Lydia Dishman wrote a brief profile of the Visual Supply Co. (VSCO) and their iPhone app.
Using the VSCO cam to edit on the iPhone takes a bit more time than the one-click filters in Instagram, but I much prefer the finished product of the iPhone photos I edit in VSCO. And man, for proof that fancy gear and expensive software does not a photographer make, look no further than Kyle Steed’s VSCO Grid. Dude’s got skills.
Scott Belsky is one of the good guys. He’s an artist and a creative, but also a leader and an entrepreneur.
This sentence from the interview really stuck out to me, especially since the launch of my book is still so fresh:
To create something extraordinary, you have to learn to gain confidence from doubt.
John Mayer’s new album, Paradise Valley, is available to stream on iTunes. I’m listening to it right now. (Thanks, Joe.)
Seems this is becoming the new boilerplate pre-launch way to market a major album on iTunes. Off the top of my head I remember that Justin Timberlake and Daft Punk both offered streaming of their albums leading up to the launch day.
I’d be very interested in what sort of metrics the iTunes store is using to show that this is a way boost sales. Perhaps offering the streaming early is iTunes’s way of getting people to the album page, and then while we’re listing they decide to pre-order. Or, maybe it’s not nearly that clever. Maybe since Justin Timberlake did it and then had off-the-charts sales, everyone else is following blindly in his footsteps.
It all started with a few months ago with a week-long miniseries on Shawn Today. The topic was “the importance of delight in design.”
The feedback from that miniseries was quite positive, and I really enjoyed the subject matter. So I had this idea of re-record the miniseries, polish it up a bit more, and selling it for a few bucks as a for-pay podcast of sorts.
Well, as you already may have guessed, the project spiraled into what became Delight is in the Details.
As I was re-writing the outline for the updated miniseries, I began adding more and more episodes. It turned into 7 parts and then 9.
Also, my plan was to write out a script to read from so I could be sure to say exactly what I wanted to say in each episode, without rambling on and on.
So I thought why not pair the written version with the audio version? And, gosh. If I was going to do that, why not just make it into a book? And then I thought it would be fun to include some additional audio by doing interviews with some of my friends in the industry that know about this stuff.
It started as something I probably could have built and shipped in a few days, and turned into something that took me over 100 hours to complete. But I’m extremely proud of the end result.
Here’s a brief overview of some of the tools and services I used to write, edit, design, and ship Delight is in the Details.
I debated how I wanted to announce the book. There was either: (a) keep it secret until the day it came out; or (b) begin talking about it ahead of time.
I opted for the latter. So, obviously, I needed a landing page for the book — a place where I could tease what the book was about and encourage people follow to follow me on Twitter or enter their email to be notified when the book comes out.
My first version of the landing page was little more than a blog-post type page on this site. Over the course of a couple weeks I occasionally tweeted some links to the landing page, letting people know I was working on a book. I also wrote a few articles related to the content of my book, and linked to the landing page from within those articles.
Over those first three weeks, 173 people entered their email address to be notified.
Then, about two weeks ago, I designed a somewhat better landing page (which looked almost exactly like the page that’s there now, except instead of the buy buttons I had a big, “web 2.0” email sign up form).
I tweeted a link to that landing page at 5:30pm on a Thursday evening. And within 24 hours I had 300 new email signups (in addition to the 173 that had already signed up). The excitement around the book seemed to skyrocket once I had that better looking landing page.
Even for the hype-averse, smart and considered audience that follows me on twitter and reads this site, a good-looking landing clearly made a lot of difference. The design of the page with the graphics showing the book’s cover and interior layout, with the different reading devices, a cleaner look, a more prominent and inviting email form, resulted in tripling my email signups in one day.
TinyLetter was my email newsletter service of choice. It’s very easy to use and I like their clean design.
Alas, when I announced my new landing page, the influx of new email signups triggered an auto-defense mechanism with TinyLetter and a reCAPTCHA was put up to make sure those joining the mailing list weren’t spam robots.
The reCAPTCHA was annoyingly difficult to answer, and it added an extra hurdle. After contacting the TinyLetter support team, I was told there was no way for them to remove the reCAPTCHA. So, after that first day, I took the list off of TinyLetter and set up a MailChimp signup form instead.
When it came time to do the mailing, I had 635 people who had signed up to get an email announcement about the book. This was very encouraging.
