Ask HN: Any interest in a CakePHP book?

3 pointsrbchv13y ago2 comments

I've recently read about several people who have been successful in selling their ebooks. Following successful entrepreneur's advice, I'm looking for a topic I know well enough and that has a big enough target audience. I arrived at the idea of making a CakePHP book.

When I was learning CakePHP myself, I suffered because all the available books were old and the framework has changed sufficiently to make them useless as a learning tool. I've found the following pros and cons:

PROS:

- PHP remains one of the most used languages for the web, and CakePHP is one of the most popular PHP frameworks.

- All existing books are really outdated.

- It's a topic I know well, and know common questions people will have when learning it.

CONS:

- Ruby, Python, etc are hipper and probably what more people want to learn.

Would you as a developer be interested in a CakePHP ebook? Any feedback regarding the idea?

Thanks

2 comments

2 comments · 1 top-level

u2sonderzug13y ago· 1 in thread

I'm actually working on a CakePHP legacy app today and have experienced precisely what you are talking about (the lack of good material out there).

I am actually surprised at how CakePHP can be so popular, yet have so few books to support it.

Ruby and Python might be 'hipper' but with the numbers of people using PHP out there I am sure you would find demand would still be strong enough for something like this.

From a business/money making perspective - I'd assume that the market for Ruby, Python books is very crowded - but the competition doesn't seem strong at all for CakePHP.

u2sonderzug13y ago

Further more to this, how about an 'MVP' version of the book - write a chapter and see ifyou can get any interest in it and make a decision from there.

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