From Program to Product: Turning Your Code into a Saleable Product (Expert's Voice) (Paperback)

~ (Author)
Key Phrases: wedding management, product structure, custom modifications, Bea Millionaire, The Sleep Advisor, Microsoft Access (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Many would–be software entrepreneurs with expertise in many fields attempt to turn a homegrown application—one developed for use in their own business or profession—into a commercial product. Lack of knowledge, experience, or skills often prevents the idea from ever taking shape, let alone achieving its potential. Entering a new field to start a business leaves many developers unprepared and not even fully aware it’s something they know so little about. They will also often have a job that conflicts with the time commitment required to market the program well enough for it to become a complete success.

Do you have an idea for a commercially viable software product or already have a product with the potential for dream financial rewards? Would–be software entrepreneurs must consult From Program to Product: Turning Your Code into a Saleable Product, written by software developer and entrepreneur Rocky Smolin, for an indispensable roadmap to creating a commercially successful software product. Smolin shares insights from his own experience and covers topics you may never anticipate but are vital to success, like pricing, documentation, licensing, and tracking customers.

What you’ll learn

Rocky Smolin walks you through the essentials of turning a development project into a product, including

• How to determine the best method of licensing your work and how to enforce that license
• Choosing the appropriate price, calculating potential revenue, and selecting payment methods, including leasing and support options
• Selling products direct to the customer, through retailers, and via other sales channels
• Managing technical considerations within your development project, including logos, splash screens, output, error trapping and reporting, and localization/internationalization
• Creating attractive packaging and developing an appearance for the product, including within the application itself, supporting documentation, and in external components
• Handling marketing, sales, and administration—learn product differentiation, lead generation, prospect tracking, and customer follow–ups

Who is this book for?

From Program to Product: Turning Your Code into a Saleable Product is for both the “lone ranger” programmer and small developer teams of 2—3 persons each. If you have a program developed for your own use and would like to commercialize it, but are stymied at the many issues to consider and resolve before selling to the public, you’ll find your answers here. Additionally, if you’re a programmer at the moment with an idea or a desire to try to create a commercially viable application, and you’re motivated by the dream of cash flow, this book is a vital roadmap.

About the Author

Rocky Smolin began programming computers at the age of 16 at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. He created and marketed his first commercial product in 1969 while an undergraduate at Bradley University, and received an MBA from San Diego State in 1974.

In the 1980s Smolin co-authored PMS-II, the first popular critical path Project Management System for PCs. He went on to develop and market E-Z-MRP(r) - an entry level manufacturing system for small manufacturers and The Sleep Advisor(r) - a consumer-targeted expert system to identify and remedy sleep problems.

Smolin is the author of How To Buy The Right Small Business Computer System (Wiley, 1981) and co-author of Production and Management Systems for Business (Prentice-Hall, 1990)

Today, Smolin's company, Beach Access Software (www.bchacc.com), provides custom databases and applications for a wide variety of businesses. He lives in Del Mar California with his wife of 30 years and two children.

Product Details

• Paperback: 201 pages
• Publisher: Apress (March 21, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1590599713
• ISBN-13: 978-1590599716
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #615,588 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars For the millions of programmers out there, this book speaks to YOU!, May 10, 2008

By	Steven W. Erbach (Neenah, WI United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Mr. Smolin's book isn't for the Sergei Brins or the Linus Torvalds of the world. If you think that the author is going to reveal the most sure-fire software development environment that will have the greatest chance of acceptance in the marketplace, you'd better look elsewhere. Actually, there IS no elsewhere because there is no such source that can deliver on such a claim.

Those that think that Mr. Smolin should have shown Java or C# examples in his book are entirely missing the point: this is a book that shows EVERY factor a developer should consider BEFORE releasing his much-beloved software to an unsuspecting public. The development environment particulars have no bearing on the business of selling software. Do you really believe that a jewelry shop looking for something to help keep track of all the parts needed for jewelry design really cares one way or another whether your program is written in C# or Cobol?

