5 ms·

A book is a startup, so use lean startup principles

19 points by swombat 17y ago

swombat 17y ago
I suspect much of this won't work at all for fiction... but then again, is that true? Would you read an incomplete piece of fiction and provide feedback to help shape its direction? And, as an author, would you take people's advice about how you're supposed to change your baby to suit their demands? For non-fiction books, though, this is a no-brainer.
- patio11 17y ago
  A lot of authors I read rely on "beta readers" right now (largely drawn from the fanfiction communities where they got their start writing for an audience), but the actual publication of the book is still a one-shot. It is sort of the pro-am convergence coming to fiction publishing, in a lot of ways. An anecdote on the general subject: I bought Gratuitous Space Battles while it was still in a highly volatile beta state and, while it was interesting enough for me to not ask for my $20 back, the balance was broken, the controls were a mess, and the game did not quite live up to my expectations given the premise. It improved later but I had already "consumed" the game -- I didn't want to re-play levels that I found repetitive/unchallenging/overly challenging even if the new versions were much improved, because I had already sucked out the "new game smell" (new mechanics, new graphics, etc) that I was there for. So in that particular instance, I got a bit burned by the release-early, release-often suggestion that I'm generally a big proponent of. However, the company certainly benefited -- they get to keep my $20 and the game is probably better today as a result of having folks provide feedback for improvement during the beta.
- spatten 17y ago
  Peter and I are both really curious about how fiction books will work with Leanpub. As you say, we think it's a slam dunk for non-fiction books (both Peter and I have written non-fiction books, so we have a bit of experience here). For fiction, I think it's a really interesting and open question. Dickens, for example, wrote all of his books in serialized format and wrote them a chunk at a time, publishing them as he wrote them (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Dickens http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Dickens). This was an unusual way to write serialized novels, but Dickens was no slouch and he (in my opinion) stands the test of time. Did he receive and welcome feedback as he wrote? I don't know the answer to that (I'm a coder and physicist, not an English Lit major :), but I can imagine that he got feedback whether he welcomed it or not. My guess is that for certain types of fiction, and certain types of authors, Leanpub will work really well. Others will run screaming from the very thought of it. Hopefully Leanpub will help us find out more.
  - peterarmstrong 17y ago
    As Scott points out, some great novels have been published in serial form. We're not claiming that this has to be the rule though. However, there's another interesting question: how many good or great novels are sitting half-written on hard drives right now as Word documents, with a discouraged author about to give up on them? If those novels were published as they were written (with automatic distribution of updates and a community of a few passionate readers / fans), maybe some novels worth reading will get created that otherwise might not be... That said, the obvious market for the Lean Publishing approach is, of course, technical books. Scott and I have both written computer books, so we're very much scratching our own itch here. Another great market for using Lean Publishing principles is cookbooks, we feel. Lots of people are blogging and even tweeting cookbooks (although I want more than a 140 character recipe!), and this is definitely something that could be published using a Lean Publishing approach. Neither of us have any idea if it will work for fiction :) Obligatory plug: we welcome computer books, cookbooks and even novels on Leanpub :)
hristov 17y ago
Sorry, the parallels do not work that far. Listening to your customers as you go along is a great idea for a startup and a really terrible idea for a book. If you listen to your customers you are guaranteed to get a very mediocre book. A good book has to continually challenge and surprise the reader. Imagine if Dostoevsky had listened to his customers when he wrote "Notes from the Underground." Most of the people reading the first couple of lines would say "please change the main character." By the way here are the first couple of lines: "I am a sick man.... I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I believe my liver is diseased." So this would never have been written if Dostoevsky actually listened to his customers. And yet it is one of the best books ever written. But releasing early and often is an interesting proposition for books. A lot of writers had to do that, because they published their books in serial fashion as they were writing them. Many other writers would continuously rewrite their drafts and would never release anything they had not completed and edited. And you can definitely notice when you are reading a book that a writer was writing and publishing it as he went along. But it is hard to say which one is better. The books that are published as they are written tend to be less organized and with less cohesive story arcs, but they can also be more original and pleasantly surprising.
- peterarmstrong 17y ago
  In some senses you're right, in that great art is usually created by ignoring the conventional wisdom etc. However, even then feedback is important: as Paul Graham has repeatedly argued, great artists don't usually work in total isolation (the Renaissance was concentrated in Florence, etc). However, my point applied more to non-fiction than fiction: it was based on my own experiences writing Flexible Rails (self-publishing, getting early customers and feedback, etc) and then Hello! Flex 4 (traditional publisher approach). And we even did release Hello! Flex 4 while it was being written, but I didn't build the community of "earlyvangelists" around it that happened with Flexible Rails. Part of this was the content (Hello! Flex 4 is an uncontroversial introductory book; Flexible Rails was arguing something and was something largely new), but part of it was affected by the dynamic of self-publishing vs. using a traditional publisher. With Flexible Rails I created a Google Group that had hundreds of readers, while the book was still in-progress. I felt I had a closer connection with them, and I learned what worked and what didn't work in my book, etc. So that post was about those experiences. Finally, a disclaimer: I'm not an artist, and certainly not a Dostoyevsky, so I really have no idea what kind of feedback that type of talent wants. (P.S. I love Dostoyevsky btw; I read Notes from Underground and The Brothers Karamazov while working a summer job in university at Walmart -- before I switched from Philosophy to Comp Sci.)
jrockway 17y ago
I disagree. A book is just highly-creative contract work. You get paid, you deliver text. A startup means you need to take on every aspect of a business; finding customers, supporting customers, listening to customers, and oh yeah, making a product. I imagine the time spent on most startups is about 30% stuff-you-want-to-do and 70% stuff-you-have-to-do. A book is 100% stuff-you-want-to-do. If not, you've done it wrong.
- peterarmstrong 17y ago
  I defy you to say that adding index entries to a 500 page manuscript is stuff-you-want-to-do :)
  - jrockway 17y ago
    My publisher did this for me. I'm pretty sure that's how it usually works.

