Alternatives
Products that do what I self-published a book does
Hey folks, I wanted to share my latest project, which is a book that I wrote and self-published. The book is called Behind the Ivy Curtain: A Data Driven Guide to Elite College Admissions, and the link is http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B013YFIQ30. Let me give you some backstory. I went to a fun high school but it was really easy and fun and I was a pretty big slacker. Around sophomore spring I decided I wanted to leave Florida, and the best way to do that was to get a scholarship to a good school. I had no idea how to do that so I spent a bunch of time reading…
- 1IM
Hello. This year I dived into UI/UX area and at the same time I work as a web developer. I sincerely love making good UI. But at my full time job it's not always possible due to different reasons =\ So I've been posting random UI/UX staff on Twitter, then I made a free book that had 50 tips (posted it here as well). I decided to finish this year by collecting everything I learned and here it is: https://akcium.gumroad.com/l/ui-ux-tips. This time it's a paid one. But, you can check ~20 pages of it, just go to…
2021
- 2SP
Hi HN, Over the past 6 months I've been working on a technical book focused on helping aspiring data scientists to get hands-on experience with cloud computing environments using the Python ecosystem. The book is targeted at readers already familiar with libraries such as Pandas and scikit-learn that are looking to build out a portfolio of applied projects. To author the book, I used the Leanpub platform to provide drafts of the text as I completed each chapter. To typeset the book, I used the R bookdown package by Yihui Xie to translate my markdown into a PDF format. I also used Google docs…
2020
- 3IW
Hey everyone! After two long years of writing along side my co-author, we have finally released the book: Tragic Design. It's about the true impact of bad design and how to fix it. We felt there was a need to shed light on the discussion of Design Ethics by exploring the ways bad design can harm people and offering up solutions. When most of us think about bad design, we think the worst case is lost customers. This book explores the very real impact it has: physical harm, emotional harm, and more. We are excited to have John Maeda writing the Foreword to the book, who has been a long…
2017
- 4
One funny & one amazing story on college admissions
2015
- 5MW
This was more of a sandbox to play with Raphael and Flot than anything else but I think there are some interesting statistics in there. It'd be awesome to do this over time but I really don't have the spare time required.
2011 · burntbrunch.github.com
- 6SA
I am aged 11 and founder of https://sprout9.net/ a platform for students to find great tutors. Please forgive me if I get this wrong and post it incorrectly. I would like fellow hackers to give me some constructive feedback on my MVP please. Ideas and suggestions as how I can improve my version 1.0 and how I can get the word out so I can help many students as possible. Thanks alot! Azaan
2021
- 7IJ
2015 · magetdd.com
- 85A
Hey everyone! I wanted to share a project that I've been working on the last few days that I finally finished last night: https://50books.org This is a simple site designed to track your reading list into 2015. My personal goal is to read 50 books this year, and I wanted to hold myself accountable. Major sites like Goodreads are great, but were too much of a social network for my personal taste; on the other hand, using a text file (which was my 2014 solution) was too difficult to track and share. I built https://50books.org using Sinatra, sqlite3 (via datamapper), and…
2015
- 9IP
To be specific, the content is generated by a GPT-2 based model. https://amzn.to/2TCc0v2 Let me know if you have any questions :-)
2020
- 10TB
Hello everyone, I have always loved coding and in the couple I was thinking of making an open source project and it turned out to be awesome I hope you guys like it. I present Explore Singapore which I created as an open-source intelligence engine to execute retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) on Singapore's public policy documents and legal statutes and historical archives. The objective required building a domain-specific search engine which enables LLM systems to decrease errors by using government documents as their exclusive information source. What my Project does :- basically it…
Feb 2026 · github.com
- 11IM
My niche is LSAT prep. I write books of explanations to LSAT practice tests. It's a pretty big industry, as people will pay a lot to improve their odds of law school admissions. I realized that, with my books, I have ~400,000 words of quality content that people search for. Lots of long tail searches for individual LSAT questions. So I made a site of free explanations for the most recent LSAT: http://lsathacks.com/ Took about a week to write them and put them up. If it goes well, I'll release my other explanations. Hope to make this a hub for LSAT study. If it's well received,…
2013
- 12IM
Hi HN! Writing has been a big part of my life for the last few years. It's helped me make sense of the world around me through journaling, and my blog and technical books have made wonders for my career as an engineer. Something I've always been missing is an online community where I can practice my skills and learn from other aspiring writers. I built Tavern, hoping to solve my own problem. Its main concept is that every Monday everyone in the app gets asked the same writing prompt and you have seven days to submit your answer. You can look at what others have posted, but only after you've…
2023 · writerstavern.io
- 13MB
Hi, I spent the last year and a half writing a book on Docker and microservices, which was finally released on O'Reilly this week. "Using Docker: Developing and Deploying Software with Containers" takes a holistic approach, showing how containers can be used as the central artifact in a modern software development workflow. If anyone has any q's or feedback, please feel free to comment below. The book is available at: http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920035671.do (use code AUTHD for a discount)…
