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"A rose by any other name..." I'm the author of 2 traditionally-published books. ISBNs, dead trees, the works. The first one (Flexible Rails) was something I

"A rose by any other name..." I'm the author of 2 traditionally-published books. ISBNs, dead trees, the works. The first one (Flexible Rails) was something I self-published on Lulu as I wrote it. It started at about 200 pages and ended up over 500 pages before I did a deal with a traditional publisher. At what point was it a book? My publisher approached me about publishing my book, not my manuscript (or rose). People all over the world bought my book when it was just a PDF. It made my mortgage payments for a while. In fact about 70% of my profit over my book's lifetime was from PDF sales. As its author, I considered it a book when I first published it. My readers did too. Publishers like O'Reilly, the Prags and Manning probably consider their beta / early access books to be books. Finally (since I'm typing on a phone), ebooks are to physical books like web apps are to shrinkwrapped software: you can do way more releases. At what point is a release real? Our answer is it is when you have paying customers. That is a commitment to your readers, and it helps you write and keeps you motivated. So, to sum up the ramble: in 5 years almost all books will be ebooks, most will have multiple releases (including before being "finished"), and this author's opinion will be quaint.

jstclair 15y ago
What you're saying makes perfect sense when applied to technical/non-fiction, but as Stross is writing sci-fi/horror, I'm -- to be honest -- a bit irritated by your use of "quaint." What does multiple releases have to do with a mystery novel? "The killer was Dr. Melville in v1, but I fixed that in v2"? And in anticipation, multiple releases != releasing a chapter at a time. That's a serial, and goes back at least to Dickens. I'm pretty sure that Stephen King tried out a "pay-per-chapter" novel once, but believe it wasn't finished. And even in the case of serials, for most authors, that's just the path to complete mediocrity; unless you know exactly where the story is going and how you're going to get there, an editor is still essential. Are you going to pull the previous three chapter releases because you've decided to put them in the middle of the book? Or refund people for the second chapter because you've decided to drop the character that it introduced? Will there be a lot of self-published ebooks in 5 years? Yeah, maybe; but the idea that publishing houses is going the way of the dodo, that they deliver no value to the consumer, is best confined to a specific set of genres.
- ErrantX 15y ago
  Well, as an aspiring Fantasy writer I fully intend to release my first book in "beta" and refine it over a number of months :) In my experience of writing occasional short stories online, Sci-Fi/Fantasy readers love updates. I mean; quite often as a fantasy reader myself I think "hmm, I wonder how that character got there" or "what is her backstory". The ability for the writer to insert those things, fix plot/canon errors (as well as spelling/grammar) and other things pointed out by the reader is really cool (Don't get me wrong; whilst I enjoy those prospects I'm not suggesting traditional publishing and "hardware" books (:P) will die - I hope not!)
- DanBC 15y ago
  Stross will agree that some of his dead tree books (Jennifer Morgue in UK) are full of typos / errors. I'm baffled why the Kindle doesn't allow crowd-sourcing to mark these errors for fixing in later versions, and then allow people to download the new version over their old version.
  - jstclair 15y ago
    Completely agreed on the crowd-sourcing of typos, that would be very useful. I just got an updated version of Programming Clojure, and the experience was wonderful.
- peterarmstrong 15y ago
  Sorry, I wasn't trying to be irritating. What I was intending by the use of "quaint" was to say that the following ideas will be considered quaint in 5 years: - "ebooks aren't 'real' books" - "in-progress books aren't 'real' books" I did not mean to imply the following: - "any book that's is published on paper is quaint" - "any book that is finished before being published is quaint" You brought up Dickens and serials. I totally agree with you! I've been bringing up Dickens when I've been talking about Leanpub to authors (and a room full of publishing industry people) for years. I am absolutely not claiming that Leanpub invented serials, self-publishing or beta books. Serials in fiction go back to Dickens, Arthur Conan Doyle, Arabian Nights, etc. What we are calling "Lean Publishing" is the act of self-publishing an in-progress book. Specifically, here's my full definition: "Lean Publishing is the act of self-publishing a book while you are writing it, evolving the book with feedback from your readers and finishing a first draft before optionally using the traditional publishing workflow." The notion of self publishing is not new, and the Pragmatic Programmers, O'Reilly and Manning have all published and sold in-progress technical books for years. I think the Pragmatic Programmers were the ones who did it well first. I wrote a manifesto about Lean Publishing, which is where the above definition is from. It's freely available here: http://leanpub.com/manifesto http://leanpub.com/manifesto I'm also selling an in-progress book of it, of course. My intention is not to promote that book, so I won't link to it, but to bring it up to ask questions about whether you would consider it a book. It's short: it's currently 50 pages, about the length of On Bullshit (a real book). Almost all the content is in the free manifesto, which is an essay on a web page. So is Lean Publishing a real book? People have bought the ebook and read it on computers, Kindles and iPads. If it's not real yet, when will it be real? When it's printed? When it has an editor? Finally, you focus a lot on mediocrity and the role of publishers. I've thought a lot about this too; my ideas are here: http://leanpub.com/manifesto#what-does-lean-publising-mean-for-publishers http://leanpub.com/manifesto#what-does-lean-publising-mean-f...

