Just Fucking Ship

Two months ago I found out that Nathan Barry has a 24 hour product contest, in which he aimed to produce a real product, in the form of an email course, in 24 hours, from start to finish. It was really interesting following the process where he created a whole product, that earned a fair amount of money, in 24 hours, from scratch. Of course, it wasn’t from scratch, because he already has a couple of design products, but his process of making something in 24 hours seemed awesome.

One of the other people that I follow, and use their products, Amy Hoy, accepted the challenge and had her own product built in 24 hours. I bought both of the products, and although I’m not a designer, I’ll be using Nathan’s exercises for learning.

The thing I’m writing about here is Amy’s book, Just Fucking Ship, which is the sum of all her knowledge on shipping products fast. She takes us through a very convenient metaphor of creating a Thanksgiving dinner, planning for it ahead, and doing only the necessary things that you need to ship the product, or finish the dinner on time. Stripped to bare essentials, the final product (after 24 hours) didn’t have nice formatting, it wasn’t edited, and had no cover. But it was a product that had a price, and a place to buy it. It wasn’t perfect, but it was just enough. I’ve read the first version when it was out, and then the last (edited) one a few days ago. It’s a very short read and intended to be re-read every time you start creating something new. The updated version is much better, with nicer formatting, and although there is no kindle or epub format yet (I really love my kindle), the PDF is very readable on the kindle.

Amy’s language might scare off some of the purists, and it’s intended to. It’s really fun to read a book that is written just as someone would explain stuff to you in person, with real language, not overinflated purist nonsense. Go  buy the book, it’s only $19, and the price will probably increase in the future.