19 points by swombat 17y ago

I suspect much of this won't work at all for fiction... but then again, is that true? Would you read an incomplete piece of fiction and provide feedback to help shape its direction? And, as an author, would you take people's advice about how you're supposed to change your baby to suit their demands? For non-fiction books, though, this is a no-brainer.

patio11 17y ago
A lot of authors I read rely on "beta readers" right now (largely drawn from the fanfiction communities where they got their start writing for an audience), but the actual publication of the book is still a one-shot. It is sort of the pro-am convergence coming to fiction publishing, in a lot of ways. An anecdote on the general subject: I bought Gratuitous Space Battles while it was still in a highly volatile beta state and, while it was interesting enough for me to not ask for my $20 back, the balance was broken, the controls were a mess, and the game did not quite live up to my expectations given the premise. It improved later but I had already "consumed" the game -- I didn't want to re-play levels that I found repetitive/unchallenging/overly challenging even if the new versions were much improved, because I had already sucked out the "new game smell" (new mechanics, new graphics, etc) that I was there for. So in that particular instance, I got a bit burned by the release-early, release-often suggestion that I'm generally a big proponent of. However, the company certainly benefited -- they get to keep my $20 and the game is probably better today as a result of having folks provide feedback for improvement during the beta.
spatten 17y ago
Peter and I are both really curious about how fiction books will work with Leanpub. As you say, we think it's a slam dunk for non-fiction books (both Peter and I have written non-fiction books, so we have a bit of experience here). For fiction, I think it's a really interesting and open question. Dickens, for example, wrote all of his books in serialized format and wrote them a chunk at a time, publishing them as he wrote them (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Dickens http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Dickens). This was an unusual way to write serialized novels, but Dickens was no slouch and he (in my opinion) stands the test of time. Did he receive and welcome feedback as he wrote? I don't know the answer to that (I'm a coder and physicist, not an English Lit major :), but I can imagine that he got feedback whether he welcomed it or not. My guess is that for certain types of fiction, and certain types of authors, Leanpub will work really well. Others will run screaming from the very thought of it. Hopefully Leanpub will help us find out more.
- peterarmstrong 17y ago
  As Scott points out, some great novels have been published in serial form. We're not claiming that this has to be the rule though. However, there's another interesting question: how many good or great novels are sitting half-written on hard drives right now as Word documents, with a discouraged author about to give up on them? If those novels were published as they were written (with automatic distribution of updates and a community of a few passionate readers / fans), maybe some novels worth reading will get created that otherwise might not be... That said, the obvious market for the Lean Publishing approach is, of course, technical books. Scott and I have both written computer books, so we're very much scratching our own itch here. Another great market for using Lean Publishing principles is cookbooks, we feel. Lots of people are blogging and even tweeting cookbooks (although I want more than a 140 character recipe!), and this is definitely something that could be published using a Lean Publishing approach. Neither of us have any idea if it will work for fiction :) Obligatory plug: we welcome computer books, cookbooks and even novels on Leanpub :)

