Letting go of the words
"Learn how to have great conversations through your site or app. Meet your business goals while satisfying your site visitors' needs. Learn how to create useful and usable content from the master - Ginny Redish. Ginny's easy-to-read style will teach you how to plan, organize, write, design, and test your content"
Stats for nerds
6recommend
6mentions
6people
2008–2022years
100% recommend
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Letting Go of the Words by Janice "Ginny" Reddish
https://www.amazon.com/Letting-Go-Words-Interactive-Technolo...
It is practical guidance that is durable over time. The book is exemplary of the advice on the pages. Plain language FTW!
- If you're looking for good/useful/worthwhile books to read, I would suggest considering UI/UX as well as technical writing topics - a couple personal recommendations:
* Don't Make Me Think! (UI/UX)
* Forms That Work (UI/UX)
* Letting Go of the Words (interface writing / UI/UX)
* Developing Quality Technical Information: A Handbook for Writers and Editors (technical writing)
- I was in a similar position 4 years ago, before my first startup.
On reflection, the books I got the most out of that actually shaped my behaviour are...
THE PERSONAL MBA, JOSH KAUFMAN
Was blown away by this. Couldn't believe how much stuff I didn't know about. It covers everything you've asked about and more...
It's also written a bit like a Software Patterns/Recipes book, which I love.
I've read the MBA book about 5 times.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Personal-MBA-World-Class-Business-Ed...
PITCH ANYTHING, OREN KLAFF
You'll hate reading it. It will make you cringe. It's uncomfortable.
But it changed my attitude to business, my products, and deals a LOT. Which is REALLY important.
Applying some of these techniques had amazing results in any dealings with 3rd parties (sales, partnerships, deals). That's because I'm a softie engineer, not a battle-hardened business man. I still read this before attending any significant meeting.
http://www.amazon.com/Pitch-Anything-Innovative-Presenting-P...
HOW TO BE THE LUCKIEST PERSON ALIVE, JAMES ALTUCHER
Covers everything in one way or another...
I keep coming back to the epic rule list in this book. I keep ignoring them in business, then learning the hard way that the list is right. He shares his failures and successes in a humerous way.
It's a real down-to-earth, eye opening book.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1461120705
OTHER
I'm reading Lean Startup, and have read Made to Stick, Letting go of the words, Ignore Everybody, Spin Selling, and tons more. All good books, but the 3 above were the biggest impact for me on all levels.
- (Caveat: As a hacker with an interest/need to learn marketing)
22 Immutable Laws of Marketing - just the best overview for how to get out there (in the words of Steve Jobs, "it's a noisy world, the best you can ever hope or ask for is that just one single idea about what you do can be remembered"). Also might as well throw Positioning in there as its compliment.
Made to Stick - how to encapsulate a single idea, and hook it in people's minds
Founders at Work - a huge boost of motivation and some interesting individual strategies that people used, but light on useful tactics or broad strategies that you can action.
Not on the list, but I really highly recommend, is "Letting Go of the Words: Writing Web Content that Works" - an absolute bible for how to get your words on a website to be read and remembered.
- Hmmm - I don't know that I have a particular style that I like; I'm more of a, "When I see what I {like | dislike}, I know it immediately." That probably doesn't help.
For our site, we went with the fixed width layout and I'm happy. For more link-driven/based sites (a la reddit/hn/digg), I prefer a full screen layout I suppose since I don't want to scroll forever.
For landing pages, I wish I could tell you anything useful. What I've found, after several years of trying to predict what would be successful, is that I suck at predicting what people will like. Test, test, test...
I suppose to me it all boils down to one thing: usability. Gorgeous designs fail if they aren't usable and crappy designed sites who fit a need thrive. Now I'm just rambling...
Here's a couple of book recomendations:
* "Letting Go of the Words: Writing Web Content that Works" by Janie Redish - fantastic book. It isn't about design/layout per se but it is, see?
* "Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability" by Steve Krug
- How about these:
Letting Go of the Words: Writing Web Content that Works: http://tinyurl.com/3ftxva
Founders at Work:http://tinyurl.com/4cytwa
(links are to amazon.com)
