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Books in Beta Form 137

Posted by timothy from the first-run dept.
congaflum writes "The Pragmatic Bookshelf recently released the second beta of their upcoming book Agile Web Development with Rails. By releasing the book to the public in beta form, the authors are able to gather feedback about the books content from a larger audience that would normally be the case. Readers get to influence the direction on the books content by posting feedback to the publisher's website. And of course there's the benefit of simply getting to read the book early. Could beta-version books be a sign of future changes in the commercial publishing industry? And with the availability of things like print on demand these days, how about books that are much more frequently revised (why buy a year-old Edition 1 of something, if you can have Edition 1.1.18?)"
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Books in Beta Form

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  • Star Wars Beta? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by fembots ( 753724 ) on Monday June 13, 2005 @05:12PM (#12806569) Homepage
    Maybe Star Wars should be released in beta? This way nobody can really argue who shot first.

    For a guide/manual book, beta is probably a good idea because the ultimate goal is for readers to make use of the book easily.

    For a story book, instead of releasing beta of a pseudo-complete book, author should release it chapter by chapter, and change the story direction based on reader feedback, in another word, Plot-Beta rather than Writing-Beta.

    • Re:Star Wars Beta? (Score:4, Informative)

      by yotto ( 590067 ) on Monday June 13, 2005 @05:22PM (#12806668) Homepage
      I like that idea. I post all of my fiction online for free to anybody who can figure out how to ask me for the password (password protected = not published, if you must know. That's important when talking to a publisher) and most of my writings I consider to be "beta" versions of the books/stories. They're beta until someone buys them. Until then, I take all feedback I get and use it to make the story better.
      It's worked for me so far (though I haven't sold anything, I've gotten better feedback after incorporating others' suggestions) and it feels good to "give away" fiction in this way but still maintain the ability to publish if a publisher ever shows an interest.

    • Re:Star Wars Beta? (Score:5, Funny)

      by Cruciform ( 42896 ) on Monday June 13, 2005 @05:22PM (#12806669) Homepage
      That would be a logistical nightmare. Especially for someone writing for the geek crowd.

      "Can you add more swordfights? And sex?"

      "I want a unicorn! And a really hot naked chick! and sex!"

      "I want a hot chick that gets into swordfights and when she's done, has sex with a unicorn! Oh, and could you throw in a star destroyer too?"
      • Certainly funny, but you don't necessary need to include all opinions about your piece of work after consultation, so it would not be such a big logistical nightmare...

    • For a story book, instead of releasing beta of a pseudo-complete book, author should release it chapter by chapter, and change the story direction based on reader feedback, in another word, Plot-Beta rather than Writing-Beta.

      That would be a disaster [fanfiction.net]. ;-) Seriously, though, a lot of the time, the criteria for getting a book published simply is whether or not it's finished or not. Young, struggling writer = Unfinished Novels. Lots of them. Old, struggling writers = Finished Novels that sold about 100 cop

    • Re:Star Wars Beta? (Score:3, Informative)

      by globalar ( 669767 )
      "For a story book, instead of releasing beta of a pseudo-complete book, author should release it chapter by chapter..."

      Charles Dickens released novels (like "A Tale of Two Cities") in a chapter-by-chapter format monthly or weekly. It's obvious to see how this diverted the story's chapters into episodes, often with cliffhangers at the end. Dickens was able to gauge public opinion and take reader feedback to adjust the story as needed, probably greatly contributing to his success.

      • Re:Star Wars Beta? (Score:3, Informative)

        by Big Sean O ( 317186 )
        It also made some of his novels (I'm thinking David Copperfield) go on and on and on an ON. Also, there's the 'dropped thread'. In one book (I forget which) there was a lady who was a 'little person'. Her thread gets dropped somewhere in the middle of the story. She makes a perfunctory appearance in one of the final chapters, as if Dickens says "Oops, forgot about the midget".

