> Wow. I'm into screencasts, but I'd never heard of you!
We launched a month ago. :)
> I'm curious about the pre-order screencasts. How much planning did you do beforehand?
There is quite a bit of planning behind it:
* Only authors that we're familiar with and trust can do courses (as opposed to authoring a single screencast).
* Each author needs to be specific about what material they're going to cover in each lesson.
* Half of the royalties from preorders are withheld until the course is completed. This motivates authors to finish what they started, as well as giving us funds to handle emergency situations.
* We only release a course after work on the second lesson has been started. This helps us evaluate how long the first lesson took a given author. If it took too long, we won't start a course, but simply convert that lesson into a single screencast.
* We aim for a release of at least one lesson per month, give or take.
* When it comes to TDD and Python, these courses have been adopted/translated from our Italian catalog, where the fourth and fifth lessons, respectively, are being created at the moment. The Italian version of the Python course should be finished by the end of June, then it will be a matter of translation.
> Are you set up to do bulk refunds if you don't finish a series in a reasonable amount of time?
Creating a whole course takes a lot of time and work. It's akin to writing a large technical book. For this reason, we may disagree on the definition of "reasonable amount of time". What's sure is that if after a year, a course has yet to be completed, and a customer complains, we'll issue a partial refund or some form of "store credit".
Ultimately, we sincerely care about providing really good customer care, and strive to ensure that all of our courses end up being completed.
We launched a month ago. :)
> I'm curious about the pre-order screencasts. How much planning did you do beforehand?
There is quite a bit of planning behind it:
* Only authors that we're familiar with and trust can do courses (as opposed to authoring a single screencast).
* Each author needs to be specific about what material they're going to cover in each lesson.
* Half of the royalties from preorders are withheld until the course is completed. This motivates authors to finish what they started, as well as giving us funds to handle emergency situations.
* We only release a course after work on the second lesson has been started. This helps us evaluate how long the first lesson took a given author. If it took too long, we won't start a course, but simply convert that lesson into a single screencast.
* We aim for a release of at least one lesson per month, give or take.
* When it comes to TDD and Python, these courses have been adopted/translated from our Italian catalog, where the fourth and fifth lessons, respectively, are being created at the moment. The Italian version of the Python course should be finished by the end of June, then it will be a matter of translation.
> Are you set up to do bulk refunds if you don't finish a series in a reasonable amount of time?
Creating a whole course takes a lot of time and work. It's akin to writing a large technical book. For this reason, we may disagree on the definition of "reasonable amount of time". What's sure is that if after a year, a course has yet to be completed, and a customer complains, we'll issue a partial refund or some form of "store credit".
Ultimately, we sincerely care about providing really good customer care, and strive to ensure that all of our courses end up being completed.