Hi everyone!

Today I’ve got two things to announce! First up, copies of my book “Antifragile Software: Building Adaptable Software with Microservices” has been reduced to a minimum price of $10, in-line with the current amount of the book that’s been written.

I’d like to say a huge thanks to everyone for buying this book! At these early stages your purchases don’t just help fund the writing of the book, they also show a real belief in the value of what the book might convey once it’s written. That’s a level of faith in me as the author that is truly humbling, and I’m very grateful. 

However, in terms of pricing I think I initially made a mistake and so have changed things up a bit. 

One thing that I’ve struggled a little with myself is charging full face value for a book that is under development. The wonderful Ralf Westphal has pointed out, quite rightly, that this can be a cause for concern for those that want to buy the book and feel that full-price for a book that’s not more than a third finished just yet is a risk too far. I’m inclined to agree, but seeing as already over 100 books had been sold at various prices I couldn’t see a way of easily rectifying the problem.

At the same time, I’ve been getting prepared to donate 20% of net book income to charity. The charity I’ve selected is YoungMinds.org.uk. This is a charity dedicated to improving the mental health and wellbeing of today’s youth, a subject very much close to my heart.

Ralf pointed out that there might be a solution to the pricing problem in the association with this charity, and so here’s what I’m proposing to do along the lines of his original idea.

So I’ve lowered the price of the book inline with the amount completed with the opportunity of course for folks to up the amount they pay if they think it is worth more. 

At the same time for those that have already bought the book I’m going to calculate the paid money difference from $10 to what they paid and then donate that to  YoungMinds.org.uk, announcing the total on the homepage. Going forward 20% of the net income will be donated to the charity, and I’ll keep a running tally on the book’s homepage.

Finally I’m going to gradually increase the price of the book as it is completed, likely in $5 steps, increasing the amount being donated to the charity as the book is completed. 

I hope everyone agrees this is a good way forward. I’m really stoked to be helping a great charity, and at the same time asking a fair price for the book as I’m writing it.

Thanks so much for everyone’s faith in this book so far and I am looking forward to turning that faith into a great book on software development as I continue to write it over the summer.

Cheers!
Russ
(from Heathrow Terminal 1, bound to Ace! Conference in Poland) 

There are going to be code samples to accompany the "Antifragile Software: Building Adaptable Software with Microservices" book, LOTS of code samples (especially accompanying Book 3!). To organise the code and make it freely available I've created a new one-stop Antifragile Software GitHub organisation that will house each of the repos of code associates with the book.

Right now, it's empty but it's worth a watch as code will be appearing there soon.

The aim is to license the code using the Apache Software Licence as the code is added so that everyone can use it with as little restrictions as possible. After all, this is learning material!

In addition, the hope is that others might extend the ideas into new implementations and repositories of their own, and perhaps ask for those repos to be formally associated with this GitHub org. As long as the licenses are open then I'd be very keen to hear in time from others who would like to contribute their own samples to this reference organisation.

I've just published a new version of "Antifragile Software: Building Adaptable Software with Microservices". This book is incredibly close to my heart as it is beginning to capture not only how I build software systems but also how I approach the thinking process of architecture and design; this book is going to go philosophical as well as practical and I'm proud of that! 

That said, the book has been through quite a journey but the mission for the book (and it's sub-books) is now clear and so a huge thanks is in order to those that are early-adopters! The book is really beginning now to take shape not least in response to my work with Skills Matter on the first Microservice conference, µCon, and the announcement of my public courses that accompany this book too.

As such expect to see a lot more activity on the book than there has been in recent months (I apologies for that!). The ideas are now in place, the table of contents and flow I believe is a final one and I'm off and running with the writing.

Hopefully going forward the only thing I'll need to apologise for is the fact that readers are being asked to update their copy of the book too frequently!

I love books, it's why I keep trying to write them...

Here is a list of books that I recommend for various topics.

Here's what I recommend (so far):

• "Antifragile" by Naseem Nicholas Taleb
• "Antifragile Software" by me
• Simon Brown's "Software Architecture for Developers"

Here's what I recommend (so far):

• "The Art of Travel" by Alain de Botton

Here's what I recommend (so far):

• "The Consolations of Philosophy" by Alain de Botton

I'll be extending this list out as I journey through life. If you have recommendations of great books then please don't hesitate to either leave a comment here or ping me on twitter, @russmiles