  • Post-Publish Fate (Score:2, Interesting)

    by BlogPope ( 886961 )
    What happens to that book content once the book is published? Will it still be available? Seems odd

    On the plus side I wouldn't mind seeing an "updates" site where the author could publish tech corrections, version updates, etc.

    • Re:Post-Publish Fate (Score:3, Interesting)

      by joeljkp ( 254783 )
      Here's an idea for a wiki if someone wants to implement it:

      ErrataWiki, or maybe WikiFixes

      Search by title, author, ISBN, get book errata and corrections listed by edition, and tagged with any official confirmation
    • What if the author released a version (high level or almost complete) of the book and opened up a forum for comments. Then the author reviews the feedback and decides which contributors are thoughful and grants wiki-style access to the manuscript. The changes can be reviewed and commented on. The contributer group could be changed (bigger and smaller) as the project progresses.

      Maybe the incentive for making contributions is access to the final wiki version of the book. The publisher can still make money o

      • Why not give everyone who buys the book access to the Wiki-ized version?

        For example, I have Securing Cisco Routers but 6 months from now threats can morph into a new format (The rise of Botnets for example). The goal of the book was to organize the security info into an actionable format, If I knew there was a simple place to go that interpreted the latest info in light of the book (While Attack-14 is a serious threat, if you implemented Tip #9 you are safe, since this routes all evil bit enabled packets t

    • I much prefer having a real book to electronic formats, its easier to markup, easier to bookmark, no annoying window switching (I use dual monitors these days for this), etc.

      Of course, electronic versions are easier to search and updatable/correctable. Problem is, once an author writes the book, they are usually on to the next title. They aren't spending their time updating/correcting published work (Excepting George Lucas :)

    • Re:Post-Publish Fate (Score:3, Informative)

      by Marillion ( 33728 )
      It's iterative book development. And since iterations is an agile development philosophy, what better context.

      I've bought this book. More to the point, I have the current Beta. The authors have sent e-mails as the book gets updated. I had two ways I could by the book: 1) Dead tree + PDF, or 2) PDF only. I went with #1 since there's nothing like being able to touch it. The PDF's are slightly different that the printed version - The one I bought was watermarked with my name. They're hyperlinked and ma

  • First Post (beta 0.8b) (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Please give feedback on the quality of this post.

  • They probably thought about it long and hard (Score:4, Insightful)

    by 3770 ( 560838 ) on Monday June 13, 2005 @05:16PM (#12806613) Homepage
    With people having the electronic format available there's a few factors to consider:

    1) There will be more word of mouth, so more people will hear about it
    2) Some people will buy it because they read some of it and like the content but prefer the format of the book (so that they can read it in the bathroom maybe, what do i know).
    3) Some people will read it and decide that they either don't like it, or that they are satisfied with just having the book in its electronic format.

    What the publisher in this case is that item 1 and 2 will add more buyers than item 3 will cost them.
    • Don't forget that most authors would earn more money spending those book writing hours working at McDonalds than they they are likely to make in royalties from a book (at least that is the rational analysis conclusion, but then who says authors are rational). Many authors want exposure and to have people read what they have to say. Also publishers are waking up to the idea that readers will spend money on a paper copy of what they have read.

      I would have prefered my own book (downloadable here [ntl.com], 8M pdf) t


      • I looked at your book and it looks as if you could get a doctorate out of that.

        Pretty deep stuff.
        • I don't think they award them on the basis of past work. Perhaps I should buy one via the for-sale ads in the Sunday papers :-)

          I did get one reviewer complaining that some of my references were very dated. Obviously a computer scientist who thinks anything over 5 years old no longer applies. Experimental results in psychology (or any other subject) are ageless.

      • Wow... obviously I couldn't read your book in this short period of time (1616 pages?!) but it looks good. Sorry to hear that the publisher backed out on you. Was it too technical for them?

        Have you considered offering it through a publish on demand site like LuLu [lulu.com]? It seems like you could make some money for all of your trouble. And w/ LuLu you can distribute in digital or paper forms.
        • My editor left, the financial downturn hit, and my book was big enough (the page count is on the limit of what non-specialist printers can handle) and unusual enough to look like a very risky proposition.

