Discursive: Tim O'Brien: Open Source Writing: Part I: A Few Problems with Publishing... - 1 views
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The idea behind this book is that open source writing should be no different than open source software.
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In other words, if you are writing a book that needs to be printed in lots of five thousand and shipped to book stores, your process is always affected by the idea of the book as a static, physical object.
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This attachment to the physical object is driven by the economic realities of the publishing industry, but it creates an odd situation when you are writing about a rapidly moving open source project.
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Successful open source projects usually don't have a set release date, software like Maven is released when it is ready.
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It just seems odd that we have to dance around publisher deadlines when we are writing books about collaborative, unpredictable, schedule-less open source projects.
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These days, publishers don't like to commit to books that are not going to move a significant number of copies. It is becoming more and more difficult to sell a good book to a publisher because as the open source world continues to evolve every topic becomes a niche topic with a limited audience.
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You don't get a chance to interact, and you certainly don't establish any sort of persistent HTTP 1.1 connection with your readership. Publishers provide some tools to enable this support: forums, blogs, etc. If you've grown used to the "intimacy" and unstructured creative anarchy of open source communities, you'll feel a bit stifled.
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But, as an author, you will want to either create that community yourself or (better yet) integrate that community with the community that has already developed around the project you are supporting.
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I think authors and open source projects should manage a community of readers.
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This blog is written by a published author. He has written and continues to write books about software or code. In this blog post he discusses authorship in terms of open source. He makes an argument about how writing in general should be treated more like open source software is created. I am using his assertions to help development my claims that sites like webook.com are open source communities that allow authors to share ideas. -
This blog is written by a published author. He has written and continues to write books about software or code. In this blog post he discusses authorship in terms of open source. He makes an argument about how writing in general should be treated more like open source software is created. I am using his assertions to help development my claims that sites like webook.com are open source communities that allow authors to share ideas.
