basically tracking your book around, even if you send it to your friend, so he can read it. It’s tracked and you are watched by them. If you call that very friendly then what can I say.

Chris D 29 Sep 05

Yes Jean, I’ve looked at Safari. Although my comment might have sounded like a critic of O’Reillys’ It was not the goal intended. I bought my share of their books.

On Safari, you only acquired the right to consult books online for a while, in the end you don’t own anything (aside from knowledge). I guess that’s my collector self speaking there. I’ll put it this way, I’m the “buy my car” kinda guy rather than “rent it”. Same goes for books.

On value, sinelogic sells a 17 pages pdf about designing on a budget, it costs 9$ and it’s well worth it…

Chris D 29 Sep 05

^hmm… I think I did close that ancor element… :/

jean zaque 30 Sep 05

chris, that’s funny, because i’m the opposite, a renter as opposed to an owner. i’m the heaviest library user i know. for me, safari is all about owning the knowledge and nothing else - i don’t even think of it in terms of buying safai books. it’s more like i’ve bought access to a customisable information tap that i can turn on and off as needed.

that said, there’s a couple of books i really want to buy right now …

Dave Glasser 30 Sep 05

anonymous, I think you’re confused. I don’t think that the PDFs contain spyware calling home to the publishers and reporting on your friend’s reading habits.

Rather, think of it as a watermark. It’s as if a publisher noticed a bookstore was selling thousands of photocopies of their book — it’s not evil for the publisher to be able to find out who made the illegal copies.

Anonymous 30 Sep 05

Checkout www.changethis.com for *free* mini-books and excerpts on various business and IT topics.

Some very interesting reads.

have fun.