6 ms·

Github, the future of book publishing?

29 points by latch 16y ago

pdenya 16y ago
It would definitely be handy for technical books but I can't see this being widely adopted because most technical books aren't free. Fixing errors and sending a pull request via an interface we all already know would be much easier than tracking down author contact info. Having said that this might be more readable as a wiki.
- antirez 16y ago
  I'm currently writing a "commercial" book (the redis book), and I'm every day more confident that the future of many tech books is self publishing. You get hardly rich writing a tech book for a traditional publisher, it is a lot of work for little money most of the time (you are not going to sell, usually, a large number of tech books, they are not "best sellers", and the percentage you earn is very low). So after all, why not self publish? You have more control on what you write, you earn a lot more if you publish the book on the Kindle for every sold copy, you are free to provide the book for free on the web, and so forth. From this point of view github is a viable way to handle the writing of a book. What is needed is a license that allows everybody to contribute, so that the electronic version is free for everybody, but only the "main" authors have the right to use the book for commercial purposes (Kindle, Printed, ...). Otherwise if the book is under a non free license it can be still interesting to use github in a public repository to get feedbacks, comments, and so forth. We'll see what happens but my next book will be a self-published one for sure, written using a github public repo, if I'll ever write another one :)
  - JonnieCache 16y ago
    >I'm currently writing a "commercial" book (the redis book) Nice! When do you think that's going to be out? (Horrible question to ask an author I know.) And if it's not self published, who is publishing it?
    - antirez 16y ago
      Not sure, but I think it will be out this summer (sorry, unable to be more specific). It is published with O'Reilly.
  - ivanr 16y ago
    I wrote my first book for a traditional publisher. Later, with my second book, I decided to effectively self-publish, for two reasons: 1) the money is better and 2) I wanted to be able to update my books whenever I had something to say. My first book, which was published in 2005, hasn't been updated once, even though I have hundreds of notes on the margins of my own copy. Talk about frustrating. The problem is that self publishing is a lot of work if you want to do it properly. It requires a large up-front investment, which is difficult to justify if you're only going to write a book or two. I spent months learning the publishing business, building the processes and the software. To support my continuous publishing ideas, I built a fully-automated workflow based around DocBook, from which I produce print, screen, and various other digital formats. While I enjoyed all of it, most people wouldn't. I was also lucky to have the support of my wife, who is actually managing the company, as well as the sales and marketing activities. Experiencing all this, we are now transforming our publishing company to to provide low-cost support to authors who wish to keep control and a big chunk of their royalties, but also to focus on writing (rather than publishing and the other repetitive activities). Lean is the word here, and we pass most of the savings to authors. That's where I think the future of technical publishing will be.
hucker 16y ago
Pull requests is an awesome way to fix errors and spelling mistakes, and the fork that is aiming to translate the book to brazilian portuguese is also very interesting. What I really hope to see catch on though, is the format that this book is written in. There is definitely a shortage of technical resources that is longer and more in-depth than an online tutorial, yet shorter and more to-the-point than the full fledged 500-pager. I feel like reading this book gave me just enough info to make an adequately informed decision on whether or not MongoDB is what I'm looking for and worth looking into, or that it isn't the fit for whatever application I'm writing. Great work!
joshuacc 16y ago
I've no idea if it would be work, but I'd love to see a web app for authors and editors that used git on the back end to manage things.
perlgeek 16y ago
writing != publishing. Where does the publishing come into play?
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- antirez 16y ago
  Kindle, Lulu-alike, and after you have a book written likely it will be easy to do a deal with a traditional publisher as well. The rule should be IMHO: first write then understand how to publish. This gives the power to the author. The other way around gives the power to the publisher.
- latch 16y ago
  Publishing is about "making information available to the general public". I think two translations to different languages and one conversion to a different format directly accomplishes that goal.
  - cakeface 16y ago
    Uploading a file somewhere public is barely publishing. There are issues of formats, making it easy to find with search, marketing and metadata to name a few.
simonsarris 16y ago
This isn't exactly publishing. Serious question: How would this be different (and better) than Wikibooks from the Wikimedia foundation? http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Main_Page http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Main_Page
- jedsmith 16y ago
  If you put your book on Wikibooks, you don't own it.
  - aplusbi 16y ago
    Do you have a citation? I checked wikibook's Terms of Use and it didn't say anything about giving up ownership.
    - jedsmith 16y ago
      I should have phrased it better. Thank you for making me go look. http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks:Copyrights#Contributors.27_rights_and_obligations http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks:Copyrights#Contributo... Your submissions are automatically and irrevocably licensed GFDL and CC-BY-SA. Copyright isn't transferred, but since you cannot revoke the licensing you have (in effect) given up ownership.
      - brennen 16y ago
        You have in effect given out an irrevocable license to your work. This isn't practically or legally the same as giving up ownership, though it's certainly ceding a sizable measure of control.
draegtun 16y ago
The Modern Perl Book was also written via Github: https://github.com/chromatic/modern_perl_book/network https://github.com/chromatic/modern_perl_book/network
kneath 16y ago
https://github.com/schacon/git-scribe https://github.com/schacon/git-scribe Highly recommend you check this out. We're pretty interested in this idea and definitely want to see it take off.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- mazsa 16y ago
  GUI pls!!
- draegtun 16y ago
  Very nice. The Modern Perl Book I linked to elsewhere here also comes with publishing tools for producing PDF, LaTex, ePub & HTML and (I believe) was used for the finished printed book (http://onyxneon.com/books/modern_perl/ http://onyxneon.com/books/modern_perl/).
kodablah 16y ago
I wonder when people are gonna write "choose your own adventure" books w/ github. Could call it "fork your own adventure"
filiwickers 16y ago
This is cool but I'm not sure if it's really publishing nor is it something new. I help manage a large publishers proprietary platform for online textbooks. We use svn to hold all of our books. We then serve them to their site in an online reading app. If we were to remove the front end and point users to our svn repo I doubt one could call that publishing. Sure we would be providing informtion, but until we add the wrapper that makes it useful, it is not published. Could you call an unbound book published? Providing that platform for reading creates more value for the user. It also makes it easier for the author to pass their value through their publisher to the reader.
banooker 16y ago
Sounds familiar: http://www.inkling.com/blog/art-content-engineering/ http://www.inkling.com/blog/art-content-engineering/
freedrull 16y ago
My schoolmates and I wrote a collaborative paper using git back in college. It was great for critical feedback, sometimes we would delete each other's entire paragraphs in a single commit.

