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Work in Progress: Safari Exposes Books
in Development for Immediate Content Needs |
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30 January 2006 |
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In an age of instantly available global content services
the gestation period required to bring most any book to the
marketplace seems to be far out of synch with the
expectations of most of today's audiences. How do
publishers maintain the integrity of book publishing while
adapting to the expectations of an electronic era? Safari
Books Online's new Rough Draft product line offers
audiences a chance to peek at new books online as they're
being developed and to provide useful feedback in the
process - all for a premium price. In the process of doing
so these publishers and audiences are reshaping the very
nature of what a book is and can be as a form of vital
content. |
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What is a book? Even if we're
not consuming books in paper form these days, the net product of what book
publishers have created over the past several centuries is still pretty much the same: a carefully
edited and reasonably lengthy work, hopefully of high quality,
that is fact-checked, typeset, carefully composed and proofed,
and then made available to a waiting audience who can store it
away for the ages. Creating a book is a downright
glacial process by modern standards, requiring patience, many
specialized skills and a willingness to accept the practices
that have driven this process through the ages. It's hard to
come up against this long-established regimen in an age of
rapidly changing content shaped by both authors and audiences and to
not ask the
troubling question: in an age of electronic publishing, what
should a book be?
The "should" of books has already been pushed around by the
likes of Chris Anderson, Editor-in-Chief of
Wired
Magazine, whose development of a book on the "Long
Tail" phenomenon in online publishing was chronicled in his
weblog as he developed the manuscript, absorbing feedback
from readers along the way. That's fine for a few trendy
titles, but what about mainstream publishers who are still more
closely wedded to traditional production processes? How can
book publishers respond more effectively to audiences eager to
get a hold of authoritative content while still being able to
produce traditional book content?
Safari Books Online, a joint venture sponsored by
O'Reilly & Associates and The Pearson Technology Group, has
begun to break the mold of who books can be marketed with a
newly
announced program called
Rough Cuts.
With the Rough Cuts program online subscribers to Safari
Bookshelf will have the option to access PDF-formatted
pre-release versions of books on technology subjects from their
online library, with tools that will allow readers to provide
suggestions and feedback as these books are prepared for
print-worthy production. Rough Cuts titles are not fully
edited, are subject to final technical review and may not even
be in a nicely printable format yet. In other words they are
indeed rough cuts of what a final title may look like when
finally published. For the privilege of accessing these
pre-release books Safari subscribers will pay a premium, either
for the pre-release version alone or for a combination of the
pre-release version and its final form. Alternatively, a Safari
reader could just wait for the final version.
While modest in scope and aimed at tech readers who are most
likely to want to experiment with new ways to develop content
online the Rough Cuts program is the first significant break
from the philosophies that have driven book production almost
since its inception. In doing so Rough Cuts challenges content
producers to rethink not only book content but many forms of
content that we're used to picking up in a final, highly
polished package. Here are a few quick thoughts as to what the
Rough Cuts program signifies for both book publishing and other
content publishers who have relied on long established
editorial and production methods:
- Being able to touch and to help shape a work in
progress is in many ways as valuable as the work itself.
Journalism is oftentimes called the "first rough draft of
history" in a somewhat demeaning fashion, as if to say that
evolving content is less valuable than the final product.
While the reflection and precision required for a major book
still has great value we should not forget the important
value of conversations and interactions that help to shape
any major work. Broadening those conversations adds
significantly to the value of a final work, making it not
just the product of one intellect but of an intellect that
has had the openness to work with their audience as an active
participant in shaping their "finalized" thoughts. From this
perspective books are like the approved minutes of a very
valuable meeting, capturing the development of human
knowledge that may have enriched those participating in the
production process far more than any end audience glimpsing
only the final form.
- Engaging audiences early on in a production process
can reduce the likelihood of costly production mistakes.
The Wall Street Journal noted today noted that the recent
scandal surrounding the James Frey memoir "A
Million Little Pieces" points up the increasing
reluctance of publishers to do the traditionally thorough
fact-checking usually associated with the output of major
publishing houses. This puts the dirt being tossed on
interactive online sources such as
Wikipedia
in a somewhat different light: at least wikis have the
ability to evolve and heal in response to questioning from
their audiences. Wikis and new information services such as
Jigsaw
rightly affirm that in the formation of useful knowledge
oftentimes the audience for a given work holds leading
expertise to help shape a work into its most useful and
accurate form. Such community feedback cannot fully replace
traditional QA functions but in the process of discovering
the truth as a community a new kind of quality is created.
- Having a flexible payload is becoming more important
than one particular way to deliver it. By the time the
most engaged portion of an audience helps to form a final
work for printing, the printing may start to become the
culmination of a marketing process rather than its beginning.
Online access to book titles will encourage audiences to
become active participants in its marketing, creating new
dynamics for how and when books are printed, Print on demand
services are likely to accelerate in popularity as books
developed with interactive input from audiences become ways
to commemorate any point of a book's production process. Or
maybe we'll just be satisfied with historical downloads.
Increasingly, the choice will be ours.
What is a book today? It's the process of collecting topical
content into a highly readable and authoritative form that can
benefit authors and audiences over a long period of time.
Safari's Rough Draft products offer us a glimpse of how books
can evolve to that more open vision. I doubt that it's the last
glimpse of this evolution that we'll be seeing this year.
-
John Blossom
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