          I investigated various ways in which my book could be made available in paper form. The various self publishing companies don't go above 500-700 pages, and then not always in larger page sizes. Ok, I could split the material in two, but at the moment I am not inclined to put the effort in.

          I was also

    • 3) Some people will read it and decide that they either don't like it, or that they are satisfied with just having the book in its electronic format.

      In the case described in the article, you have to buy the book first to get the beta copy. Later, they give the the final version when it's finished. I got it and I have already shelled out the money. I didn't really get it to provide feeback, I just like to read the books those Pramatic guys write and I'm finished with all the other ones I have.

  • Paranoid College $tudent (Score:4, Insightful)

    by richdun ( 672214 ) on Monday June 13, 2005 @05:17PM (#12806621)
    Yeah, this may just be the paranoid college student in me, but why do I see this being taken advantage of for textbooks? It's bad enough they release a new version just when you're finally ready to sell the book back to your campus bookstore, but updating possibly even quicker, new editions may keep coming out mid-course.

    If they only make you pay once for the beta and for the full version when it is ready, as this one appears to work, that's okay I guess, but this could get way out of hand.

    • Re:Paranoid College $tudent (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Wait--you never took a college course where the textbook was the most recent version written by the professor? And it wasn't quite done before it hit the printers?

      I recall a $100 textbook I bought 8 years ago. In the first lecture, we were helpfully given a 40 page packet of "errata" with the textbook.

      This aint new.
    • Yeah, this may just be the paranoid college student in me, but why do I see this being taken advantage of for textbooks?

      Because the whole system is corrupt? Have you ever compared the X edition with the X+1 edition? They generally just move the page numbers around and change some of the chapter questions.

      Someone needs to organize a good ole' fashioned book burning. That might bring some attention to the problem. Otherwise, this will continue forever.
      • Because the whole system is corrupt? Have you ever compared the X edition with the X+1 edition? They generally just move the page numbers around and change some of the chapter questions.

        For many courses, you're correct. I used to use the last year's textbook and check the library reference copy for any change in the questions for assignments most of the time, with a skim of the TOC and intro to see if any chapters were substantially different - most weren't for most courses.

        But then you get my new field

    • If they only make you pay once for the beta and for the full version when it is ready, as this one appears to work, that's okay I guess, but this could get way out of hand.

      This is how the PragProg guys are doing it. You buy the book up front, then you get major beta milestones. When the book is complete, you get the paper copy along with the most up-to-date PDF.

      So far, it's been an awesome model. I've enjoyed comparing the two revisions and seeing the authors' notes. I hope they continue to do this.

    • This sounds like they are trying to get us to do their editing and fact-checking for them to save them money. Considering the general quality of commercial software out there, why would the publishing industry want to replicate their(honestly, our) methods?
    • Dude, I don't know about you, but my University frequently used Beta textbooks.

      We would get the draft, and would be expected to use it as if it was a normal book. If it was an alpha level book, we just got what looked like the output from Word (or latex) photocopied and shrink wrapped. If it was in Beta stages, then we might be lucky and just get a crappy printing of it.

      The down side is that the book was not factually correct, and contained lots of mistakes.

      The upside was that the book only cost us as mu

  • Chapter by chapter (Score:3, Insightful)

    by cytoman ( 792326 ) on Monday June 13, 2005 @05:17PM (#12806622)
    More efficient would be to release each chapter as and when it becomes beta-ready. If the publisher is greedy, then the chapters can come with some sort of expiry date so that the whole book cannot be assembled by the chapter collectors.

    I'm just thinking like a publisher here... personally, I would want no kind of DRM or expiry date or any such crap on these things.
    • That wouldn't really work with this book. The authors have assumed that much of their readership is very interested in Rails but don't know much Ruby yet, so they've put in a lot of cross-references between where some Ruby construct is first used and an Appendix which describes its whys and wherefores.

