REBASE Book
The complete Guide on Rebasing in Git
Today I've sold over 400 copies of https://rebase-book.com!
It's super nice to see that people are buying the book quite regularly. It's still 5-star rated on Gumroad and I'm receiving a lot of good feedback.
I've added FAQ to the website as well, to make sure everyone feels included.
Over the past few days https://rebase-book.com has sold more than 350 copies in total!
I haven't done much advertisement about the product lately, however, one of the most read tech magazines in Germany picked it up and published a little review about the book that caused another spike of sales.
The product's overall conversion rate through rebase-book.com is now 14.1 %!
About one month after publishing rebase-book.com, first readers have giving it a rating on Gumroad, making it a 5-star rated book!
I'm also regularly receiving feedback from my readers through the email workflow I've set up as discussed in https://pascalprecht.github.io/posts/writing-an-ebook, and they seem to really like it!
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@PascalPrecht very cool, I didn't know you could do star ratings on Gumroad! I also really like how your buy now window embeds onto the side of the screen (at least on desktop) instead of taking over - didn't know you could do that with gumroad either!
Creating rebase-book.com was a fun experience! I've now put my entire product development process and key learnings into an article and published it today.
I hope it's useful for some of the indie hackers here!
Another week has passed and yesterday https://rebase-book.com has reached the 5k mark in gross revenue.
Sales definitely have been going down since the official release two weeks ago, but that was expected.
I've also reached out to most of my customers to ask them how they like the book and what they are missing. Turns out the feedback has been overwhelmingly good! A lot of people enjoy the introduction chapters that explain the inner workings of Git.
As always here are some numbers:
Total number of sales: 162
All time conversion rate (rebase-book.com): 12.9%
I'm currently working on an article that describes the entire workflow/process on how I've authored and published this ebook in just two months.
Feel free to follow me on Twitter for updates very soon: https://twitter.com/PascalPrecht
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Great accomplishment!
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Thanks for sharing Pascal!
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What is your seo strategy? The link at uber suggest does not show a pretty picture?
https://app.neilpatel.com/en/seo_analyzer/backlinks?domain=rebase-book.com&locId=2840&lang=en-
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Hi!
I haven't spent too much time on SEO related things. Most of my traffic is generated organically.
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Pascal, congrats to your figures but what I don't get at all: Why did you choose such a niche topic? I do not mean git but git rebase. I think also that using rebase has its trade-offs. If you are in teams where not everybody is rebase-wise on the same level as you are, rebase is risky. Then, it shows also that your workflow is brittle if you need rebase. Whatever, read https://medium.com/@fredrikmorken/why-you-should-stop-using-git-rebase-5552bee4fed1
Imagine you spent your time and energy into something where you have a bigger audience, why rebase? Also consider, how many times you spread the word in forums etc. just assume some reach you created and compare this to 162 buyers. Just IH gets 500-800K visits per month, let's assume they have just 100K uniques which is very conservative. Those 100K must have seen your many posts with 100% odds.
162/100K = 0.16% conversion and that's just IH (admitting that IH is not the right site for getting leads because of the high no code ratio)
no offense just curious.
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Hey @Cass1
Thanks for your thoughts and input, and no worries I don't take this offensive.
I think those are great questions, so let me answer them for you.Why did you choose such a niche topic? I do not mean git but git rebase
I've touched on that in a blog post here: https://pascalprecht.github.io/posts/i-am-writing-a-book
Basically, it boils down to this:
There are many people out there using git and most of them certainly get away with typical workflows like adding, committing, pushing and pulling changes. Some of them manage to survive merge conflicts without being scared to “mess things up”. However, the majority of software engineers (and any git user for that matter), feels rather uncomfortable when using the tools, especially when just knowing how to add and commit changes is not enough.
I see many people struggling with having "control" over their commits and their actions inside of a git repository. That's why REBASE actually doesn't just discuss rebasing in git, but also explores the inner workings of a git repository and how git puts commit objects together etc.
I'm getting a lot of feedback from my readers that they found those chapters extremely valuable, which kind of confirms my theory that there's a need for people to learn this stuff.
I think also that using rebase has its trade-offs. If you are in teams where not everybody is rebase-wise on the same level as you are, rebase is risky.