hristov 17y ago

Sorry, the parallels do not work that far. Listening to your customers as you go along is a great idea for a startup and a really terrible idea for a book. If you listen to your customers you are guaranteed to get a very mediocre book. A good book has to continually challenge and surprise the reader. Imagine if Dostoevsky had listened to his customers when he wrote "Notes from the Underground." Most of the people reading the first couple of lines would say "please change the main character." By the way here are the first couple of lines: "I am a sick man.... I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I believe my liver is diseased." So this would never have been written if Dostoevsky actually listened to his customers. And yet it is one of the best books ever written. But releasing early and often is an interesting proposition for books. A lot of writers had to do that, because they published their books in serial fashion as they were writing them. Many other writers would continuously rewrite their drafts and would never release anything they had not completed and edited. And you can definitely notice when you are reading a book that a writer was writing and publishing it as he went along. But it is hard to say which one is better. The books that are published as they are written tend to be less organized and with less cohesive story arcs, but they can also be more original and pleasantly surprising.

peterarmstrong 17y ago
In some senses you're right, in that great art is usually created by ignoring the conventional wisdom etc. However, even then feedback is important: as Paul Graham has repeatedly argued, great artists don't usually work in total isolation (the Renaissance was concentrated in Florence, etc). However, my point applied more to non-fiction than fiction: it was based on my own experiences writing Flexible Rails (self-publishing, getting early customers and feedback, etc) and then Hello! Flex 4 (traditional publisher approach). And we even did release Hello! Flex 4 while it was being written, but I didn't build the community of "earlyvangelists" around it that happened with Flexible Rails. Part of this was the content (Hello! Flex 4 is an uncontroversial introductory book; Flexible Rails was arguing something and was something largely new), but part of it was affected by the dynamic of self-publishing vs. using a traditional publisher. With Flexible Rails I created a Google Group that had hundreds of readers, while the book was still in-progress. I felt I had a closer connection with them, and I learned what worked and what didn't work in my book, etc. So that post was about those experiences. Finally, a disclaimer: I'm not an artist, and certainly not a Dostoyevsky, so I really have no idea what kind of feedback that type of talent wants. (P.S. I love Dostoyevsky btw; I read Notes from Underground and The Brothers Karamazov while working a summer job in university at Walmart -- before I switched from Philosophy to Comp Sci.)

jrockway 17y ago

I disagree. A book is just highly-creative contract work. You get paid, you deliver text. A startup means you need to take on every aspect of a business; finding customers, supporting customers, listening to customers, and oh yeah, making a product. I imagine the time spent on most startups is about 30% stuff-you-want-to-do and 70% stuff-you-have-to-do. A book is 100% stuff-you-want-to-do. If not, you've done it wrong.

peterarmstrong 17y ago
I defy you to say that adding index entries to a 500 page manuscript is stuff-you-want-to-do :)
- jrockway 17y ago
  My publisher did this for me. I'm pretty sure that's how it usually works.