Software that Sells: A Practical Guide to Developing and Marketing Your Software Project

Do you know why you don’t see a lot of negative reviews of anything in magazines?  The answer is simple.  Why print something that is negative when you can just as easily print something positive?  Well, the beauty of a blog is that I can post something negative if the item deserves it.  This is one of those cases.

I just finished reading Software That Sells: A Practical Guide to Developing and Marketing Your Software Project.  Actually, there were several sections that I couldn’t force myself to read.

The information contained in the book is trivial, obvious, and sufficiently non-specific so as to be non-actionable.  In other words, this is stuff that nearly everyone knows.  You could buy someone in your area a drink at the local tavern or pub and get a more coherent delivery of useful information.

While I do realize that there are some folks who are very early in their careers who might be able to find value in the broad coverage of topics, most people will find the coverage too trivial.  What is worse, in my opinion, is that the author doesn’t provide the reader good references to go find more information.  There are chapters on marketing and sales, but no references to other books that cover these topics in detail.

So, if you’re trying to figure out how to start a Micro-ISV (small software product company) you may want to keep looking for a good book.  (Micro-ISV by Bob Walsh is on my reading list still.  I’ll let everyone know what I think of it.)