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

Re:Star Wars Beta?

[yotto]

I like that idea. I post all of my fiction online for free to anybody who can figure out how to ask me for the password (password protected = not published, if you must know. That's important when talking to a publisher) and most of my writings I consider to be "beta" versions of the books/stories. They're beta until someone buys them. Until then, I take all feedback I get and use it to make the story better.
It's worked for me so far (though I haven't sold anything, I've gotten better feedback after incorporating others' suggestions) and it feels good to "give away" fiction in this way but still maintain the ability to publish if a publisher ever shows an interest.