New Evernote Book: Evernote Essentials

Our Notes | 23 Jul 201023 Jul 10 | By Andrew Sinkov

78 comments

We’re excited to announce the release of Evernote Essentials, the first English-language Evernote handbook (e-handbook, technically). Huzzah!

This excellent Evernote overview was written by blogger, developer and avid tweeter, Brett Kelly. With Evernote Essentials, Brett has created a guide that shows new and experienced users alike the many ways to make the most out of Evernote. Each section comes full of easy to understand explanations, walkthroughs, tips, tricks, and ideas to help anyone become an Evernote ninja.

Brett sent us some early drafts, which impressed us so much that we hired him. Brett is now working on dramatically improving Evernote’s own documentation.

Evernote Essentials is not an official Evernote book. It is self-published by Brett. He owns all of the content.

A look inside

To give you a sense of what’s in the e-book, here are a few of the chapter headings from Evernote Essentials

Evernote Anatomy
Evernote Organization 101
Evernote Search:Seek and Ye Shall Find
Evernote, Email and You
Tagging for Superhumans
Evernote for Bloggers
Evernote for Programmers
Evernote for Foodies
Evernote as an Address Book
Evernote as a Task Manager

Get the book

Evernote Essentials is an e-book, available from the Evernote Trunk.

Format: PDF
Pages: 84
Evernote proficiency level: Any
Price: $25

Limited time discount

Brett is generously offering a 25% discount until August 8th. To get the discount, enter the coupon code “TRUNKLAUNCH” during checkout.

Tip: Evernote as e-book reader

As I sat reading Brett’s book in Evernote on my iPad, I realized “Hey, reading books in Evernote isn’t half bad.” Then later, when I was reading Brett’s book in Evernote on my iPhone, I realized “Hey, this whole Evernote sync thing makes reading e-books on different devices really easy.” It’s nice to share my internal monologue with the world.

Japanese books

As Evernote Podcast listeners may know, there have been seven Evernote book written in Japanese, many of them have become bestsellers. We have some catching up to do.

Paul in little old Africa

The comments about the price moved me to add mine but I think “David” and Jin Jin” sum it up very well. I haven’t read it but will download it after I finish this comment.
NOTHING is more valuable than our time. Brett had the initiative and passion to give his time. From the reviews, he has done a great job. The Evernote tool will save us plenty of time and frustration. So to use it efficiently from the start, without having to re-invent the wheel, and maximising its benefits will have long-term ongoing advantages.
If just one of the tips in Brett’s book saves me 20 minutes of time over the LIFETIME of my usage, it will have paid for itself.
A night out for a couple of pizzas could cost $25. I know which is more valuable to me. I don’t care how much Brett makes from this – the more the better. He chose a good niche and took a risk and I’m sure thousands will be grateful to him for writing it (and keeping it updated.
http://www.paraboli.co Devin

In terms of price, if he wants and believes that it is worth $25 per copy then good for him. I agree with everyone who says that he should be compensated for all his hard work. However I am of a different mindset on where this compensation should come from.

Evernote should be paying for this (or at least subsidizing it). I am a relativelly new user and see no value in upgrading to a premium account a this time. I am still trying to learn how to use the program and integrate it into my life. I am by no means a brand advocate for this product. I have however heard from numerous friends/pundits/app reviewers that it is a fantastic product. So I am going to invest the time to decide if Evernote is in fact worthwhile for me. I am learning slowly but surely how to use it and integrate it and am now on the hunt for the next step (becoming a power user).

The basic Evernote service is free and they have done a very good job of ensuring that the basic documentation is up to snuff in terms of what I expect from a free service. However if I am paying you for your service (igher bandwidth,additional users, additional file types and cutting in the support line is just not enough of an incentive (at least not at this point). However learning how to truly use Evernote to improve my life/work habits/organization would be.

This is crucial documentation that should be included in the platform support. Several people have suggested that this be included or subsidized to a certain degree by the Premium price. I whole heartedly agree. If it is good enough of a book to be promoted on their website and their service is good enough to be paid for then the crucial documentation on “how to become an Evernote Ninja” should be included.

This would overcome two major objections I have:

1) Is the book “really” worth $25? heck is it worth $0.99? I don’t know. All I have is other peoples suggestions on it. Because its intellectual property I can’t review the actual content for writing quality, for content (what do I already know vs what I don’t), relevancy (is this all about using Evernote as a stay at home mom, is it about using it as a student, etc) I would feel incredibly burned if I paid $25 (the price of deep subject matter text book e-book on amazon.com) and found out this was a dummies guide to the basics covering everything that could have been discovered if I had googled just a bit more.