      I'm enjoying it as a way of learning Ruby (I bought the PDF last week). Learn a bit of Rails, hmmm, what does this mean? Click - aha.
      • The other reason that it wouldn't work well is due to Dave Thomas's writing style. He's stated that he kind of bounces around from chapter to chapter writing whatever he is in the flow for at the time, so the chapters were not written serially.

        • Didn't know that, thanks for pointing it out. I should do that more often with my own writing - I tend to begin at the beginning, go on to the end and then stop instead of using flow.
  • print on demand sucks. you generally get reamed up the a**, get locked into a contract where you can't publish through a standard publishing house for X number of years, and make little to no money. ALSO when agents and/or publishing houses see that you've published via POD they will immediately turn their noses at you.

    POD and digital publishing are theoretically good ideas that just can't seem to get their wings. the public simply doesn't want to read a book from their computer or from a handheld. that's
    • Speaking as an author on the Prag Prog label, my books are NOT publish on demand.

      You can buy them on Amazon [amazon.com], O'Reilly [oreilly.com] (in fact, I'm on the front page [oreilly.com] right now!), WalMart [walmart.com], etc.

      Of course, the fastest place to get them from is the Prag Prog site itself. ;)

    • I actually had a decent POD experience, at least as decent as it can go. I understand what you are saying and agree with a fair amount of it. However, I think the big thing as always is buyer beware.

      I did my research and made sure about my rights. The first company that approached me regarding POD wanted to take a fistful of money (rather many fistfuls) and in the contract in tiny letters it said that they retained all the rights. Needless to say, I rejected them right away. The company that I did wind u
    • lulu [lulu.com] avoids many of the problems you mention. No getting locked in- no loss of control. As far as publishing houses turning their noses-- well if they are already doing that before you go the POD route, what's the difference?
    • It's not just that POD sucks. This is actually a *lousy* time to be writing technical books for publication on paper. I've written a raft of them in the past 20 years and have seen some rich and lean times, but these are the worst. The major book chains are relentlessly reducing the sizes of their computer book sections, meaning that they will buy fewer copies of fewer titles, which means that publishers will be choosing fewer titles from fewer authors, and will give less money to the authors they choose--w
    • I don't think ANYTHING will ever beat the ability to sit down in a comfy chair and read a good book. The digital aspect is nice, I mean in the future they may figure out how to make it work well, but until then, nothing beats sitting down and turning pages.
      • i absolutely agree with you.

        but there really does have to be a way to use POD effectively. maybe what it really needs is for someone to come out with a really good digital reader. you know - paperback size or something. one that can hold a library of books. sort of like the ipod - only the ibook. it would require a bigger dispay (which should be the primary real estate of the device).

        if that were to actually happen - POD would be the answer to so many authors dreams. well - theoretically.

  • Buying newer versions (Score:3, Interesting)

    by dcclark ( 846336 ) on Monday June 13, 2005 @05:19PM (#12806638) Homepage
    (why buy a year-old Edition 1 of something, if you can have Edition 1.1.18?)

    Easy. Because I need the information NOW. Because I want the physical copy that I can grab off a shelf any time I need it. Because there will always be a newer version coming out, and if I really need the book, I have to get it eventually.

    Perhaps this trend will encourage people to be a bit more conservative about actually buying a book, but people who need a book will still buy it when they need it. Of course, this begs questions like... will we eventually get the x.0.1 updates for free somehow? Will publishing ever expand to such an extreme anyhow?
    • Easy. Because I need the information NOW. Because I want the physical copy that I can grab off a shelf any time I need it. Because there will always be a newer version coming out, and if I really need the book, I have to get it eventually.