If you're looking at this book for guarantees, you won't find any. Software writing is a business, and anyone that indulges in wishful thinking is lost right from the start. You may think some feature you've written is just the coolest thing you've ever seen, but it may be the one thing that annoys a potential buyer so much that he'll pass your cool program right by without a second thought.

The 67 pages of interviews take up about a third of this book. I was charmed, informed, and bemused by them all at once. The interviews in this book read like direct transcripts from the tapes. There seems to be little editing; nothing, say, like "Ten Questions for Lotta Miles" in People Magazine. But the flow is very natural and Mr. Smolin makes an engaging interviewer. I think he felt it important to devote such a large portion of his book to the interviews because it serves up a huge dollop of authenticity.

None of his interview subjects have household names. Sure, an interview with the founders of Google or with Bill Gates would certainly have increased the general public's interest in this book and helped the sales considerably. But what do you really expect from an interview with a top flight software developer that hasn't been seen before? The people that are likely to buy this book will appreciate interviews with people that made a go of it by selling small, targeted software products to limited markets. That's going to make a heck of a lot more sense to developers looking to target small markets with their software products!

The "secret" to success in software development is the same as it is in every business: work hard, pay attention to what your customers say, get the details right, work hard, keep promoting your product, make sure to have enough capital at the start and keep your fiscal house in order, keep up with your taxes, work continuously on improvements to your product, work hard, watch your competitors like a hawk, don't let yourself become discouraged, keep on top of your billing, don't borrow too much money, and work hard.

Mr. Smolin's book covers them all. If you don't have a head for business, this book isn't really going to give you one. Well, NO book is going to give you that, all the thousands of business-oriented book titles to the contrary.

But what this book DOES give you is -- believe it or not -- a step-by-step guide to bringing your software to market. There isn't anything magical here. No, let me re-phrase that: there IS magic here, magic in the down-to-earth principles that Mr. Smolin writes about so clearly. Yes, you've heard them a hundred times, but have you drawn them to your bosom and made them a part of your everyday life?

If you want to know what this book is really all about, take these words from the section in Chapter 1 called "What This Book is Really About", contemplate them, absorb them, and realize that there really is no other way:

"This book is really about getting to your first day in business.

"It is about taking that raw idea you have for a program and creating a saleable product. And setting up the support system you need to make your business hum.

"If you're going to do this thing, you have to be ready for some tough days. But nothing worthwhile ever comes easy. Sometimes what it really takes is stupid, blind obstinacy -- the drive to keep going, stubbornly solving one problem at a time until you get the brass ring."

The magic comes from what Judith Martin calls "the alchemy of the spirit": the realization that you can, indeed, make a go of it if you just keep at it with "stupid, blind obstinacy", keeping your eye on the road ahead. Why should success involve anything more than what other successful people have done to become successful?

Here, in brief, are most of the steps that Mr. Smolin covers:

1) Define your product
2) Analyze it and create a system specification
3) Build in security
4) Design
5) Make program navigation consistent and smooth
6) Choose a platform
7) Decide whether to write it yourself or hire someone
8) Consider deeply the point-of-view of the user
9) Test
9a) Test some more
9b) Keep testing
10) Pricing and pricing options
11) Business considerations that lead to success
12) Financing options
13) Legal issues: copyright and ownership
14) The business type: sole propietor, corporation, etc.
15) Insurance
16) Software piracy
17) When to stop programming and sell the product
18) Writing a manual
19) Packaging
20) Going one step at a time

Some of these things are treated more-or-less in the form of to-do items on a checklist, such as insurance. You won't find a list of the best software product insurers in the land in this book...it's just another one of those things you must deal with if you're actually going to make a business out of your brilliant software.

Smolin's style has a light touch, particularly in the interviews. If you're somebody with little to no sense of humor, then this isn't the book for you. If you believe that business topics should be treated with seriousness and stodgy attention to every last stinking detail, then this isn't the book for you.

