Although software has become easier to build, launching and scaling new products and services remains difficult. Startups face daunting challenges entering the technology ecosystem, including stiff competition, copycats, and ineffective marketing channels. Teams launching new products must consider the advantages of “the network effect,” where a product or service’s value increases as more users engage with it. Apple, Google, Microsoft, and other tech giants utilize network effects, and most tech products incorporate them, whether they’re messaging apps, workplace collaboration tools, or marketplaces. Network effects provide a path for fledgling products to break through, attracting new users through viral growth and word of mouth.

Yet most entrepreneurs lack the vocabulary and context to describe them—much less understand the fundamental principles that drive the effect. What exactly are network effects? How do teams create and build them into their products? How do products compete in a market where every player has them? Andrew Chen draws on his experience and on interviews with the CEOs and founding teams of LinkedIn, Twitch, Zoom, Dropbox, Tinder, Uber, Airbnb, and Pinterest to offer unique insights in answering these questions. Chen also provides practical frameworks and principles that can be applied across products and industries. 

The Cold Start Problem reveals what makes winning networks thrive, why some startups fail to successfully scale, and, most crucially, why products that create and compete using the network effect are vitally important today.

This all-encompassing guidebook concentrates material from The Freddy Files (Updated Edition) and adds over 100 pages of new content exploring Help Wanted, Curse of Dreadbear, Fazbear Frights, the novel trilogy, and more!

Fans hungry for fresh Five Nights at Freddy's lore can sink their teeth into this massive guidebook packed with mythology, gameplay, and secrets to help unwind the twisted mysteries lurking behind the smiling face of Fazbear Entertainment. Delving into each game, players can map the animatronics' paths, learn how timed elements of the games work, and discover how to trigger unique events. Special sections throughout highlight FNAF fans' most talked-about topics, from the alternate endings in Help Wanted and Curse of Dreadbear, to the new technology introduced in Fazbear Frights, to the ways that Easter eggs, rare screens, and hidden content can shed light on some of the more elusive questions in the FNAF universe. A comprehensive animatronics inventory and reproduced content from the Fazbear Entertainment Archives complete this compendium, helping fans bring their theories straight to the source. All the evidence, along with every detail of the games, books, and more, is laid out for fans to explore in this one-of-a-kind guide to the warped world of Five Nights at Freddy's.

• Special Feature: Coronavirus Status Report: A special section provides up-to-the-minute information about the world’s largest public health crisis in at least a century. Statistical data and graphics across dozens of chapters show how the pandemic continues to affect the economy, work, family life, education, and culture.
• Special Feature: 20 Years in Afghanistan: The World Almanac provides history, data, and other context for the end of America's longest war and the future of Afghanistan and its people.
• 2021—Top 10 News Topics: The editors of The World Almanac list the top stories that held the world's attention in 2021.
• 2021—Year in Sports: Hundreds of pages of trivia and statistics that are essential for any sports fan, featuring complete coverage of the Olympic Games in Tokyo and the sports world's ongoing adaptations to the coronavirus pandemic, and much more.
• 2021—Year in Pictures: Striking full-color images from around the world in 2021, covering news, entertainment, science, and sports.
• 2021—Offbeat News Stories: The World Almanac editors found some of the strangest news stories of the year.
• World Almanac Editors' Picks: Time Capsule: The World Almanac lists the items that most came to symbolize the year 2021, from news and sports to pop culture.
• World Almanac Editors' Picks: Memorable Recent Sports Scandals: From a trash-can banging, sign-stealing scandal to the doping of horses and humans, World Almanac editors select some of the sports world's biggest black marks from the last 20 years.
• The World at a Glance: This annual feature of The World Almanac provides a quick look at the surprising stats and curious facts that define the changing world.
• The Biden Administration: Complete coverage of the presidential transition in Washington, DC, including cabinet-level leadership and the filling of other key administration roles.
• Other New Highlights: First data available from the 2020 Census, congressional appropriation and redistricting, and much more.

“It's sweeping, it's contextual, it's just very light on its feet....This book is perfect for people who are interested in the period but don't know where to start. Because the scale is sweeping but so well organized....Most importantly, it's really entertaining." —Brandon Taylor, author of Filthy Animals and Real Life

"Traveling easily through a thousand years of history, The Bright Ages reminds us society never collapsed when the Roman Empire fell, nor did the modern world did wake civilization from a thousand year hibernation. Thoroughly enjoyable, thoughtful and accessible; a fresh look on an age full of light, color, and illumination." —Mike Duncan, author of Hero of Two Worlds: The Marquis de Lafayette in the Age of Revolution

A lively and magisterial popular history that refutes common misperceptions of the European Middle Ages, showing the beauty and communion that flourished alongside the dark brutality—a brilliant reflection of humanity itself.

The word “medieval” conjures images of the “Dark Ages”—centuries of ignorance, superstition, stasis, savagery, and poor hygiene. But the myth of darkness obscures the truth; this was a remarkable period in human history. The Bright Ages recasts the European Middle Ages for what it was, capturing this 1,000-year era in all its complexity and fundamental humanity, bringing to light both its beauty and its horrors. 

The Bright Ages takes us through ten centuries and crisscrosses Europe and the Mediterranean, Asia and Africa, revisiting familiar people and events with new light cast upon them. We look with fresh eyes on the Fall of Rome, Charlemagne, the Vikings, the Crusades, and the Black Death, but also to the multi-religious experience of Iberia, the rise of Byzantium, and the genius of Hildegard and the power of queens. We begin under a blanket of golden stars constructed by an empress with Germanic, Roman, Spanish, Byzantine, and Christian bloodlines and end nearly 1,000 years later with the poet Dante—inspired by that same twinkling celestial canopy—writing an epic saga of heaven and hell that endures as a masterpiece of literature today.  