      Agrred. I think I worded it a bit badly in the submission. Bah. What I meant was, whenever you do choose to buy a book, it would be nice to be getting the most up to date revision at that point, rather than the last major release (which might have been a long time ago

    • When I was young, my mother bought me a set of World Book encyclopedias. Each year, they would mail me a Year in Review (General news) and Science Year update which would have a set of stickers (the lick-em, stick-em kind) that would indicate which book and which page the new article was on, and you would add that sticker to your original encyclopedia entry. That way you would be able to know where and when the original entry had been updated.

      Personally, I think it's a darned clever little idea. Even in th
  • This seems a lot like what they did in the 17th cent. with the passing around of manuscripts before publishing--- just an observation.
    • This seems a lot like what they did in the 17th cent. with the passing around of manuscripts before publishing--- just an observation.

      I knew that /. was bad about posting dupes, but this is just getting out of hand ...
    • Getting a little feedback about a book prior to publication is always a good thing, particularly from people who are familiar with the subject matter or those who are the target audience of the book. Going at this on a large scale reminds me more of the two statues Polyclitus made, one according to his sensibilities and another following the advice of all of his friends. I would expect the same results with any creative endeavor.
  • When I first read the title, I thought it read "Books on Beta".
    • Just at an 'at' at the end and you're there.... Books in Beta format. Much better than books on (audio) tape because it's an entire half inch instead of 3/16ths.

      *sigh*

  • beta books = draft copys? (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    read subject ^^

    • Re:beta books = draft copys? (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      please mod parent up. ianat (I am not a troll)

      calling this a "beta book" reminds me of sun's java advertising circa 1996: it is fully buzzword compliant. folks, a "beta book" is a draft that is being put online for comments. some people have been doing this for years. notably academics, who put draft papers online, and who make online drafts of textbooks available to their students for free.

      • One recent example of a non-academic book where the author had a public feedback loop in this way, is Peter Seibel's "Practical Common Lisp". The chapters were published on the web and got updated frequently, and the author was active on and consulted comp.lang.lisp throughout the process. It was quite interesting to follow the development of a book so closely, and I must say it really boosted my respect for the works of good technical authors.

        (The book (which really is dead sexy): http://www.gigamonkeys [gigamonkeys.com]

  • I dont know (Score:2, Interesting)

    by hobotron ( 891379 )
    As weird as it sounds, a publicly moderated "bugtraq" forum for a new book would be highly interactive and interesting.
    I am also wondering what happens in the long run? Would the authors' individuality be hopelessly spoiled by people camping (and/or some version of bot/scripting), or even just the will of the masses ruining the personal touch of one author?
    Where would it end?
  • I could see how this would work for technical/programming books, but for fiction novels this would be a terrible idea!

    For a technical book it would be fantastic to reduce errors, and include input from potential readers about what they are still confused/unsure about.

    For a fiction book I could see the publisher pushing the author out of his original imaginative story into an idiotic story that the "people" want.

    I have read a few technical books that could definitely have used some input from it's potenti
    • I don't know. I've seen plenty typos and missing words in pubilshed works.
      • I was going to suggest the utility from the perspective of catching minor temporal inconsistencies between multiple books in the same timeline. You know... a bunch of comic book guy types shouting "but Kirk in season 3, episode 19 was distinctly carrying a phaser PISTOL."

        Or not....

  • Art By Committee (Score:3, Insightful)

    by EraseEraseMe ( 167638 ) on Monday June 13, 2005 @05:23PM (#12806686)

    What a grand idea. Let's dumb-down, mollify, coddle and all-around temper any possibility of having something 'different' and instead replace it with the infamous 'too many cooks' defense.

    Honestly, how many books have you read, written by a committee, were worthy of the time spent reading them? Or movie-scripts written by 4 or more people?

    I have nothing against collaboration, but let's be honest; it's easier for one person to innovate than it is for ten people to integrate.

    • Counterpoint (Score:4, Interesting)

      by FunWithHeadlines ( 644929 ) on Monday June 13, 2005 @06:08PM (#12807077) Homepage
      You make a valid point, but mostly when a committee actually tries to sit down and write something. In contrast, soliciting feedback is an author's best friend. The readers of the author's work give comments that might not be valid, but they just might be. Grammatical errors are found, or changes in tone, or just hard to read sections. All of this is very valuable, and the reason editors exist.

