Free eBook! The Simple Web: A Philosophy for Getting What You Want
This is the free 27-page eBook version of a post series that appeared on Skelliewag in 2007. It’s completely open-source, so do whatever you want with it: offer it as a download on your blog or website, share it with friends, or sell it and make a million!
About the book:
Most hard questions have simple answers. The hard part is in the doing.
The question: how can I lose weight? can be answered truthfully in one sentence: eat three modest, healthy meals each day (and no more), and make exercising a habit.
But that isn’t good enough. It’s the how that gets us. It’s not enough to say what we have to do. We need to know how to do it.
As bloggers and webmasters, we want most or all of these things: more visitors, more subscribers, more comments, more money, more inbound links, and more people saying good things about us. Our wants aren’t in question. It’s the how that gets us. It’s the how that has us reading a dozen blogs a day, trying to find the answer (or at least a little piece of it).
You can stop searching, for now. The answer is in this eBook.
Click the cover below to download the 399 KB eBook .PDF
Cover source photography by visualpanic.
Cool, I’ve no doubt this will be a great read as soon as I get to it. You might want to look at the licensing though:
The statement about sharing that you’re making in this blog post is potentially bad for you: it does not imply a requirement of *attribution* - like a creative commons license would! Also, there’s no mention of the licensing terms within the pdf itself.
(and, less important: “open source” does not imply “free to share”)
Awesome! This eBook is fantastic, Skellie. Now make one with new content in it and charge for it and I’ll put my money where my mouth is.
If you make an eBook with new content in it that I haven’t seen yet, then I’m willing to pay for it. I would seek it out if I had to, track you down and offer to buy it if I had to.
Not sure if other readers feel the same way or not, but I think you should know that your content really is that valuable to some of us out here….thanks again for all your great ideas!
Excellent resource and great that it has all been collated into one e-book. Nice job.
Only had chance to scan through it at the moment, but can see that there are some excellent ideas in there.
Any one know if there is a Creative Commons for dummy’s out there - to explain the various options that you can have?
Very useful download. Keeping it as a library copy for any time reference.
Thanks a lot for this e-book, it’s a very nice idea to wrap up an article series in this way :-)
It will be a nice read.
BW, the CC web page makes that almost automatic for you:
http://creativecommons.org/license/
Thanks everyone!
@ Yungchin: I don’t mind what people do with it. I can’t enforce attribution or copyright so I figure I’ll just give the book to the people and see what happens! If someone slaps their name on it, so be it — bad karma for them ;).
Thanks for your concern, though — I do appreciate it.
Finally! The first of many lets hope :D
Hi Skellie! I’m not sure if that’s true - there may be more you can do than you think. But, then, on the other hand it might save you a few heart attacks not to worry about these things, so I guess you’re making a good choice. I envy you for your relaxed attitude!!
Is this the ebook, you’ve prepared for so long (I remember you writing about it)? If so, then I’m kinda dissappointed, if it contains only some of your old posts.
[...] The Simple Web - A Web Philosophy for Getting What You Want [Download this free E-Book HERE] [...]
@yungchin
Thanks for the link
[...] take the easy way out and link to her site. You can get the free eBook at The Simple Web: A Philosophy for Getting What You Want. Categories: Blogging Tags: Blogging tips Leave a [...]
The ebook is great.
As far as I know not placing licensing terms in the work means, at least in Poland, that the work is copyrighted. For those who do not obey the law there is no difference. For second group it can be huge.
The best solution, at least for me, is browse mentioned ealier Creative Commons website, chose one of the licenses, and put it in the ebook.
Awesome! I’ve downloaded it and am going to print it out to keep on file. Looking forward to reading it all over (again). Thank you for doing this
[...] Skellie released a cool 27 pages long free ebook, called The Simple Web: A Philosophy for Getting What You Want. [...]
@ Bitten: it’s not — I’ve actually been approached to turn the ‘big’ eBook into a book, which I’m scheduled to finish in October, and my guess is that it should be out in early 2009. I’m excited about it!
@ PTV: I didn’t think of that — but I’m not going to prosecute anyone, so it should be OK? If not, I can add an Attribution 2.0 license, but only if it’s necessary to protect distributors.
Thanks for compiling this! I’m sure I’ll enjoy reading it again, especially now that it’s in pdf form.
I too echo everyone’s concern for the protection of your work. John Chow released a free ebook way back. I think all he asked was to keep his links and attribution intact. Not sure how he enforces that… you may want to do the same.
But yes, I also admire your relaxed attitude about the whole thing… very zen.
[...] if you have one already, you owe it to yourself to read Skellie’s free eBook, The Simple Web. Here’s Skellie: As bloggers and webmasters, we want most or all of these things: more visitors, more subscribers, [...]
Nice job Skellie - I’ll be blogging this and recommending it to my Search Engine College students. BTW - to get around the copyright issues, you should issue this under a Creative Commons license.
Thanks Skellie .. will download when I finish Today’s shift … I am new reader here, and really moved by the dept of posts, so an Ebook should have something more in it… pretty sure about it..
Hi Skellie,
Congratulations!
I think the e-book is nice. It does not matter that you have presented the material before. The way it is organized and published in your e-book is useful, also for a reader of your blog for some time. :-)
Hello Skellie, I have been waiting for your e-book. Now I can bring your writings on the pda everywhere. Thanks a lot.
[...] The Simple Web, Skellie, 27 pages [...]
Skellie,
This is THE BEST! I’m so glad I subscribed to your feed. This was just the gift I needed in my inbox this morning, so I could relax, stop worrying, and focus on some simple actions to take that will help me do more with and get more from my blog. Thank you so much!
Cheers,
filmfangirl
Skellie - this is very cool. I know I will benefit from reading this, and I’m sure my readers will too. :-)
Very nice!
I like the focus on effectiveness and simplicity.
I think a large part of success in life is about reducing friction, focusing on what’s important, and measuring against effectiveness.
I also like the focus on value delivered. I think success in today’s world is about delivering incremental streams of value.
Skellie, I was expecting such a book from you.
BTW why is this free?
Is this question answered in the book?
Probably you could make out an printed copy too.
I’m downloading it. Will get back to with more questions, so that you might get ready to make another book. ;-)
[...] Free eBook! The Simple Web: A Philosophy for Getting What You Want: (Thanks Skellie!) As bloggers and webmasters, we want most or all of these things: more visitors, more subscribers, more comments, more money, more inbound links, and more people saying good things about us. Our wants aren’t in question. It’s the how that gets us. It’s the how that has us reading a dozen blogs a day, trying to find the answer (or at least a little piece of it). [...]
Thank you Skellie. Good work-great price!
Please let us know when the book is out.
~ Another happy subscriber
[...] above question and answer are opening paragraphs in Skellie’s free, 27-page eBook version of a post series that appeared on Skelliewag in 2007. As bloggers and webmasters, we want [...]
Thanks Skellie! You are gold…
I just stumbled across your blog today and may I say what a great welcome gift this was :)
I think you’ve done a great job here. Website owners do tend to get carried away with complexity.
I’m going to pass this on to all my new clients before they start planning their sites. Thanks.
That’s a big lump of gold, Skellie, thanks. I’ve already gone through and (I believe) improved the look of my site, following your easier-to-implement suggestions; now to try a few of the more long-term ones.
Thank you for this free-ebook “The Simple Web: A Philosophy for Getting What You Want”.
Why say i thank you? Simple… ;) With your thought about a simple web i get new ideas about a simple web in future.
Thanks for the free e-book.
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Thank you!
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