Hey HN -
Around May 2022, I made a thread here about my early (access book series over iOS)[1]. It was kinda popular (at least, by my own standards) so now that I (finished it)[2], I thought I would update everyone on how it went.<p>I ended up selling 2,050 copies while in early access. That number changes a bit, since some of those were from companies who bought team packages. Looking back, I don't think I would ever start another book series again. It was a massive task that ate up virtually all free time. If I hadn't of put a deadline of promising updates for the series every two weeks, I would have (no doubt) fizzled out. Writing this series, though, taught me a very valuable lesson in opportunity cost. I was put on this earth to eat pizza and ship iOS apps, but I simply couldn't do the latter while writing the book series. There just wasn't time, and that's been a very hard part of all of this for me. It's a big part of my identity, and I find so much joy in it.<p>In the end, I feel very proud to have finished this thing up, though. I'll update it going forward when new versions of iOS come out. I like to think I've built up enough trust at this point (shipping 55 updates on schedule, never missing one update cycle) over the years while it was in beta, so I think folks know I'm good for it. Logistically, I ended up switching from Gumroad when they changed to a flat 10% fee over to Lemon Squeezy. It's a newer platform, and I'm mostly happy with it. My biggest pain point is that I can't do bulk sales for companies (trust me, I've tried) but other than that, it's nice.<p>Tooling wise, I wrote the whole thing in Ulysses. I've really grown to enjoy that app, and it's still the best place to write in my opinion.<p>If you have any other questions on the topic, how I marketed it or absolutely anything else, I'm always happy to answer questions.<p>[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31534988 [2]: https://www.bestinclassiosapp.com