29 points by latch 16y ago

It would definitely be handy for technical books but I can't see this being widely adopted because most technical books aren't free. Fixing errors and sending a pull request via an interface we all already know would be much easier than tracking down author contact info. Having said that this might be more readable as a wiki.

antirez 16y ago
I'm currently writing a "commercial" book (the redis book), and I'm every day more confident that the future of many tech books is self publishing. You get hardly rich writing a tech book for a traditional publisher, it is a lot of work for little money most of the time (you are not going to sell, usually, a large number of tech books, they are not "best sellers", and the percentage you earn is very low). So after all, why not self publish? You have more control on what you write, you earn a lot more if you publish the book on the Kindle for every sold copy, you are free to provide the book for free on the web, and so forth. From this point of view github is a viable way to handle the writing of a book. What is needed is a license that allows everybody to contribute, so that the electronic version is free for everybody, but only the "main" authors have the right to use the book for commercial purposes (Kindle, Printed, ...). Otherwise if the book is under a non free license it can be still interesting to use github in a public repository to get feedbacks, comments, and so forth. We'll see what happens but my next book will be a self-published one for sure, written using a github public repo, if I'll ever write another one :)
- JonnieCache 16y ago
  >I'm currently writing a "commercial" book (the redis book) Nice! When do you think that's going to be out? (Horrible question to ask an author I know.) And if it's not self published, who is publishing it?
  - antirez 16y ago
    Not sure, but I think it will be out this summer (sorry, unable to be more specific). It is published with O'Reilly.
- ivanr 16y ago
  I wrote my first book for a traditional publisher. Later, with my second book, I decided to effectively self-publish, for two reasons: 1) the money is better and 2) I wanted to be able to update my books whenever I had something to say. My first book, which was published in 2005, hasn't been updated once, even though I have hundreds of notes on the margins of my own copy. Talk about frustrating. The problem is that self publishing is a lot of work if you want to do it properly. It requires a large up-front investment, which is difficult to justify if you're only going to write a book or two. I spent months learning the publishing business, building the processes and the software. To support my continuous publishing ideas, I built a fully-automated workflow based around DocBook, from which I produce print, screen, and various other digital formats. While I enjoyed all of it, most people wouldn't. I was also lucky to have the support of my wife, who is actually managing the company, as well as the sales and marketing activities. Experiencing all this, we are now transforming our publishing company to to provide low-cost support to authors who wish to keep control and a big chunk of their royalties, but also to focus on writing (rather than publishing and the other repetitive activities). Lean is the word here, and we pass most of the savings to authors. That's where I think the future of technical publishing will be.