Not that it's a laugh riot, mind you. Smolin slips in the persiflage at the right moments, I think, to keep you mindful of the fact that business can be fun and that a bit of humor helps you overcome the self-doubt that can come with the inevitable business setbacks.

In "From Program to Product", Smolin treats the building of a software business, with all the attendant worries, obstacles, and triumphs, as if he's giving you advice as a very close friend who really wants you to do well. I truly wish that I'd had this book when I started my own software business. I'd still be in it ... and thriving.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Learn from the mistakes of others..., April 13, 2008

By	Thomas Duff "Duffbert" (Portland, OR United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Most programmers at some point think they have something they've built that, with a little luck and hard work, can be the next Visicalc of the computer world. In reality, there's a lot more that goes into it than that. Rocky Smolin talks about that process in the book From Program to Product: Turning Your Code into a Saleable Product. You'll know some of the stuff already, but it will keep you from making some other mistakes that could keep you from getting all you could from your brainchild.

Contents:
Who Wants To Be a Millionaire?; So What Do I Do First?; The Program - From The Outside Looking In; The Price of Success; Legal Matters; Some Financial Considerations; Sample Software Licence; Index

Smolin has a couple of different product offerings that he's taken from idea to saleable product. He uses that experience to talk about the perils, pitfalls, and payoffs of selling your work to others. Much of what he covers is how to take a step back and actually plan the product. This ideally should be done *before* you build it, but you may already have the program built and working for the original intended purpose. He shows how it's best to have that architecture and analysis done before you actually release it, as it will give you the foundation you need to create something that is solid and doesn't start breaking down under the strain of multiple customers. Probably the best information is on licensing and other legal issues (like escrow). We may be good at slinging code, but we're not all that hot at making sure the legal groundwork is done. Without it, you may find yourself giving up all your hard-earned profits to lawyers and disgruntled customers. Worth reading and considering before you make the mistakes.

There are a couple of nits I have with the book itself. Smolin is mainly an Access/SQL Server developer, so pretty much all the examples, interviews, and colleages mentioned in the book hail from that software niche. That doesn't make the core information any less valuable, but it does tend to get a bit old having all the examples showing the same type of software technology. Also, I'm not sure the interviews at the end of each chapter work as well as they could. They are nearly verbatim transcripts, so you have too many sequences of answers consisting of single word "yes" and "no"s. I realize that gives you the realism of the interview, but it also reads in an awkward fashion. I think I would have chosen clean up that area a bit more.

This book is worth reading if you plan to go down the independent software vendor route. It'll save you the hassles of repeating the common mistakes that nearly everyone ends up making.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent book for anyone looking to sell their own software., October 28, 2008

By	Chris Long - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This is a great book that I highly recommend for anyone considering creating and selling their own software. While you do not need to be programmer to read this book, it is assumed that you will be working with one--and programmers will get the most out of this book.

Rocky Smolin covers a lot of important, but easy to overlook, topics throughout the entire development process. Some of these topics are avoiding solving problems that don't exist, or not maintaining focus on what your program does, and does best. These are issues that need careful consideration at the beginning of the project and should not be taken lightly.

He also includes interviews with developers who have already gone through a lot of the growing pains associated with developing software for sale. These really bring to light issues that you may have never considered, but are valid nonetheless. For example, how the interviewee handles customer support and pricing models. Very useful stuff.

Some things you should not expect:
1) How to program - This book provides considerations for how your program should be designed, but not what and how to code it. That is not the purpose of the book.
2) Expert legal advice - Mr. Smolin is not an attorney and only addresses some legal considerations for writing and selling your software. Need legal advice? Hire a lawyer.

I like how Mr. Smolin doesn't try and give you a 900 page book filled with information you don't need. It's kept short, with good information, and to the point. I don't have time to read yet another super-thick book--I'm too busy programming!

I originally checked this book out from my local library, but have since purchased it from Amazon for my own collection. I really enjoy book and it continues to be a reference as I develop software for distribution.