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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:

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
Sorry if my tone came across as being more irritated than I actually was; and I appreciate your clarifications. Also, I didn't notice that you were mentioned in the grandparent; I probably would have interpreted your remarks more charitably if I had known that you were involved in the leanpub project. Love On Bullshit! But that takes me back to my original point; I love my Kindle, have read all of cstross's articles on the challenge of ebooks, and don't have any problem calling an ebook a "real" book. And from both a technical and philosophical perspective, I understand and sympathize with leanpub (and thanks for the links; this is the first I've heard of your company, and it's great to see you've put so much thought into it). My original point was simply that I can appreciate the interative nature of writing a manuscript, and getting feedback is essential. But I think there are large swaths of literature which are simply not suitable for the average consumer to provide that kind of feedback, because the very process of reading the draft ruins your ability to enjoy the end result. And since many of my colleagues in the software business don't tend to read those sorts of books (or ebooks), I probably should have made more of an effort making my point, rather than being snarky.
- peterarmstrong 15y ago
  Thanks for replying. I agree that publishing in-progress is an easier sell to a technical book author or a business book author (or any non-fiction author, frankly) than to a novelist. This is especially true since in a non-fiction book where the subject matter is changing so fast, publishing in-progress is the best way to avoid your words being obsolete when read. However, for a fiction author, publishing in-progress has its merits too. First, given the number of writers in the world, it's a mathematical certainty that there's a really good story that exists only on some author's laptop right now, and all that s/he has to show for it is rejection letters. (Or the author could be so shy that they haven't even submitted it to anyone yet.) Lean publishing on Leanpub could help this author get their work out there and overcome the fear of publishing. (It would be really cool if one day Leanpub enables some great work of literature to be discovered...) But publishing is special. Even if you've been creating lots of previews and have no interested readers, the first time you click the publish button and make your book available for purchase it is a scary thing to do. (This is a lot more so than tweeting or blogging.) I was even nervous clicking publish on my in-progress manifesto book, and I'm the cofounder of Leanpub! I think this is because most authors (myself included) have a deep respect for books and publishing. Saying that your words are worth reading is one thing, saying that they constitute a book worth reading is a big deal. That said, we believe that the Lean Startup principles do apply to books, and that releasing more often can create a better work. Publishing in-progress can give authors some of the feedback that really good editors can provide. With my first book, I actually got really good feedback both from readers when I self-published and from my technical editor once I signed with a publisher after the first book version was done. But frankly, the reader feedback was more important: a reader found a security bug in my code, I got to ask my readers how important they thought REST would be to them (this was many years ago), etc, etc. Now, most readers gave me no feedback. This is expected. But the level of feedback I got from the most engaged readers was superior to what I would have gotten from even a good development editor. (The technical depth of these readers was equal to that of the technical reviewers, who are only typically engaged near the end of a technical book's development.) Finally, publishing in-progress has another advantage: it helps avoid writer's block. This is because once you get in the habit of publishing, it removes the fear from it and just leaves the endorphin rush. This is similar to how continuous deployment in lean startups works, or how regular exercise at the gym works. Lean publishing makes releasing new versions a habit, and habits are powerful things...

jstclair 15y ago

Sorry if my tone came across as being more irritated than I actually was; and I appreciate your clarifications. Also, I didn't notice that you were mentioned in the grandparent; I probably would have interpreted your remarks more charitably if I had known that you were involved in the leanpub project. Love On Bullshit! But that takes me back to my original point; I love my Kindle, have read all of cstross's articles on the challenge of ebooks, and don't have any problem calling an ebook a "real" book. And from both a technical and philosophical perspective, I understand and sympathize with leanpub (and thanks for the links; this is the first I've heard of your company, and it's great to see you've put so much thought into it). My original point was simply that I can appreciate the interative nature of writing a manuscript, and getting feedback is essential. But I think there are large swaths of literature which are simply not suitable for the average consumer to provide that kind of feedback, because the very process of reading the draft ruins your ability to enjoy the end result. And since many of my colleagues in the software business don't tend to read those sorts of books (or ebooks), I probably should have made more of an effort making my point, rather than being snarky.

peterarmstrong 15y ago
Thanks for replying. I agree that publishing in-progress is an easier sell to a technical book author or a business book author (or any non-fiction author, frankly) than to a novelist. This is especially true since in a non-fiction book where the subject matter is changing so fast, publishing in-progress is the best way to avoid your words being obsolete when read. However, for a fiction author, publishing in-progress has its merits too. First, given the number of writers in the world, it's a mathematical certainty that there's a really good story that exists only on some author's laptop right now, and all that s/he has to show for it is rejection letters. (Or the author could be so shy that they haven't even submitted it to anyone yet.) Lean publishing on Leanpub could help this author get their work out there and overcome the fear of publishing. (It would be really cool if one day Leanpub enables some great work of literature to be discovered...) But publishing is special. Even if you've been creating lots of previews and have no interested readers, the first time you click the publish button and make your book available for purchase it is a scary thing to do. (This is a lot more so than tweeting or blogging.) I was even nervous clicking publish on my in-progress manifesto book, and I'm the cofounder of Leanpub! I think this is because most authors (myself included) have a deep respect for books and publishing. Saying that your words are worth reading is one thing, saying that they constitute a book worth reading is a big deal. That said, we believe that the Lean Startup principles do apply to books, and that releasing more often can create a better work. Publishing in-progress can give authors some of the feedback that really good editors can provide. With my first book, I actually got really good feedback both from readers when I self-published and from my technical editor once I signed with a publisher after the first book version was done. But frankly, the reader feedback was more important: a reader found a security bug in my code, I got to ask my readers how important they thought REST would be to them (this was many years ago), etc, etc. Now, most readers gave me no feedback. This is expected. But the level of feedback I got from the most engaged readers was superior to what I would have gotten from even a good development editor. (The technical depth of these readers was equal to that of the technical reviewers, who are only typically engaged near the end of a technical book's development.) Finally, publishing in-progress has another advantage: it helps avoid writer's block. This is because once you get in the habit of publishing, it removes the fear from it and just leaves the endorphin rush. This is similar to how continuous deployment in lean startups works, or how regular exercise at the gym works. Lean publishing makes releasing new versions a habit, and habits are powerful things...