2016
- 14SA
Over the past three months, I’ve been working with my dad on this app as a way to learn Cursor, shadcn/ui, and Next.js. I’m currently studying UX design at the University of Michigan, and I’ve been really impressed by how much vibe-coding tools have advanced over the last six months. This work journal includes private AI-generated insights with scheduled summaries that can be shared with your team or manager. You can also choose to make a summary public—like I’ve done here for my work on this web app: https://www.workjourney.ai/summary/mkblt2zt-hn2kdbus If anyone has…
Jan 2026 · workjourney.ai
- 15GA
hi, TLDR: I’m a programmer/solopreneur who got into online marketing, built a marketplace website, and just finished a book about online marketing that’ll appeal to programmers and other technical types. Now I want to recruit early readers to review it (good or bad–as your please) on Amazon. Any takers (non-binding, of course), contact me here: https://www.jackkinsella.ie/customer_support_requests/new Long Version: Six years ago, I programmed a web app, but it didn’t get much traffic, so I started researching everything on online marketing. I thought the best way to…
2016
- 16IM
Hi there! I've been working with data in one form or another, professionally, for about 5 years. I've been thinking about my own personal data and how it's used for at least twice that long. I've been sort of building something in my head for a while that solves my own problem and, in the beginning of this year, I found the opportunity to spend some time building it out. I'll leave the detailed explanation to the blog post but, in short, I built what amounts to an API crawler combined with a data processor to help you download your personal data from 3rd party services and work with it using…
2024 · joshcanhelp.com
- 17IW
Hey HN! Recently published a book developing new frameworks of meaning and value informed by our most advanced cosmology and physics. It makes the argument for the necessity of spiritual revolution in order to free the abundance trapped in the world, a reimagination that interlinks the spiritual project to systemic reformation. The inspiration for the text draws from my history of social impact work and the frustrations and lessons learned along the way. If it's of interest you can learn more/read it/download it in a variety of formats for free at https://singletruth.org.
2022
- 18IW
Just about a year ago, the concept for a sci-fi book popped into my head. I instantly knew I have to see it through despite not having any writing experience (and a pretty demanding job). Over 2025, I attended writer circles, improved my writing, and structured the story. Here is the first chapter. I hope you enjoy it :)
Jan 2026 · docs.google.com
- 19IM
One week ago, I launched a new directory, which is a curated list of useful and cool Mac apps and tools that are not available on the app store. Initially, I wasn't sure if it was a good idea, but I managed to create it in just one day. I started promoting it on Twitter and some communities, and although I got some views, I didn't make any sales. Then the next day, I wrote a post on a subreddit related to Mac apps about the directory I launched. People loved it so much, and I got 39k views on that post, leading to around 2.5k visitors on my site. Thanks to this exposure, I made my first 4…
2024 · mactools.pro
- 20IW
Hey HN, I wrote a short book about the fundamental aspects of Clojure. The target audience is programmers with at least minimal experience who want to learn how to express solutions in Clojure (and perhaps in LISP, generally). If the price is a bit too steep for you, send me an email (address in bio), and I'll provide a discount coupon. If you can't afford it all, and believe the material may help you for studying or interview preparations, I can send you a free copy.
2025 · leanpub.com
- 21WW
Over three months ago, I posted my book on HN and got tremendous +ve reponse. I am happy to inform that I have published the book to leanpub as per the comments I got on HN itself! It is pay as you go model, and the minimum is $0 because I wanted to contribute back to the FOSS Community
2016
- 22IB
I've been frustrated by so many blogging platforms. Last I used Ghost. I thought it was expensive and I hated that www I had to prefix on custom domain. So, I built https://lykhari.com just for myself and then opened for public. If you want something simple do try. It became profitable and hence self sustaining!
2025 · lykhari.com
- 23EE
Hey, guys and girls :) Please notice, that my intention is not to advertise my project here, but to ask for your advice. Long story short: we've noticed that it's very hard to "sum-up" any idea on one page and share it without using a blogging platform. Let's say you want to collect and present your point of view on "IA reaserch". You can write a blogpost or use social media to share your opinion (that would reach limited amount of people though). We really missed a tool that allows you to embed a lot of different resources on one page and than to share it with one link. This way you can…
2013
- 24SF
Hey everyone! I know that a lot of people want to make more time for reading in their lives, but don't always have the time to do so. So I've created Summrize, an online platform for reading FREE non-fiction book summaries. For each book, I've condensed the most important concepts, quotes, actionable insights, frameworks and case studies, and presented them in a beautiful format. You can save the snippets that resonate the most with you, and share them on other platforms too! We know there exist other similar platforms (Blinkist, Shortform), but my goal with Summrize is to make access to the…
2024 · summrize.com
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