Publishing
Apr. 3rd, 2006 12:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cdybedahlLately, thoughts about publishing have been bouncing around in my head. Mostly caused by one particular book: Rails Recipes by Chad Fowler, published by The Pragmatic Programmers. It's a very useful little book with clear instructions on how to accomplish a number of common tasks with Ruby on Rails. Several things from it are now included in the application I'm writing for work, in more or less mutated form.
It's also currently scheduled to be published in May this year.
When the book was first announced, I placed a pre-order for the so-called "Combo Pack". Which means that once it comes out, I'll not only get a physical paper copy of the book but also a PDF copy. You can buy either version separately if you want, but it's suprisingly convenient to have them both. And there is the thing that you get beta copies of the PDF while the book is being worked on, as well as errata updates after publication. For a technical book on a fast-moving subject, both these things are huge advantages.
Oh, and their PDFs don't have any kind of DRM, encryption, weird proprietary formats or any other use-inhibiting technology. The one and only thing in that vein is that the PDF has my name imprinted at the bottom of each page. I've bought a handful of PDF-format books so far, and will almost certainly buy more, but I will never buy any that uses "copy protection".
But that wasn't really what I wanted to wibble about. What's been, in a way, bothering me is the way the Pragmatic Programmers publish their books. And that's not "bother" as in I have a problem with it, but as in it's different and I haven't yet really got a handle on the ramifications of the difference.
One difference is that they're fast. As mentioned above, Rails Recipes is still being written, yet I have no doubt it will come out next month. To be able to do the beta-PDF thing, they must have an extremely short production pipeline (because layout-wise, those versions look exactly the same as the published versions). A blog posting I read hints that their process is akin to putting the marked-up manuscript in the right place and running make. Which makes a whole lot of sense to me, but it sure isn't how most publishers do it. Not even those who specialise in technical publication. One of the main reasons I don't buy very many technical books these days is that for the most part they're already obsolete by the time they get printed, which makes them pretty darn useless.
Between what the Pragmatic Programmers are doing and Steve Jackson Games' online publishing (they also sell un-DRMed PDF, and I have bought from them too) are doing, I have a feeling that the entire publishing world are in for interesting times in the coming decade or so.
But there's still something about this that I can't quite put my finger on.
It's also currently scheduled to be published in May this year.
When the book was first announced, I placed a pre-order for the so-called "Combo Pack". Which means that once it comes out, I'll not only get a physical paper copy of the book but also a PDF copy. You can buy either version separately if you want, but it's suprisingly convenient to have them both. And there is the thing that you get beta copies of the PDF while the book is being worked on, as well as errata updates after publication. For a technical book on a fast-moving subject, both these things are huge advantages.
Oh, and their PDFs don't have any kind of DRM, encryption, weird proprietary formats or any other use-inhibiting technology. The one and only thing in that vein is that the PDF has my name imprinted at the bottom of each page. I've bought a handful of PDF-format books so far, and will almost certainly buy more, but I will never buy any that uses "copy protection".
But that wasn't really what I wanted to wibble about. What's been, in a way, bothering me is the way the Pragmatic Programmers publish their books. And that's not "bother" as in I have a problem with it, but as in it's different and I haven't yet really got a handle on the ramifications of the difference.
One difference is that they're fast. As mentioned above, Rails Recipes is still being written, yet I have no doubt it will come out next month. To be able to do the beta-PDF thing, they must have an extremely short production pipeline (because layout-wise, those versions look exactly the same as the published versions). A blog posting I read hints that their process is akin to putting the marked-up manuscript in the right place and running make. Which makes a whole lot of sense to me, but it sure isn't how most publishers do it. Not even those who specialise in technical publication. One of the main reasons I don't buy very many technical books these days is that for the most part they're already obsolete by the time they get printed, which makes them pretty darn useless.
Between what the Pragmatic Programmers are doing and Steve Jackson Games' online publishing (they also sell un-DRMed PDF, and I have bought from them too) are doing, I have a feeling that the entire publishing world are in for interesting times in the coming decade or so.
But there's still something about this that I can't quite put my finger on.
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(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-03 03:54 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-03 04:43 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-03 09:40 pm (UTC)