jstclair 15y ago

What you're saying makes perfect sense when applied to technical/non-fiction, but as Stross is writing sci-fi/horror, I'm -- to be honest -- a bit irritated by your use of "quaint." What does multiple releases have to do with a mystery novel? "The killer was Dr. Melville in v1, but I fixed that in v2"? And in anticipation, multiple releases != releasing a chapter at a time. That's a serial, and goes back at least to Dickens. I'm pretty sure that Stephen King tried out a "pay-per-chapter" novel once, but believe it wasn't finished. And even in the case of serials, for most authors, that's just the path to complete mediocrity; unless you know exactly where the story is going and how you're going to get there, an editor is still essential. Are you going to pull the previous three chapter releases because you've decided to put them in the middle of the book? Or refund people for the second chapter because you've decided to drop the character that it introduced? Will there be a lot of self-published ebooks in 5 years? Yeah, maybe; but the idea that publishing houses is going the way of the dodo, that they deliver no value to the consumer, is best confined to a specific set of genres.

ErrantX 15y ago
Well, as an aspiring Fantasy writer I fully intend to release my first book in "beta" and refine it over a number of months :) In my experience of writing occasional short stories online, Sci-Fi/Fantasy readers love updates. I mean; quite often as a fantasy reader myself I think "hmm, I wonder how that character got there" or "what is her backstory". The ability for the writer to insert those things, fix plot/canon errors (as well as spelling/grammar) and other things pointed out by the reader is really cool (Don't get me wrong; whilst I enjoy those prospects I'm not suggesting traditional publishing and "hardware" books (:P) will die - I hope not!)
DanBC 15y ago
Stross will agree that some of his dead tree books (Jennifer Morgue in UK) are full of typos / errors. I'm baffled why the Kindle doesn't allow crowd-sourcing to mark these errors for fixing in later versions, and then allow people to download the new version over their old version.
- jstclair 15y ago
  Completely agreed on the crowd-sourcing of typos, that would be very useful. I just got an updated version of Programming Clojure, and the experience was wonderful.
peterarmstrong 15y ago
Sorry, I wasn't trying to be irritating. What I was intending by the use of "quaint" was to say that the following ideas will be considered quaint in 5 years: - "ebooks aren't 'real' books" - "in-progress books aren't 'real' books" I did not mean to imply the following: - "any book that's is published on paper is quaint" - "any book that is finished before being published is quaint" You brought up Dickens and serials. I totally agree with you! I've been bringing up Dickens when I've been talking about Leanpub to authors (and a room full of publishing industry people) for years. I am absolutely not claiming that Leanpub invented serials, self-publishing or beta books. Serials in fiction go back to Dickens, Arthur Conan Doyle, Arabian Nights, etc. What we are calling "Lean Publishing" is the act of self-publishing an in-progress book. Specifically, here's my full definition: "Lean Publishing is the act of self-publishing a book while you are writing it, evolving the book with feedback from your readers and finishing a first draft before optionally using the traditional publishing workflow." The notion of self publishing is not new, and the Pragmatic Programmers, O'Reilly and Manning have all published and sold in-progress technical books for years. I think the Pragmatic Programmers were the ones who did it well first. I wrote a manifesto about Lean Publishing, which is where the above definition is from. It's freely available here: http://leanpub.com/manifesto http://leanpub.com/manifesto I'm also selling an in-progress book of it, of course. My intention is not to promote that book, so I won't link to it, but to bring it up to ask questions about whether you would consider it a book. It's short: it's currently 50 pages, about the length of On Bullshit (a real book). Almost all the content is in the free manifesto, which is an essay on a web page. So is Lean Publishing a real book? People have bought the ebook and read it on computers, Kindles and iPads. If it's not real yet, when will it be real? When it's printed? When it has an editor? Finally, you focus a lot on mediocrity and the role of publishers. I've thought a lot about this too; my ideas are here: http://leanpub.com/manifesto#what-does-lean-publising-mean-for-publishers http://leanpub.com/manifesto#what-does-lean-publising-mean-f...