At this point I had segments of the list: one in TinyLetter and one in MailChimp. I exported the names out of MailChimp and dropped them into TinyLetter to create the final master list.
Monday afternoon, the day before launch, I sent an email letting people know the book would be out on Tuesday. I then sent another email at 10:00 am EST, on Tuesday morning announcing the book was out.
I used Photoshop CS3 to design the hero image for the website, size the book cover for Kindle, and create the individual MP3 artwork “covers” for each chapter of the book and each audio interview.
All the rest of the design (the actual book cover typesetting, the book layout, and the interview show notes) was done in Pages.
I wrote the whole book in Pages, and even designed the cover in pages. I used Warnock Pro and Avenir Next as the typefaces.
(Side note: Jeff Abbott edited the book for me (he edits all the major articles I publish here). I’ve been working with Jeff since I took the site full time and highly recommend him if you are in need of an editor.)
For the PDF version of the book I simply printed from Pages and saved as a PDF — easy as pie.
The ePub, however, was not so easy. I exported from Pages to ePub, but the auto-generated xhtml and css turned out horrible. There were massive line breaks between paragraphs, the default font size was too small, and the chapter formatting was all a mess. I had to dig into the ePub source files and edit all the xhtml files, the manifest, and the css.
An ePub file is not unlike a zipped up website. Each chapter and section has its own html file. My crude explanation of what’s inside is this:
My small experience working with ePubs has taught me one thing: they are a world of hurt.
Though the components are basic enough, I haven’t yet used an app that could generate a clean, basic ePub file. I’ve made two eBooks so far and molding each one to meet my standard of quality was a tedious and painful process.
The first ePub I did was for a book my wife wrote. We had the layout done in InDesign (CS3). I knew InDesign could export to ePub, but the whole process turned out to be quite a bit of work. I first had to rebuild the document as a new book file and apply new paragraph styles to all the text (even italics and bold). And, after export, I then had to dig into the source files and update the manifest to properly link and name the chapters, and fine tune the CSS a bit.
I thought that certainly Pages would be better when it came to ePub export but I was wrong. It turned out to be worse. Though, in part, it could have been due to operator error. I had section breaks, but not a proper Table of Contents set up and linked within my original Pages document.
If I write another book, I might build the ePub version from scratch.
Editing and Validating ePubs
A few months ago, this forum thread proved to be immensely valuable when I was making the ePub for my wife’s book. Not only did it help walk me through the process of building the document in InDesign, it also gave some helpful information about the ePub’s source files as well.
On a Mac, there is no easy way to just get in to an ePub file’s source documents. Through the aforementioned thread, I found this ePub zip/unzip app. It’s basically just an Applescript that takes an ePub file and unzips it so you have access to the source files. Then, when you’re done, you use it to turn the files back into an ePub document.
And so, after I had exported my book to an ePub file from Pages, I then unzipped it using the above Applescript, and then went to work cleaning up the source code using Coda. After I had changed some of the metadata, taken out the superfluous paragraph breaks, changed some of the CSS, and adjusted the TOC and Spine order, I zipped the folder to ePub so I could validate and test it.
I used the IDPF’s ePub validator tool to make sure I hadn’t broken anything after I had been fiddling with my document source files. If there are errors the validator tells you what’s wrong and in which document and line the error is occurring. It’s quite helpful.
Once I had a valid ePub (it took a few tries) I then “tested” it on my iPad. I did this by simply opening the file in Dropbox and sending it to iBooks. Once I was happy with the formatting, and table of contents, etc., I then made a Kindle version.
Making a MOBI file (what the Kindle uses) from ePub is a piece of cake. Using Calibre, you import the ePub file, then chose to convert it. And boom, you’re done.
I made a different cover source file for the Kindle, so it would fit on the screen of my Kindle touch. There are a lot of suggestions and opinions from Amazon and the rest of the internet about what the dimensions of a Kindle cover should be. Mine ended up being 1500×2030.
I conducted all the interviews over Skype and used Skype Call Recorder (with Piezo recording as well for backup).
Then I split the MOV track created by Skype Call Recorder, and dropped the two sides of the conversation into Garage Band.
I used Garage Band for everything audio related except recording the interviews.