      This is a way of open-sourcing, so to speak, the editorial process. And as long as the author has final say ("What? That's a stupid suggestion!") it can still read as one person's voice, but a voice that has been refined by many eyes to eliminate the inevitable mistakes.

      • You'll still end up with crap. Why? Some people are stupid, and some are smart. Some people have style, and some don't.

        Art can't be Open Sourced. That's just a dumb gimmick, not a stroke of greatness.
    • All of the Grosset and Dunlop Young Adult books were written by committe and are among the most popular young adult series ever, AKA Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, Bobsey Twins, Tom Swift, Etc.

  • the usual for academic books (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    At least in math, all books are published this way, erleased first electronically to interested/knowledgeable people, or whoever feels like downloading it, then published after taking some comments
  • Are you familiar with Sourcebeat [sourcebeat.com]? They provide a "12-month book subscription" for open-source related technical manuals. From the site:
    "At SourceBeat, we believe the traditional publishing model does not work in rapidly changing environments such as open source software. Traditional books take too long to go from author to bookshelf, and many times the books are outdated soon after release. Until now. SourceBeat is the first publisher to create always updated open source technology books, written by exp
  • The internet encourages this sort of iterative, distributed approach. Witness Google, public betas of major OS releases, and the ultimate beta, Wikipedia, the encyclopedia that is never complete. Low cost communications let people provide useful feedback after testing/using the product and comparing against their expectations/needs/knowledge. Low cost communications also lets creators distribute patches/updates to inexpensively offer fixes to beta products.

    Betas do come with a downside. The notion th
  • I am a fledgling author (I only have my first book published so far - looking for an agent for #2), and from my opinion I think that this is a horrible idea. Sure, on the surface the idea seems wonderful to allow lots of people to input their own two cents and correct mistakes, whether they be grammar or continuity based. However, that should all be done before it goes to the public.

    If you put something out there in a rough form, people will read through it, and I imagine they would have one of two react
    • But couldn't you just fork it? I mean, you could have the original author's storyline as one option, but readers could fork the storyline at any time and write their own version. Each of those lines would be available at options to click down. I mean, what if instead of Lucas' versions of teh prequels we had some fan versions to choose from? Do you think at least one of them would be preferable to the original authors? And people could choose if they wanted Greedo to shoot first or Han... ... kinda li
  • OMG open-source literature!

    I'd hate to read the acknowledgments page in THAT book.

  • Having a Beta book seems appropriate... for a beta application framework, at version 0.12.1, and no sign of 0.2 on the horizon.

    That said, rails has made it really easy to build new webapps for my job. It has replaced Filemaker for the stuff I use project after project.

  • Hello, We are writing to inform you of a vulnerability in the code on page 131 of Agile Web Development with Rails. We have promptly released a 2-page patch which you can order and apply to your book to fix the bug. We apologise for any inconvenience caused.
  • It would be nice that registered users, with good karma could edit summaries to fix spelling, grammar and such, or flag stories as dupes. (I'm not saying that this story has some of those, just that i would like this feature implemented in slashdot)
  • Here's a better idea.

    Take the time and do it right the first time. Get somebody who knows what they're doing to check it. Get somebody else who knows what they're doing to check them.

    Crap like code errors is completely unacceptable. If you're writing books because you claim to be an expert on the subject, prove it and do it right.

    Companies should be raising standards on publications, rather than eliminating them like New Riders. But even Addison Wesley puts out garbage.

    • In the Pragmatic Programmers' books, code errors are the least likely problem. Every code snippet is taken from a real, runnable source file. Tags in the book text and the source code tell the build process what to extract, and even sometimes how to run the code to get the result that is then inserted into the text.