It absolutely has! Like everything in life :) You should be knowing what you're doing and that's exactly what this book tries to accomplish. Regarding the risk in general, luckily it's actually very hard to lose work in git, which is also something I keep touching on throughout the book.
Regarding the article you've linked: I still need to read the whole thing, but I skimmed through it. So one thing he mentions, that commits might break the build and you aren't aware until you see it breaking with the last rebased commit... well, that's where it's part of our job as software engineers to ensure every commit in the repository compiles/builds. But that applies whether you're using rebase or not. As a matter of fact, the exact same can happen without using rebase at all.
To address this issue there's actually several things you can do. For example, to ensure CI is green and stuff is compiling with every commit, you can run your CI task during a rebase for every commit. That's also covered in the book :)
Imagine you spent your time and energy into something where you have a bigger audience, why rebase?
I don't think I understand the question. Can you elaborate?
162/100K = 0.16% conversion and that's just IH (admitting that IH is not the right site for getting leads because of the high no code ratio)
Also not sure I get your point here... Are you wondering how my conversion rate is higher than the number you've came up with (given those variables)?
Thanks for your input and feedback! Good discussion :)
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why rebase?
I don't think I understand the question. Can you elaborate?The point where coders google about rebase and want to learn about rebase takes time (I rarely to never use rebase) and I'd say that the urge/pain/target demo to learn rebase is smaller than eg understanding git from scratch (you mentioned that readers found the inner workings valuable). maybe it's just the title and/or CTA which puts yourself in some niche.
not sure I get your point here...
Apologies for being not clear: Your content marketing efforts were good, means you and your book were quite visible. I think I read at least half a dozen time about your book (but never thought a second to order it despite being a coder). And when you just take look at IH and its reach, the outcome is a bit underwhelming. Imagine you would have a topic with broader interest ('git for no-coders' as a non-sense example) you would have exploited IH's user base better.
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You make a very interesting point with the topic being a niche interest.
My thoughts on this are two-fold. One is regarding picking niches, the other one is concerned with the production of knowledge.
If I look at Pascal's product from an entrepreneurial point of view, he had a choice between two general audiences: a large general audience in which a minority is interested in rebasing (let's say "Audience 1: all current and future users of git") and a smaller niche audience where a majority is interested in rebasing (let's say "Audience 2: all intermediate git users who work on projects complicated enough to eventually warrant deeper knowledge of git").
Audience 1 is a very aspirational audience. There are lots of people, and selling to them requires them not only to find your product, but they have to be made aware that they actually need to know something about rebasing in git. Marketing gets more complicated in two ways: you're fishing in a larger sea, so reaching your prospects will cost more, and you have to prime your prospects to become aware of their problem at the same time. People in this niche could be anything: complete novices, intermediate developers, or senior architects. Each group needs a different message and channel to be reached.
Audience 2 is a smaller, but more realistic audience. There are fewer people, but they are uniquely aware of the need to understand git better to be able to deal with more complicated problems. This niche will consist of intermediate and expert users of git, already being aware of most core parts. Many of them will likely be employed by medium or large IT organizations, as problems with distributed version control that require more advanced concepts usually spring up when a lot of people are involved in the development process.
Pascal does something really nice with his introductory chapter: it removes all the little differences in specific knowledge that an intermediate or even an expert may have skipped or forgotten. It levels the playing field by explaining foundational functionality to then teach an advanced concept with the core principles assumed to be understood.
That brings me to an important point: the Indie Hacker crowd is not his (prime) target audience for the book. Many developers here have limited experience with larger projects, and if they run a solopreneur business, they might never need to. Pascal IS an Indie Hacker, and his book CAN be helpful for other Indie Hackers, but it WILL be helpful for engineers working in mid-to-large organizations.
So while we're talking about SEO and finding customers: my recommendation would be going to the places that developers who work for Mailchimp, Buffer, Microsoft, Twitter, Facebook, and all other 15+ employee businesses' developers hang out: IRC, Discord, Coding Slacks, Forums, Meetups, Virtual and real conferences. That is where Pascal will find his budget-owning niche audience :)
And by the way @Cass1, you are 100% right to assume that if he had written a more generic book about git, his audience HERE would have netted him more revenue, as it would have solved another more general problem.
