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Change The (Dead-Tree Publishing) World... ...one publisher at a time. Let Wrox and others know what you really want to see in technical books.	Trends: Into eBay, Out Of Microsoft I'm not the only customer checking out of Microsoft's revenue enhancement plans. Even investors are making a change. Also, eBay, coming soon to a TV near you.	Thin Books & The Linux Cookbook Thin books I'd like to see: "Linux Firewalls w/ iptables," "Secure Remote Computing w/ SSH & VNC," "Illustrated Guide To ZPTs," and "From ASP to Zope: Zope For ASP Programmers"
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Good Conversation

This week, Andy McKay over at ZopeZen posted a well-thought out response to my recent call for comments on what people would like to see from technical publishers.

If you will, please take a moment to read his excellent comments. I've posted my response on his site and include it below for my and your future reference.

Andy's comments turned my head: instead of Thin Books, should I be thinking of lots of specialized magazines, independent zines like Py?

Thinking Out Loud Again

Andy,

I'm a big fan of the online Zope Book, Mark Pilgrim's online Dive Into Python, and Micheal Bernstein & Scott Robertson's all-paper Zope Bible -- unlike you, that one *is* around while I'm learning Zope and it has been a terrific help. I'll review it on my site as well once I'm through it.

You're right that my suggested titles, like *The Illustrated Guide To Zope Page Templates* are incredibly narrow in focus, for limited audiences. That was the point of the exercise, and it is so far not even an exercise, just a thought experiment: Can a profit be made publishing thin books for narrow audiences? Can they be inexpensive too?

The important words there are *profit* and *inexpensive* and *books* and *publishing.*

• *Profit* because I totally agree with you: "I'd love to write a book, but without a financial incentive, I have to go and do work that brings money in to pay the bills." Agreed. We all have to eat.
• *Inexpensive* is important because I'd want to sell a lot of them, get them in front of a lot of readers, have them be popular enough to make an impact, and help expand the community. Er, and turn a profit.
• I stress *Books* for two reasons. First, and this is key: People Pay For Books. We are reluctant to pay for web sites, PDFs, weblogs, online subscriptions. But we've been paying for books all our lives. Second, also key, and maybe self-evident from the last sentence: online docs are not books. I love 'em, I write 'em, I visit 'em, I read 'em. But they're not books. Even when I printed the online version of The Cluetrain Manifesto and slapped it into a duo-tang, that wasn't quite a book.
• Finally, I stress *Publishing* because I've heard from a lot of writers lately (and your anecdote) who aren't exactly making a living at it. Good writers. There are bookstores and distributors and printers, well, publishers, all sharing the same pie. If there's one thing the web and weblogging have taught us that we don't need all of those middlemen, all of that overhead, to connect with an audience. So I would endeavour to make the leap into self-publishing. I've seen some tremendous self-published works lately.

You make a terrific point about the fixed costs of dead tree publishing. I hope that if I self-publish I can manage and minimize those costs - not obliterate them, because someone's got to proofread, and the book needs to be professionally printed. If I avoid Print On Demand services, my as yet unconfirmed estimates are that it would cost thousands of (Canadian) dollars to get even a Thin Book published.

And print editions, like The Zope Book, do get out of date. Computer books have a Best Before date, no doubt about it.

I've thought a lot about these goals and these challenges since your post, and tried to figure out how to get the best of all worlds.

• It has to be on paper, so interested readers will pay for it.
• It has to be thin, to fit my longstanding vision.
• It should be as cheap as it can be, but profitable, or I'd eventually have to go work in the mines.
• I should be able to self-publish so there's not a big corporation between me and the reader.
• It would be nice if it could be updated regularly.

That's starting to sound a bit like a magazine, isn't it? A journal, and newsletter, a zine... not a book, sadly. Not as impressive to our parents, then, but it meets all of the other goals.

And if it *did* turn out to be profitable, then we could keep doing it. Keep writing, keep helping the Zope or Python or PostgreSQL community grow, and keep feeding ourselves and our families.

More on this as it develops... here and on http://www.skippingdot.net.

Thanks for the thoughts, Andy.

Shane

Doing The Research

Since then, in my few spare moments outside of client work, I'm taking a real look at what I want to write, publish, and how to go about it.

I lean towards self publishing, so if anyone out there has any good links or experiences to share, please do so.

Bryan Richard, the one-man force behind the exciting and groundbreaking zine Py, has also been a great source of reality checks, much more than a sounding board -- like Andy before him, I'm pleased to call him a new friend.

What a wonderful web we weave, eh?

- Shane McChesney

  

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This Page was last updated: Friday, September 13, 2002 at 11:11:55 PM
This page was originally posted: 9/13/2002; 11:08:42 PM.
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