Congradulations on publishing the book! As a business consultant learning web/iOS development I thought I would share my feedback from both perspectives.<p>Thoughts as a potential customer:<p>-I didn't have the time to read through the tutorial and wanted to know more than was provided by the TOC on the Leanpub page.<p>-I had no idea who you were until I looked at your signature.<p>-After going back and looking at the first chapter I didn't find the chapter very compelling ("Okay, so we changed the background color?").<p>-I wanted to see what I could expect to accomplish.<p>-----<p>Recommendations as a consultant:<p>Change the index to a landing page and move the first chapter content to a second page.<p>Make the top half of the body similar to the LeanPub page (name, tagline, image) with a call to action to the LeanPub purchase url.<p>Establish your knowledge/credibility: ex: "Learn everything you need to know to develop your first app with <i>Your First iOS App</i>, written by 500px's lead iOS developer Ash Furrow"<p>In the bottom half of the body add a few text blocks summarizing the main topics covered (possibly a screen shot of what a reader can expect to build after reading the book) and a secondary call to action to preview the first chapter.<p>At the end of the first chapter page condense the final paragraph to more of a tagline, "It may not seem like much, but you're well on your way to developing full featured apps. Get the full eBook for $14.99 on LeanPub." Then move the GitHub link below the sales widget, so I visually consider the <i>Buy Now</i> link before looking at the source.
I have the NerdRanch book, but never made it through it. I like your direct, informal approach. I'm not to the point I need it just yet - but one thing I would like would be an overview of the process. (I do best starting at 10,000 foot view and zooming in). Just a thought
Great job Ash. Congratulations. I got to see a little bit of the book development happen via GitHub and it was great to see how crowd-sourcing technical review/editor function could potentially work in the future.<p>Congratulations again.
you should show the kind of app that will be possible after reading the whole book.<p>as it is 'your first ios app' i'd expect the final (i.e. most complicated topics discussed) to be somewhat basic... but maybe they aren't. maybe a list of things covered (like tables, core data etc)<p>it kind of looks like you do a timer from <a href="https://github.com/AshFurrow/Your-First-iOS-App" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/AshFurrow/Your-First-iOS-App</a>
I will definitely give this book a try. I'm in the middle of learning from the NerdRanch book (never had the time to keep up with the Stanford course).<p>Any general thoughts from the community about the best way to balance between _any_ book and the Apple documentation (especially the guides)?