That brings me to my second point because a more general book would have been a wasted opportunity. In my experience, technical experts excel to transfer their experience at the margins of the production of knowledge. Phrased more pragmatically: experts should write about their deepest expertise.
Pascal is a highly talented programmer, and I had the opportunity to be part of a workshop he gave a few years ago. He has a deep understanding of advanced concepts, and he is a great public speaker as well. With this in mind, I claim that I would rather have him apply his clarity and expertise to write a book about advanced concepts of using a system like git. Many people can write an introduction to git. Few people can write a clear explanation of rebasing with git. @PascalPrecht is one of them.
Hope this gives you some insight into my perspective. I love the progress of the book and the transparency of the process. Very cool.
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thx for your elaboration. check Dan Abramovs (one of react cores and quite popular guy) upcoming book on JS. Old subject but he tries a new way to let newbies grok JS. Big audience, big competition but he found still a way to differentiate himself. You have to get deep into his tweets to get that he chose a new angle to teach JS.
With this in mind [Pascals skills], I claim that I would rather have him apply his clarity and expertise to write a book about advanced concepts of using a system like git
I heavily disagree and there is no correlation between your expert level and what you should write about. Again compare Dan Abramov as one of functional JS' godfathers and his newest JS book. If Pascal wants to push his personal market value with some deep niche book then git rebase might (!) be an option (which I'd still doubt) but commercially it doesn't make sense. It's like writing about a sub-sub ecosystem.
Using git rebase is debatable, it shows that your overall versioning processes are subpar and the moment a senior engineer at Amazon has the time and an urge to order git rebase to get smarter is <0.1%. IDK if mastering rebase matters, but mastering standard git workflows, k8s, state management , Tensorflow, that's stuff that's matter and where you would order a book but not git rebase. I think it's even not the contents of the book but just the title. Maybe it should have been 'git advanced concepts for high productive teams'.
still i am happy for the 162 pieces sold and congrat Pascal BUT I just wonder if this effort could have created some bigger ROI.
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These are all great points and I totally see where you're coming from. I'm certainly no Dan Abramov, but to be honest, I'm also not doing this to push my personal market value.
It's not even my goal to make a lot of money with this book. See my older milestones. Reaching the first 1k was already more than I've imagined I'd make with this project.
The reason I've created this product is because a) yes I do see a lot of people struggle with some things and this book can help, but also b) I just wanted to go through the process of creating something from scratch and giving it my personal signature.
Of course, I wouldn't mind if REBASE generates even more revenue, and it most likely will. I sell ~10 copies weekly on average, that is 25*10 = 250 € per week * 4 = 1000€ per month, passive income.
However, I'm well aware I won't get rich with it and that's perfectly fine. It's already been going much better than I thought. The feedback is outstanding, people seem to really like the book and learn a lot (I will update the landing page with testimonials).
I also have some other things planned around the book, so at this point it's just making the best out of it that I can and ideally earning a little from it. :)
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Ahh, that makes sense yes.
I still believe I actually haven't reached as many people though. Looking at some stats there were just about ~9000 page views in total for rebase-book.com since the pre-release of the book.
So I would assume that, if there were indeed 100k ppl (just to stick with your example) checking out the site, sales would be much higher. Probably still with a conversion rate of ~10%.
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Another week has gone by and https://rebase-book.com has sold another 50+ copies.
This last week was rather quite for me. I decided to let the launch sink in for a couple of days to give people a chance to read (parts of) the book and see how that's going.
What's really nice is that, even though I haven't proactively reached out (yet), some of my readers reached out to me to let me know how much they like the book and they they've found a couple of typos.
This will I'll put out another release with bugfixes for all the reported typo issues.
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Great!! How have you been promoting your book?
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Hey @supremeRumHam
No actual promotion. Just putting out updates on a regular basis and sending 1-2 newsletter to my company's newsletter list. Most of my customers are from twitter actually.
For more information, I broke most of it down here: https://www.indiehackers.com/product/rebase-book/200-sold-copies--M-4Keh0hRvgsbIGFXrA?commentId=-M-9KtZj3naeLQFs25-d&utm_campaign=forum-notification&utm_medium=email&utm_source=indie-hackers-emails
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Oh cool!! Thanks!!