2) Is Evernote premium “really” worth $45? what if I end up finding out I don’t need all that functionality. What if its just too darn complicated? And wait… I can “cut in the line” for support at premium levels??? Does that mean I am going to have to be in a support line? Heck I don’t want to need any support for a product that is supposed to be a support structure for me. Am I really going to use all that additional functionality? Is this going to change my life or is it going to be another in a long line of bad tech purchase descisions like the Samsung “smart phone” I purchased in 2001 or the Sony Discman I purchased in 1995, relegated to the dust heap of broken promise and technology tears?

How about it Evernote its $5 a month for premium and $45 for a year. If you included the e-book at $5 more with a year long account I would upgrade tomorrow. And you can quote me on that (or bill me whichever you prefer) if you included 3 months at Premium for free with the $25 e-book purchase I might do that too.

Either way, I just bet your upgrade timing from free to premium would shorten considerably and you would have a whole new legion of Evernote Brand Advocates telling people to use it. (and able to explain why and how it changed their lives for the better)
- Will S
  
  What a bunch of sniveling.
  - DR Crunk
    
    Blah Blah Blah.. what-the-F-ever. Even at the $5/hr your time is probably worth, you just wasted $25 worth of time writing that useless snot-rant. Do you realize you can upgrade for a month for $5 and get all the premium benefits for whatever is in your account at the time… forever? So you could spend $5 (not $45) – and have Evernote index all your scanned .PDFs that won’t normally index with a free account. Downgrade again after a month. Do it again in 6 months if you need to. They don’t take stuff away once it’s in your account. Great company with a great community philosophy IMO. For me, $5/mo for what this app does is not even worth thinking about – it’s a total no-brainer. You’re probably wasting more money than that daily on your Bohemian Latte-Cappa-whatever from Starbucks – or whatever.
Elena

Don’t know what the fuss is about. People spend more for a haircut than what the asking price of this book is. This book was recommended by a professional writing coach. Information is valuable; time is money. The man put in the research and development. Actually cheap for the time and frustration it supposedly saves in my professional life. Happy to pay the price.
Richard Jones

I’m not a blogger, a foodie, or a programmer, and I am already happy with my contact and task management. That means that half the book is not going to interest me. I agree that the price is too high, but maybe if a sample was offered–a killer tip or two–it would make me see the value of buying the book. But buying a $25 ebook pig in a poke? No thanks.
Roger Davis

If an enterprising individual bought a copy at $25 then offered copies of it for $5 each, then according to Kips figures, that’s
6,000,000 * .005 * $5.00 = $150,000. That’s $150K for the me, I’m happy – and $25 for Brett
Simon

is the book good or not?
http://gitarre-spielen-lernen.com Gitarre-Lernen-Online

People, seriously. I don’t see where the problem is.

If you don’t want to (or can’t) spend 25 bucks on a book on productivity and have time to write a comment of >500 words (used MS Word’s word count, didn’t count myself), then this e-book surely isn’t for you (yet).

But that’s fine. Who knows who or where or in what situation you are. But then you may have the time to find out about the tips and techniques yourselves. Google for free tips and tutorials, fiddle around with Evernote and your skills will increase. Brett didn’t write the book as a member of the dev team. So maybe, theoretically, you could find out about the same things yourselves (but maybe it will take you ages).

But then there are people who are happy to pay 25 bucks to save time on research and trial+error in order to gain advanced knowledge with Evernote.

USD 25 is about average for an e-book (yes and for a haircut, as Elena said). If Brett wanted to rip you off, you’d have to pay more. But he could indeed offer a free excerpt so undecided people can have some kind of trial, I think Richard’s tip could really make sense for customers and Brett.

Is the book good? I don’t know yet and there is always a risk when buying something you can’t really return. But the Evernote team recommended it. They gave us Evernote – an awesome, hugely useful tool. So when they recommend us Brett’s book AND he now supports their team to “dramatically improve [...] Evernote’s own documentation” then Brett must have some skills. And then the e-book can’t be that bad.

’nuff said. I’ll happily buy. You decide what’s best for you but stop complaining about paying a (small) fee for productivity boosting knowledge for an awesome productivity tool that’s free and that doesn’t require a paid handbook in the first place (I understand that its content is for advanced users, and those are the ones who’ll be happy to pay to save them time).
Or try another software if you feel ripped off (maybe try “ON” for $63,99!)

Cheers
Dave (Gitarre-Lernen-Online)

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