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

Star Wars Beta?

[fembots]

Maybe Star Wars should be released in beta? This way nobody can really argue who shot first.

For a guide/manual book, beta is probably a good idea because the ultimate goal is for readers to make use of the book easily.

For a story book, instead of releasing beta of a pseudo-complete book, author should release it chapter by chapter, and change the story direction based on reader feedback, in another word, Plot-Beta rather than Writing-Beta.

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.

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:Star Wars Beta?

[Ambush Commander]

For a story book, instead of releasing beta of a pseudo-complete book, author should release it chapter by chapter, and change the story direction based on reader feedback, in another word, Plot-Beta rather than Writing-Beta.

That would be a disaster. ;-) Seriously, though, a lot of the time, the criteria for getting a book published simply is whether or not it's finished or not. Young, struggling writer = Unfinished Novels. Lots of them. Old, struggling writers = Finished Novels that sold about 100 copies. Let's not change the problem.

They probably thought about it long and hard

[3770]

With people having the electronic format available there's a few factors to consider:

1) There will be more word of mouth, so more people will hear about it
2) Some people will buy it because they read some of it and like the content but prefer the format of the book (so that they can read it in the bathroom maybe, what do i know).
3) Some people will read it and decide that they either don't like it, or that they are satisfied with just having the book in its electronic format.

What the publisher in this case is that item 1 and 2 will add more buyers than item 3 will cost them.

Paranoid College $tudent

[richdun]

Yeah, this may just be the paranoid college student in me, but why do I see this being taken advantage of for textbooks? It's bad enough they release a new version just when you're finally ready to sell the book back to your campus bookstore, but updating possibly even quicker, new editions may keep coming out mid-course.

If they only make you pay once for the beta and for the full version when it is ready, as this one appears to work, that's okay I guess, but this could get way out of hand.

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.

Counterpoint

[FunWithHeadlines]

You make a valid point, but mostly when a committee actually tries to sit down and write something. In contrast, soliciting feedback is an author's best friend. The readers of the author's work give comments that might not be valid, but they just might be. Grammatical errors are found, or changes in tone, or just hard to read sections. All of this is very valuable, and the reason editors exist.

This is a way of open-sourcing, so to speak, the editorial process. And as long as the author has final say ("What? That's a stupid suggestion!") it can still read as one person's voice, but a voice that has been refined by many eyes to eliminate the inevitable mistakes.