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What was your writing tools stack? Sorry if I missed the post, this lazy loading drives me mad every time I need to find something :)
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Hey @dmitripopov!
I'm using
pandocand a custom script to automate some things. Check out this comment for some more information: https://www.indiehackers.com/product/rebase-book/80-sold-copies--LxpNIDxfyQV8rg0mMuX?commentId=-Lxu-U9MyldIhUcQchIU&utm_campaign=forum-notification&utm_medium=email&utm_source=indie-hackers-emailsAlso, I'll be publishing a blog post about my whole process. Follow me on twitter for updates: https://twitter.com/PascalPrecht
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Awesome work Pascal! Keep track of those people reaching out to you. They are your best customers and will be an invaluable resource for you in the future.
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Very true! Will do!
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This comment was deleted 6 years ago
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Thank you @alxcnwy!!
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In the last week, https:rebase-book.com made $2000+ more in gross revenue since the last revenue milestone, crossing the 4k line!
230 copies have been sold now and I'm very happy to see that there are +- 10 sales coming every day.
Here are some numbers:
- Total gross revenue: $4,185.56
- Total sales: 230
- Conversion Rate last 30 days (rebase-book.com): 18.3%
- Conversion Rate (rebase-book.com): 12.8%
I'll be writing a "post-mortem" article about how I've authored and published a book within 2 months this week.
Follow me on twitter for updates: https://twitter.com/PascalPrecht
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Awesome congrats! I always enjoy seeing more independent authors having success with consumable books like this. Keep up the great work, I'll follow along on Twitter.
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Thanks @kgalb!
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Congratulations!!!
It is a major milestone, but get ready for higher horizons.
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Will do!
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I barely understand Git and I couldn't tell you what a "rebase" is to save my life. HOWEVER, I really love your landing page and cover art. Congrats on your sales this month! Care to share what's been working for you in terms of marketing? Is it all organic or paid as well?
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Hey @tomalley
Thanks for the kind words!
So in terms of marketing, it really boils down to these things here: https://www.indiehackers.com/product/rebase-book/200-sold-copies--M-4Keh0hRvgsbIGFXrA?commentId=-M-9KtZj3naeLQFs25-d&utm_campaign=forum-notification&utm_medium=email&utm_source=indie-hackers-emails
Lemme know if you have more questions!
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Congrats! I'm writing a book and taking notes on your success.
Would love to see your "stack" for authoring and publishing.
Also, how did you decide on pricing?
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Hey @blakerson
I'll get into more detail on the stack in a follow-up article. But it boils down to
pandoc.As for pricing, I did a quick poll when I've started the project:
https://www.indiehackers.com/product/rebase-book/evaluation-and-feedback--Lvr2SJ-x2IYEQitenUi?utm_campaign=forum-notification&utm_medium=email&utm_source=indie-hackers-emailsWhen it comes to pricing, it's very important not to undersell yourself. Keep in mind that, what you're charging is actually not just the product that customers get, but also what they get out of using your product. Given that, a lot of products should probably be higher priced.
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Congrats bro! :)
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Thank you!
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This comment was deleted 7 years ago
Shortly after the launch of rebase-book.com, the project made it on Hacker News to the Show HN front page at place #3 , with 9 comments and 38 points.
Some interesting discussions by the community can be found on the post.
Within less than a week, https://rebase-book.com sales skyrocketed to over 200 sales and counting!
The biggest jump in sales was made on the 30 January, one day before the official release. The reason for that is most likely that this was the last day people could buy the book for 40% off.
I'm really happy to see that even after the full price being active, sales are coming in regularly.
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Is your book launch a huge success? I would like to see how you communicate for this launch?
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I think that sold copies is a very good thing to do. I don't know how many times I've bought a book and then re-read it because I didn't like it or did not like the way the author wrote. But when a friend told me about this book, I decided to give it a try. And now I'm glad that I did! Try this social media marketing white label for best marketing about social media. The book is about a man who lives in America during the Civil War. He's a Yankee who thinks that he has everything under control, but then he meets an African American man who wants to become a soldier for the Union Army.