Editing the interviews
The finished interviews are, on average, 30 minutes each. After splitting the conversation sides and dropping the recording into Garage Band, it took me about 2.5 hours to edit each conversation. I would adjust the individual track volumes so that our voices were about equal, and then I would crop the front and end of the call, and then listen through to edit out as much of the dead space and as many of the “Umms” as I could. I wanted these interviews to sound like something you’d hear on NPR — a well-paced conversation that sounded natural, and was free from awkward silence, talking over one another, and the like. It took me an additional 20 hours to edit the interviews, but it was worth it.
Recording and editing the audio book
Using my trusty Blue Yeti microphone, I recorded the shows directly into Garage Band in my home office.
I placed towels all on my desk and around where I was to help muffle the audio a bit. As I was recording, if I messed up a word or phrase, I’d just take a pause, say “again” into the mic, take another pause, and then start that paragraph over.
The finished audio book is 77 minutes, and it took me about 4 hours to record all the chapters. It then took me another 8 hours to edit out all of my misspoken words, etc.
For adding and editing the metadata and artwork of each audio file.
AudioBook Binder is a free app in the Mac App Store. You just drop in your MP3 files, and then it will bind them together into a single M4P file with chapters.
You can make an audio book Garage Band by lining up your files end-to-end and setting your own chapter markers and then exporting. However, since I already had the individual MP3 tracks, I preferred the easier, more automated approach of just dragging and dropping into AudioBooksBinder.
I am using Gumroad to handle payments and delivery of the book.
Some alternatives I consider were Spacebox, a WordPress commerce plugin (there are many), or even a basic Shopify store.
Spacebox or Gumroad were the ones that made the most sense.
Compared to Spacebox, Gumroad is a bit more expensive. To sell my $29 book through Spacebox would cost $1.431 (that is Spacebox’s 1% transaction fee and Stripe’s 2.9% + 30 cents fee). Spacebox also charges $12/month to sell digital goods.
To sell my $29 book on Gumroad costs me $1.70 per book. That’s 5% + $0.25 per transaction. There are no monthly fees, no limits on product sales, no extra costs whatsoever.
Obviously the more books I sell the more money I lose to Gumroad that I could have saved had I used Spacebox. But I went with Gumroad primarily because of its the way it integrates on my site and how it handles digital delivery.
The design of the product and payment pages in Gumroad are very clean and classy. I like how when someone clicks the buy button on my book’s site, the payment form shows up right within the page. On Mobile, you’re redirected to their site where you get a mobile friendly checkout page. The experience is pretty much exactly what I wanted, and works how I would have it work had I built the service myself.
I also like how they handle the digital delivery. When you buy the product you instantly get a link to download. Also, an email is sent to you with a download link in there as well. This is great because it means folks who buy the product on their computer can download it immediately. Folks who buy it on their iPhone, iPad, or work computer can download it later via the email link if they like.
For one, the checkout process simple and clean (they ask only for an email address and the bare essentials of credit card info). Equally simple is the seller’s dashboard. For me to sell Delight is in the Details I just made an account, uploaded my ZIP file, set a price, and was done.
And, as the seller, I see real-time sales results On launch day I was checking the Gumroad stats page about once every 10 minutes.
On today’s episode of Shawn Today, I talked about this in great detail, and perhaps sometime I’ll write about it more here as well. But in short, the launch day was incredibly emotional for me. I was nervous, of course. But I also woke up feeling like a fraud, before I had even shipped the book. I felt fearful that people would consider the content of my book and the interviews to be not worth paying for, and yet here I was charging $29.
While waiting for my coffee, I decided I would continue as planned and not make any emotional decisions (or listen to the “lizard brain”) on launch day.
I wasn’t afraid that nobody would buy it, rather I was afraid people would buy it and be upset. But after a few days, the opposite has proven to be true. So far the feedback has been nothing but overwhelmingly positive.
A huge thanks to Marco, Cameron, Michael, Paul, Jory, Federico, Dan, and Chase who so generously gave of their time to contribute to the project. And a huge thanks to everyone who has bought the book. Your support and kind words mean the world to me. Thank you.
I was a guest on this week’s episode of the Generational podcast. As the show title suggests, we talked at length about many of the topics in my new book, such as the importance of delight in design, some examples of what makes an interface delightful, and how delight can impact the the design process.
I wrote a book that focuses on addressing the finest goal a person in our industry can have: to create substantive work that delights and excites our audience.
It’s called, Delight is in the Details, and it’s now available.