The Bright Ages reminds us just how permeable our manmade borders have always been and of what possible worlds the past has always made available to us. The Middle Ages may have been a world “lit only by fire” but it was one whose torches illuminated the magnificent rose windows of cathedrals, even as they stoked the pyres of accused heretics.  

The Bright Ages contains an 8-page color insert.

Despite her losses, Rin hasn’t given up on those for whom she has sacrificed so much—the people of the southern provinces and especially Tikany, the village that is her home. Returning to her roots, Rin meets difficult challenges—and unexpected opportunities. While her new allies in the Southern Coalition leadership are sly and untrustworthy, Rin quickly realizes that the real power in Nikan lies with the millions of common people who thirst for vengeance and revere her as a goddess of salvation. 

Backed by the masses and her Southern Army, Rin will use every weapon to defeat the Dragon Republic, the colonizing Hesperians, and all who threaten the shamanic arts and their practitioners. As her power and influence grows, though, will she be strong enough to resist the Phoenix’s intoxicating voice urging her to burn the world and everything in it? 

“Plenty of breathless one-more-chapter, stay-up-late suspense wrapped around a meaty and timely story... irresistible.”

   — Lee Child

To find a Russian mole in the White House, an FBI agent must question everything. . . and trust no one

To save America from a catastrophic betrayal, an idealistic young FBI agent must stop a Russian mole in the White House in this exhilarating political thriller reminiscent of the early novels of John Grisham and David Baldacci.

No one was more surprised than FBI Agent Peter Sutherland when he’s tapped to work in the White House Situation Room. From his earliest days as a surveillance specialist, Peter has scrupulously done everything by the book, hoping his record will help him escape the taint of his past. When Peter was a boy, his father, a section chief in FBI counterintelligence, was suspected of selling secrets to the Russians—a catastrophic breach that had cost him his career, his reputation, and eventually his life.

Peter knows intimately how one broken rule can cost lives. Nowhere is he more vigilant than in this room, the sanctum of America’s secrets. Staffing the night action desk, his job is monitoring an emergency line for a call that has not—and might never—come.

Until tonight.

At 1:05 a.m. the phone rings. A terrified young woman named Rose tells Peter that her aunt and uncle have just been murdered and that the killer is still in the house with her. Before their deaths, they gave her this phone number with urgent instructions: “Tell them OSPREY was right. It’s happening. . . “

The call thrusts Peter into the heart of a conspiracy years in the making, involving a Russian mole at the highest levels of the government. Anyone in the White House could be the traitor. Anyone could be corrupted. To save the nation, Peter must take the rules into his own hands and do the right thing, no matter the cost. He plunges into a desperate hunt for the traitor—a treacherous odyssey that pits him and Rose against some of Russia’s most skilled and ruthless operatives and the full force of the FBI itself.

Peter knows that the wider a secret is broadcast, the more dangerous it gets for the people at the center. With the fate of the country on the line, he and Rose must evade seasoned assassins and maneuver past jolting betrayals to find the shocking truth—and stop the threat from inside before it’s too late.

A dedicated bookworm.

An awkward goody-two-shoes.

Lover of fiction more than reality.

Jett Michaels had always had a broken moral compass.

A cocky egomaniac.

An unashamed womanizer.

Craving adventure instead of responsibility.

Lily never expected to come face-to-crotch with her old high school crush, and she never dreamed he’d make her an offer she couldn’t refuse. But what was supposed to be a platonic arrangement quickly spiraled out of control.

Can the inexperienced nerdy girl tame the notorious player?

Or will he peel back her pages, exposing the wildcat hidden underneath?

Blaze is a full-length standalone novel in the Men of Inked Heatwave series.

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What people are saying about the Heatwave Series

"I loved this book!!" -Corinne Michaels, NYT bestselling author

"This book will blow your mind." -Chelsea Camaron, USA Today bestselling author

"Fast-paced, twist, turns, and a whole lot of FLAME" -Kaylee Ryan, NYT bestselling author

"Blown away!" -Fiction Beer & Cupcakes

"I inhaled this engaging tale!" -Books & Bindings

"A fictional world that absolutely had me wanting more!" -Angel Payne

"Chelle is hitting all the high notes in this first book in what promises to be a great series!" -Jasinda Wilder

"Holy cow!! What an absolutely awesome book" -Cat's Guilty Pleasure

"What a freaking amazing read." -Bookhaven Book Blog

"HOT. HOT. HOT." -Ruth Cardello, NYT bestselling author

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Topics: MC romance, men of inked, biker romance, romance saga, romantic suspense, series starter, first in series, romance series, romance saga, romantic family saga, new release, tattooed heroes, forbidden romance, second chance romance, small-town romance, hidden romance, strong alpha, alpha hero, family business, strong female lead, strong heroine, family secrets, new releases, top romance reads, Helen Hardt, Charlotte Byrd, Penelope Sky, E L James, Anna Todd, Avon Books, Harlequin Books, Nora Roberts, Bella Andre, Lexi Ryan, Penny Reid, Liliana Rhodes, Lexi Blake, Charlotte Byrd, Julia Kent

Perfect for the fans of Lauren Blakely, Nana Malone, Meghan March, Penny Reid, Skye Warren, Kendall Ryan, Kennedy Fox, Lexi Blake, Carrie Ann Ryan, Katie McCoy, and Penelope Ward