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Yay! Congrats 🙌
What channels did you use to market the book launch?
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Thanks @yanus!
The channels I've used (and still am using are):
- My Twitter channel (https://twitter.com/PascalPrecht) - Actually turns out that most of my customers got to know about the book through twitter. Certainly my most important channel.
- My company's blog (https://blog.thoughtram.io) - I've added a little banner to the blog-post view. We have several thousand readers every day so a good subset of those click the banner and end up on https://rebase-book.com.
- My company's newsletter - We've got a few thousand subscribers there as well, so I could send out a newsletter with a special discount code out of which also a good handful converted.
- Indie Hackers milestones - Since the book was written within 2 months, it was feasible to put out a milestone update every week. The community here is very engaging which often caused my milestones to be on the IH homepage. That in turn causes a good amount of people to run into the REBASE landing page.
- Hacker News SHOW page (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22200222#22210196) - This one even made it up all the way to #3 and it's still on the front page, so I'm getting quite a lot of traffic from there and new customers as well.
I think those are my main channels. Hope this answers your question!
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How have you done your marketing until now and how do you plan to do it going forward?
I have a course coming out, do you have any tips?
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Hey @pagemonk
I can certainly say that the strongest impact in sales is driven by my follower audience on twitter. Most of my customers got to know about the book from there and most of them follow me there because of my involvement in the JavaScript community over the past years.
For more information check out this comment: https://www.indiehackers.com/product/rebase-book/200-sold-copies--M-4Keh0hRvgsbIGFXrA?commentId=-M-9KtZj3naeLQFs25-d&utm_campaign=forum-notification&utm_medium=email&utm_source=indie-hackers-emails
I'll also write a blog post about how I authored and published this book within 2 months. If there's anything you want to have covered, please respond to this thread here: https://twitter.com/PascalPrecht/status/1224101076749733900
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Thank you for replying. I followed you on Twitter. Will wait for your blogpost.
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Congrats!
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Thank you!!
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This comment was deleted 5 years ago
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Thank you!
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REBASE - The complete guide on Rebasing in Git is out now!
Head over to https://rebase-book.com to get your copy.
Twitter announcement: https://twitter.com/PascalPrecht/status/1223177153837248512
After two months of writing chapters, creating illustrations, cross device testing, building the landing page and growing a customer base, REBASE is now finally published!
I'm extremely happy that the project has worked out and even more amazed that I actually managed to put it together within just 2 months!
This is just the first version and I'll keep iterating over it as feedback comes in from my readers. I'm also planning some more goodies around this ebook so keep an eye on this space.
Also, just yesterday, one day before the released, the sales have skyrocketed due to the 40% discount. Will share some numbers soon in a blog post about my authoring and publishing process.
If there's anything you want to have covered please respond to this thread: https://twitter.com/PascalPrecht/status/1224101076749733900
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Congrats Pascal. What tool did you use to draw illustrations? It looks pretty good
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Well done. I just bought a copy. Your landing page described your audience (me) perfectly. If it is any help, that was the bit that made me say "Shut up and take my money". 😊
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Hey @Devan
Thanks man! I hope you'll enjoy it and that it matches your expectations.
Happy to hear the landing page is doing its job haha!
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Congrats! Looks so great! I'll likely come back to it when I finish my other books!
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@mxmzb I'll be right here waiting! :D
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Congrats, man.
Don't forget to share it to Twitter!
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That has already happened of course! :D
Updating the post
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Congrats on the release, GLWS! 🎉🥳
Unfortunately I am not in your target audience (I just use merges) 😊
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Thank you!!
re: merges: no problem! You'll still do merges, also when you rebase :)
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I used to only merge, but switched to rebasing a few months ago. I was mostly wary of having to go through too many conflicts. But then I found
git rebase -iwhich let's me edit the local history much better (squish, reorder, etc), so I've been quite comfortable with rebasing.Unfortunately that means I'm not in your target audience - but best luck, and congrats on shipping! I would still have paid $25 to learn some more tricks, but 200 pages is a lot - the time cost is much larger than the money cost for me.
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That's very fair @mitko!
Thank you for the kind words!
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Congratulations!! :)