As you can see, there’s a bundle of cool stuff that comes with it. It’s an eBook, but also an audio book (featuring the voice of yours truly), and there are 8 interviews I conducted with Cameron Moll, Marco Arment, Michael Simmons, Federico Viticci, Paul Mayne, Jory Raphael, Dan Provost, and Chase Reeves.
To give you an overview of what’s inside, the book has two sections:
Section one is all about the product. I discuss why sweating the details is so important to our long-term success, and I give some examples of well-designed products (mostly on the software side).
And section two is all about the making. This section wasn’t even part of the original plan for the book. But about a month ago, as I was wrapping up the first section, I realized that there needed to be some discussion regarding “what now.” The second section is where I discuss why sweating the details is good for the soul, and I address some of the challenges we face as makers when we set our sights on doing our best creative work possible.
I’m extremely excited about what this project has become, and I hope you will get as much out of it as I have.
Check out the book’s website for more info, and to grab a copy.
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My thanks to Igloo for sponsoring the RSS feed this week. Sponsorship by The Syndicate.
Jared Sinclair:
I’ve been wrestling with some hard design challenges for my next app. Every day this week, I worked late into the evening, pushing the design to a point that seemed like the right solution, only to wake up the next day and see that yesterday’s solution wasn’t right yet.
It’s taxing to work like this, but rewarding.
Remember last week when I said Matt Gemmell was on fire lately? Well, the flame burns on. This time he’s writing about digital distractions and ruthlessly doing what we can to avoid them in order to crank out our best creative work.
This fits inline with the aforelinked piece about ego depletion.
Consider: You’re sitting at your desk, trying to accomplish a creative task. Meanwhile your phone is buzzing about once every 3 or 4 minutes, your Twitter stream is flowing in the background, and your email inbox is dinging each time a new email comes in.
In that scenario, you’re fighting against more than just distractions. Even if you can simply dismiss each notification out of your mind in a split-second, that is still a choice you’ve made — am I going to pay attention or not — and thus it has drawn on those cognitive resources you need to complete the creative task at hand.
Heck, so long as we’re on the subject… this is also why working within constraints so often breeds creativity. When you have a wide open canvas with unlimited time and resources, you’ve got too many decisions to make. If you’re dealing with time, budget, and canvas constraints then many of the project’s decisions have already been made for you, thus freeing up your cognitive resources to focus on how to best creatively solve the problem at hand.
Fantastic essay by Kathy Sierra about how apps with gamification and poor user experiences deplete our cognitive resources. (Via Marco.)
This is a subject which has fascinated me endlessly since I first learned about it a couple of years ago. Making smaller, inconsequential decisions impacts our ability to make bigger decisions, do hard work, and solve difficult problems later in the day. (Commonly referred to as Ego Depletion.)
It’s why the brain works best in sprints with breaks in-between, so we can have time to refuel our cog resources in between stretches of “knowledge work”.
I also love hearing about what sorts of patters and habits people set up for themselves. For example, did you know President Obama only wears gray or blue suits? Because it’s one less thing to think about, thus leaving him with more mental energy to run the country.
If you feel decision fatigue on a regular basis, consider automating some of your daily, inconsequential decisions. Such as when you get up each morning, what you wear, and what you eat for breakfast and lunch.
August is a great month to shake off the late-summer slumber and gear back up for the awesome work you’ll be doing the rest of the year.
In my time working on Delight is in the Details I did a lot of reading. I read some new (to me) books and revisited some books I’ve read over the years in my own journey to become a better writer and designer.
Here are some books I recommend adding to your queue. Some are practical, some are inspirational, all are awesome.
By Frank Chimero.
We all believe that design’s primary job is to be useful. Our minds say that so long as the design works well, the work’s appearance does not necessarily matter. And yet, our hearts say otherwise. No matter how rational our thinking, we hear a voice whisper that beauty has an important role to play.
The Shape of Design is one of most enjoyable and inspirational books I’ve ever read on the subject of design. Frank is a genuine artist, through and through. After I finished his book I felt empowered and encouraged as a designer.
By 99U (edited by Jocelyn K. Glei)
These people sabotage themselves because the alternative is to put themselves into the world as someone who knows what they are doing. They are afraid that if they do that, they will be seen as a fraud.
This book is filled with about 20 short chapters, each one written by someone else (the above quote is from Seth Godin’s chapter). The book talks a lot about time management, focus, and creativity.
By Seth Godin
Don’t worry about your stuff. Worry about making meaning instead.
Seth has an uncanny way of encouraging creative individuals to make great art while reminding them that they are not frauds.
