Books in Beta Form

congaflum writes "The Pragmatic Bookshelf recently released the second beta of their upcoming book Agile Web Development with Rails. By releasing the book to the public in beta form, the authors are able to gather feedback about the books content from a larger audience that would normally be the case. Readers get to influence the direction on the books content by posting feedback to the publisher's website. And of course there's the benefit of simply getting to read the book early. Could beta-version books be a sign of future changes in the commercial publishing industry? And with the availability of things like print on demand these days, how about books that are much more frequently revised (why buy a year-old Edition 1 of something, if you can have Edition 1.1.18?)"

Comments

First Post (beta 0.8b)

[Anonymous Coward]

Please give feedback on the quality of this post.

Re:First Post (beta 0.8b)

[Anonymous Coward]

Title incorrect, should be Third Post (beta 0.8.1b)

Re:First Post (beta 0.8b)

[NotoriousQ]

Although your post uses the correct grammar, the idea has been explored multiple times. You should revise your thesis, and post it again in the next thread.

Re:First Post (beta 0.8b)

[hoovernj]

Is it a Perpetual Beta?

Re:Star Wars Beta?

[Cruciform]

That would be a logistical nightmare. Especially for someone writing for the geek crowd.

"Can you add more swordfights? And sex?"

"I want a unicorn! And a really hot naked chick! and sex!"

"I want a hot chick that gets into swordfights and when she's done, has sex with a unicorn! Oh, and could you throw in a star destroyer too?"

Re:An old idea

[macaulay805]

This seems a lot like what they did in the 17th cent. with the passing around of manuscripts before publishing--- just an observation.

I knew that /. was bad about posting dupes, but this is just getting out of hand ...