Give It Your Best First Shot (even when you *know* you're going to have to scrap it later!)

(Reading time: 2 – 3 minutes)

I’m rocking out to some Crystal Method from Plastic Compilation ‘01 while discussing eBook formats with a partner. Big Beat. Great stuff. Harmonica licks straight from Zep’s fourth album (When the Levee Breaks). If you like electronic music and classic rock, check it out.

Anyway, my colleague Roberto Koci and I are working on an eBook format…

We’re having trouble deciding between A4 and 6×9, which won’t look all that different on screen, but will make a difference if we finish the whole book (we’re committed to first chapter only for now, to measure interest) and decide we want a dead tree version. Compounding the design problem is that eBooks are best laid out in landscape rather than portrait mode. Designing a single book that can be presented in either landscape or portrait mode is a problem I don’t think has been solved (I’d love to be wrong here).

No matter which design we go with at first:

we’ll do our best to make it absolutely perfect…
because we know we’ll most likely have to scrap it completely!

Here’s the deal: our goal is to sell a lot of ebook and design services, but we don’t yet know what will be a best-selling design. Of course, we want something as compelling as O’Reilly’s Nutshell or Head First or Dover’s Classic Reprints, but getting a grand slam first time at bat takes as much luck as anything else.

So we’re planning to be lucky. We’ll obsess over the first release to make it as perfect as possible, at the same time we’re willing to completely scrap our design if a different design works better.

How are you planning to be lucky?