By Stephen King
I’m convinced that fear is at the root of most bad writing.
Much of this book is filled with stories by Stephen King about his life and childhood and how he became a writer. Just writing about it here makes me want to pick it up and read it again.
By Anne Lamott
My students assume that when well-respected writers sit down to write their books, they know pretty much what is going to happen because they’ve outlined most of the plot, and this is why their books turn out so beautifully and why their lives are so easy and joyful, their self-esteem so great, their childlike senses of trust and wonder so intact. Well. I do not know anyone fitting this description at all. Everyone I know flails around, kvetching and growing despondent, on the way to finding a plot and structure that work. You are welcome to join the club.
Another one of the best books on writing I’ve ever read. Anne’s writing is enjoyable and entertaining. Some of the best writing and design advice I’ve ever heard comes from Anne, especially her emphasis on writing a crappy first draft because the most important part of writing is to sit down and actually begin doing the work.
By Natalie Goldberg
(I gave away my copy of Writing Down the Bones and have not yet replaced it. So, alas, I can’t pull any highlighted passages to quote here. You’ll just have to get your own copy and read the whole thing for yourself.)
Reading Natalie’s book is a lot like sitting in on a question and answer time where people ask all the right questions and she gives all the right answers.
You don’t have to read the book front to back. The chapters are short and fast and can be read completely out of order because each one is its own nugget of advice or food for thought. And quickly, Natalie begins to feel like a trusted friend — someone who’s not afraid to shoot it straight and who has nothing to hide.
Some books tutor you on how to write better; Writing Down the Bones will help you to become a better writer.
By Scott Belsky
You can only stay loyal to your creative pursuits through the awareness and control of your impulses. Along the journey to making ideas happen, you must reduce the amount of energy you spend on stuff related to your insecurities.
Centered around Thomas Edison’s famous quote that Genius is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration, Scott writes with a fondness towards the creative professional. This book is a guide for taking the constant flow of ideas we have and turning them into reality.
This is one of the few books that I have gone out and bought multiple copies of so I could give them away. I highly recommend it to anyone with a creative, entrepreneurial, or otherwise adventurous bend towards life.
If you like interviews and behind-the-scenes personal stories, then you’ll love Insites. Keir Whitaker and Elliot Jay Stocks conducted quite a few interviews with some well-known folks (such as Mandy Brown, Jim Coudal, Jeffrey Zeldman, Tim Van Damme, Jon Hicks, Jason Santa Maria, and Tina Roth Eisenberg to name a few). It’s beautifully laid out, printed in full color, and is full of, well, insights from some of the best creative professionals in the web community.
What’s next for me? Here are a few of the books in my queue:
P.S. If you’ve got a suggestion that should be in that list, feel free to pass it along.
For the past several months I’ve been working on an audio book, eBook, and interview series concerning the making of things. And it’s almost finished.
My whole focus for this project has been to address the finest goal a person in the creative industry can have: the goal of creating substantive work that delights and excites our audience.
In the book I talk about why the long-term success of our products (and our reputations) depends heavily on us taking the time to think through and sweat the details. I share some examples of products and services I consider delightful. And I talk with some awesome folks who know all about this stuff, gleaning from their experience and success.
Delight is in the Details is on track to come out next week. Check out the site to see what the cover art looks like, peruse the table of contents, and size up the roster of interviewees.
Nearly 19-percent of the Internet is powered by WordPress. Wowzers.
Interestingly, only 4-percent of people who sign up for a hosted WordPress site (on wordpress.com) stick with it. Curious why that is (bad user experience on WordPress’ end or lack of commitment on the user’s end). Also curious about how that 96-percent attrition rate compares to other self-hosted blogging platforms like Tumblr and Squarespace.
What I’m excited about is the fact that Automattic acquired the developers behind two of my favorite iOS apps: Simplenote and Poster (the latter being the app I use to post to this site from my iPad and iPhone). The WordPress iOS app doesn’t even come close to meeting my needs, so hopefully we’ll see some serious growth in how WordPress handles mobile for its users.
Yesterday’s Letter of Note had me laughing out loud in my dining room. In 1970, a Coca-Cola brand manager wrote to Grove Press, asking them to stop using the phrase “it’s the real thing” as part of their advertising campaign for their new book, Diary of a Harlem Schoolteacher. The reply from Grove Press was clever enough to silence Coca-Cola.