hucker 16y ago

Pull requests is an awesome way to fix errors and spelling mistakes, and the fork that is aiming to translate the book to brazilian portuguese is also very interesting. What I really hope to see catch on though, is the format that this book is written in. There is definitely a shortage of technical resources that is longer and more in-depth than an online tutorial, yet shorter and more to-the-point than the full fledged 500-pager. I feel like reading this book gave me just enough info to make an adequately informed decision on whether or not MongoDB is what I'm looking for and worth looking into, or that it isn't the fit for whatever application I'm writing. Great work!

joshuacc 16y ago

I've no idea if it would be work, but I'd love to see a web app for authors and editors that used git on the back end to manage things.

perlgeek 16y ago

writing != publishing. Where does the publishing come into play?

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
antirez 16y ago
Kindle, Lulu-alike, and after you have a book written likely it will be easy to do a deal with a traditional publisher as well. The rule should be IMHO: first write then understand how to publish. This gives the power to the author. The other way around gives the power to the publisher.
latch 16y ago
Publishing is about "making information available to the general public". I think two translations to different languages and one conversion to a different format directly accomplishes that goal.
- cakeface 16y ago
  Uploading a file somewhere public is barely publishing. There are issues of formats, making it easy to find with search, marketing and metadata to name a few.

simonsarris 16y ago

This isn't exactly publishing. Serious question: How would this be different (and better) than Wikibooks from the Wikimedia foundation? http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Main_Page http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Main_Page

jedsmith 16y ago
If you put your book on Wikibooks, you don't own it.
- aplusbi 16y ago
  Do you have a citation? I checked wikibook's Terms of Use and it didn't say anything about giving up ownership.
  - jedsmith 16y ago
    I should have phrased it better. Thank you for making me go look. http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks:Copyrights#Contributors.27_rights_and_obligations http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks:Copyrights#Contributo... Your submissions are automatically and irrevocably licensed GFDL and CC-BY-SA. Copyright isn't transferred, but since you cannot revoke the licensing you have (in effect) given up ownership.
    - brennen 16y ago
      You have in effect given out an irrevocable license to your work. This isn't practically or legally the same as giving up ownership, though it's certainly ceding a sizable measure of control.

draegtun 16y ago

The Modern Perl Book was also written via Github: https://github.com/chromatic/modern_perl_book/network https://github.com/chromatic/modern_perl_book/network

kneath 16y ago

https://github.com/schacon/git-scribe https://github.com/schacon/git-scribe Highly recommend you check this out. We're pretty interested in this idea and definitely want to see it take off.

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
mazsa 16y ago
GUI pls!!
draegtun 16y ago
Very nice. The Modern Perl Book I linked to elsewhere here also comes with publishing tools for producing PDF, LaTex, ePub & HTML and (I believe) was used for the finished printed book (http://onyxneon.com/books/modern_perl/ http://onyxneon.com/books/modern_perl/).

kodablah 16y ago

I wonder when people are gonna write "choose your own adventure" books w/ github. Could call it "fork your own adventure"

filiwickers 16y ago

This is cool but I'm not sure if it's really publishing nor is it something new. I help manage a large publishers proprietary platform for online textbooks. We use svn to hold all of our books. We then serve them to their site in an online reading app. If we were to remove the front end and point users to our svn repo I doubt one could call that publishing. Sure we would be providing informtion, but until we add the wrapper that makes it useful, it is not published. Could you call an unbound book published? Providing that platform for reading creates more value for the user. It also makes it easier for the author to pass their value through their publisher to the reader.

banooker 16y ago

Sounds familiar: http://www.inkling.com/blog/art-content-engineering/ http://www.inkling.com/blog/art-content-engineering/

freedrull 16y ago

My schoolmates and I wrote a collaborative paper using git back in college. It was great for critical feedback, sometimes we would delete each other's entire paragraphs in a single commit.