Book, Courses, and Community to support the use of Python
I have seen a lot of people frustrated while trying to control setups in their labs. I have built this platform in order to bring together like-minded researchers.
I didn't promote the book a lot, but I made it available on Amazon. Someone just ordeded ten copies, which makes me incredibly proud. It is too bad I don't know who was it, but I suspect the PI of a lab willing to share copies with the students.
I think there's no better way of finishing the year than validating that all the effort is valued by someone else.
I focused all my free energies on finishing up the book so it could go to the press. While I sent it to different companies to evaluate quality, delivery times, and costs, I started with a pre-sale of the physical book. Sent it to the newsletter and bum, got the first 10 pre-sales in a matter of hours. I am very excited of approaching the finish line of this project that goes out of the digital realm.
With the new school year starting, many people started showing interest on the topics of the website and the book started converting nicely again. It is an average of 2.5 books a week, which makes it a decent amount to explore other possibilities, such as financing the printed version and self-suftain the website(s). Next step: Increase the conversion rate.
Before going to print, I wanted to be sure my book is in the best possible condition. Unlike e-books, once you print, there is no way back, whatever your readers get will stay there forever.
I found a great editor on Upwork, who did an amazing job. It took a while until a proper candidate appeared, but I knew it was an instant fit based on her passed experience editing tutorials and courses on similar topics.
Going throught he copy editing process with a native speaker really made me gain a lot of confidence on the quality of the content.
Some people asked for it, so I hired a professional copy-writer who is already working on the content, and I soft-launched the pre-sale of the physical book on gumroad.
The plan is to ship the first batch by the end of September. All the proceeds above the threshold that covers costs will be used to donate the book to libraries in universities around the world.
Even if these numbers don't say much, I am still amazed by the amount of people who is willing to show support for a website which is just a drop of water in the ocean. 110 people have judged that the value I try to deliver through the articles, the newsletter, and the forum, was enough to spend few bucks on my book.
I didn't realize earlier, but as of today the newsletter of Python for the Lab has 1557 subscribers. Subscription is 100% voluntary, there's no popup, just a small sign that users must manually click to expand and register.
I am positively impressed by how many people find value in what I create that are willing to trust me with their e-mails. Now, I should give back value to them. Exactly how, is what I need to find out.
I used to sell the books through Fastspring, but got tired of their clumsy system. They did not support unicode characters for name of customers, has almost 0 automation, even getting the e-mails of the customers was difficult. Let's see if Gumroad has any impact on sales. It shouldn't, since the interface is still my own website. But, let's see...
There is no much to do, so I used weekends and evenings to focus on re-writing the Python for the Lab book. I used all the information gathered during the workshops, checked and corrected the outdated code, and improved a lot the flow. I think now it is much more consistent, leaving fewer things to the reader.
I shared it with the people who already bought it, as a token of appreciation for those who supported me at an early stage, and the initial feedback has been positive.
I've managed to publish 3 articles this year, averaging a little less that 1 per month. I was planning to keep it up at 2 per month, but coming up with ideas is very complicated when focusing on other things at the same time.
The articles covered very different topics, from a technical article on generators and iterators, a handy how-to that can help as a reference for a lot of projects and a tutorial on Arduino, which I thought would gain some traction.
It turns out the articles are still not gaining traction. The most popular articles are still the ones I've published in the past, and are still highly ranked by Google. Especially the one on HDF5 files with Python is extremely popular.
Therefore, for the rest of the year, I've made a plan of articles I would like to write, focusing on catering more specifically to my audience instead of competing with other resources available online. Also, I need to revamp the book I offer, since that is my value proposition.
I have seen a lot of people frustrated while trying to control setups in their labs. I have built this platform in order to bring together like-minded researchers.