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?

[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?"

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.