      Now there's an example of DRY (Don't Repeat Yourself) done right.
  • Writer Bruce Eckel [bruceeckel.com] has been publishing his books as beta for several years now. Even though I could download his books series "Thinking in Java" [mindview.net] and "Thinking in C++" [mindview.net] for free I still bought the final versions in printed form. I think the final releases of these books really benefitted from the beta-releases.
  • Print on demand is largely vaporware. People have been predicting for the last 10 years that it would be the next big thing. The plain truth is that producing books in large quantities is extemely efficient, and producing them one at a time is extremely inefficient. The most common scenario people propose is that you're going to go into Barnes and Noble and ask them to print you a copy of a book that's on some really obscure topic, or is out of print. Well, the problem there is that there isn't any really s

    • Overall I think you are right. However it could work for some things.

      Best buy could easily burn you a CD of any local (but not to the city you are in) band you care about. No way will they carry a small band that is popular in Minneapolis in New York, but if you happen to care (perhaps you have a relative in it), they could easily have a computer burn a CD, print the label (right on the disk), and build a book and insert it. You would need to wait 10 minutes, but it could be done now. Mind they woul

      • The machines exist. The problems are manifold, though:

        * They're big. So big, in fact, that no bookstore would want one, because they would take away a lot of shelf space that can be used for the popular books they sell lots of

        * Most people don't want to buy anything that would require one. In the unusual case of somebody wanting something not on the shelf, it can be ordered in a few days. The number of customers who ask for something that's actually out of print is so small that it doesn't justify the
  • *hits reset button on buzz detector* I won't be buying that book. It might force me to think outside of the box and change my paradigm.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • I've got the Rails book, and it's amazing how many people have contributed errata and feedback [pragprog.com] (which by the way was quickly written and deployed with Ruby on Rails, the subject of the book). This might be the perfect way for authors to polish their books to a mirror shine before printing, especially if the content is something readers are eager for.

    It could also be a way publishers can gauge the success of a book. No public feedback, not likely the book will sell well. Enthusiastic readers can participa
  • I remember seeing beta previews on the bookshelf sites in '98. Where's the news here?
  • or even proofread, IMHO.

    But, this might be a better method to produce textbooks in, as they so frequently become out of date before going to print, at least for new or rewritten chapters.

    So, one can remain hopeful, even while being pessimistic as to the level of quality.

    I buy all my automobiles in beta form - fun to watch them blow up when I put my key in the ignition, no? Who needs crash test dummies ...
  • The Ruby on Rails book was done particularly well. They did most of the writing before it went beta. When you buy the beta book, you get a personalized PDF (to discourage further distribution), and eventually the PDF of the final book (as well as interim editions).

    I was planning on buying the 'Dead Tree' version anyway as soon as it was released, so I sprung for the combo pack... Beta versions now, Final PDF and Dead Tree version when released.

    I'm not sure this would work for every type technical book. Ru

  • I purchased this book in Beta form and am very pleased with having the option. It's a great book so far and I would have hated waiting until August.

    The second release, however, quickly brought a problem to my attention. I'd printed out the entire first pdf to read, but had no way of knowing what pages had changed in the second beta. This means re-printing 500+ pages just to get an updated copy.

    If this truly becomes a trend in publishing, someone needs to come up with a proper way of documenting changes

  • What kind of geeks do we have here?? :) IBM has published a line of hands-on books for many years that machine room mole-people live and die by.. the IBM Redbooks series. Go to http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/ [ibm.com] and click Drafts in the left Navigation pane. There are currently 39 books in progress, all from multiple authors who are actively seeking feedback.
  • Can we spell draft kids?
    D-R-A-F-T. An unfinished book was called a draaaaaaaaft.... Very good boys and girls. Now that we have an internets we call every unfinished item a "BETA".
  • I work for a technical doc company that produces documentation for a number of companies... We do things a little different since most our products are offered free to go along with hardware. I'm not an author as you can tell by my spelling but I do work on the production / management side of things so I do see this from a different view. We release all our Beta docs to registered users (people who have the hardware) to go over the content. This allows them to get a sneakpeak at the hardware and software b

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