Edw519 wrote a book compiling his best HN Comments

Original author here.<p>This was a little side project to have some fun and maybe spread a little value.<p>I frantically threw this together over the weekend to be ready for the traffic Marc Cenedella (CEO of TheLadders.com) promised me today. His posts:<p><a href="http://twitter.com/cenedella/status/57759591789887489#" rel="nofollow">http://twitter.com/cenedella/status/57759591789887489#</a><p>and<p><a href="http://www.cenedella.com/job-search/leonardo-da-vincis-resume-2/" rel="nofollow">http://www.cenedella.com/job-search/leonardo-da-vincis-resum...</a><p>Thank you, Marc.<p>As many of you know, I spend most of my time writing software and generally resist spending time writing other stuff (even though I always find time to say something here). So in typical hacker fashion, I "launched" what I had with the intention of accepting feedback and iterating. You guys have always been really good at that.<p>I originally planned on a Kindle ebook, but Scribd was just so much easier for me. I didn't realize that others had problems viewing or purchasing. If you're outside the U.S. or have any other problems reading the sample, just email me and I'll send you a free pdf.<p>All of your feedback is greatly appreciated. I'll keep updating the content as I go and will gladly accept help with typesetting or distributing. I plan to follow up with some of you during one of my breaks today.<p>If you buy the book and don't like it, I will buy you a cup of coffee the next time we are together. If you buy it and do like it, make that a beer.

Hate to be the bearer of bad news--perhaps somewhat mitigated by the lack of hardcopies--but it's 'foreword' and not 'forward'.<p>That is, unless this is either some technolingo or inside joke that I'm not privy to.

"I never publish my code. Ever. Users get to give me feedback, but I don't care what other programmers think. Sure, I learn from them, but never in the context of reviewing the code I wrote. I learn from the code of others and apply those lessons to my own work."<p>You can, of course, do whatever you want but this seems awfully selfish... Essentially saying that you will take whatever others (foolishly?) give in open source, blog posts, etc., etc., but never give back. Am I reading this correctly?

I think I'd really enjoy the read.<p>It would have been a bit nicer if the great comments were accompanied by some good design/typesetting (generate latex?) and an alternative format (epub).<p>There are a few solutions based on princeXML that can take easily generatable HTML+CSS and convert it to pdf (example: <a href="http://www.alistapart.com/articles/boom" rel="nofollow">http://www.alistapart.com/articles/boom</a> ).<p>While the Prince license might not be the cheapest, there also is a webservice that does the conversion (<a href="http://docraptor.com/tour" rel="nofollow">http://docraptor.com/tour</a>)

Ed is one of the most prolific and valuable members of the HN community. That being said, I'd love for andrewwarner to do a Mixergy interview. Ed is not the typical Mixergy success though but we could all learn from his b2b success.

He should do Amazon Kindle self-publishing and write about the sales numbers later.

I'm not a US citizen and all I see is obfuscated content reminiscent of rot-13. Am I being slow this morning?

I tried to read this but the Scribd reader hung up on me after a few pages and all I got to see were blank pages (I'm using FF4). Would it be possible to compile some of the comments in a "Sample.pdf" file and directly link to that instead?

I just saw this in his profile yesterday, intend to buy.<p>EDIT: Apparently I need to be a US citizen. I'll find some other way to send him a donation.

I just purchased the book and it was totally worth the $2.56. Which, BTW, is a nice price. :-)<p>Comment #49 is a piece of advice that will pay for the book many times over, no matter what you do for a living.

Congrats Ed! Good luck publishing!<p>I have a similar project, so I'd like to know how you decided which comments to pick, how you put them together, etc.<p>I'm working with the epub format right now. Not sure if I made the right choice or not, but it seemed like the best technical option to hit the most platforms. Never occurred to me to use Scribd.

I probably would have bought it for that price but it says United States only. Perhaps Gumroad or Hawtcakes would work? Or the Kindle store? (I heard you can instantly convert files to Kindle format by mailing them to youramazonaccount@kindle.com)<p>Another site that I used to visit regularly, for about 7 or 8 years, had a poster who kept his own text-file of all the great posts he'd read over the years. Occassionally he would tease us by posting extracts (of course, everybody wanted to know how many of <i>their</i> comments made the cut) occassionally. But I always thought the file itself was probably worth actual money. And I keep forgetting to make a similar effort for other online communities (HN for instance. But you'd be here all day catching all the great coments on HN).

Jason Gilmore (@wjgilmore) has an interesting article on publishing a book using DocBook, and git for version control. <a href="http://www.wjgilmore.com/blog/entry/why_i_published_easy_php_websites_with_the_zend_framework_using_docboo" rel="nofollow">http://www.wjgilmore.com/blog/entry/why_i_published_easy_php...</a><p>--<p>Also, I just bought Ed's book ... Really great commentary in there. Somewhat sad I've only been a member of the HN community for such a short time.

Thanks Ed! How did you make the ebook? I've been looking for a good app to convert blog feeds to books, but haven't found anything that just works.<p>If you send me an email I will be happy to put it up for sale on my new store (for free of course).<p>You might also want to try Sahil's <a href="http://gumroad.com" rel="nofollow">http://gumroad.com</a>.

This will sit nicely next to my Encyclopedia Weaselicus, available now for the low, low price of $3.59.

Stuff like this should be made a compulsive reading for hackers.<p>This solves a very basic problem with hacker-related knowledge - you don't know what to search until you know what to search!<p>And books like Ed's solve this by compiling it all in one place. Someone here did one for pg's essays and other articles and the result was a 12+MB file good to last you a few days if you're at it.

Great idea and I would love to buy it, but I'm not a US citizen :(

bought. read. Worth every penny 256 times.

About time :)

Link to the actual book: <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/52729281/The-Best-Of-edw519" rel="nofollow">http://www.scribd.com/doc/52729281/The-Best-Of-edw519</a><p>I really like this idea and will buy the book. However, it would be nice if the comments were time-stamped, as not all advice is timeless.<p>Anyone know of any other forum-comments-turned-book examples?<p>EDIT: I would buy it if I didn't have to be a US citizen to buy a digital book in scribd. Why is this a problem for a book like this?