In my last post (XML First…What about eBook First?) I discussed an emerging trend of publishing an eBook before the print version. An interesting implementation of this process is with the electronic release of The Complete Guide to Google Wave. This is a technical manual for Google's new web application, Google Wave. The technical manual was released one-month after the initial preview release of Wave. Since Google Wave is a hard-to-understand concept and application, this manual has been very useful for the early adopters of Wave.
The fact that the guide was released first in electronic form, rather then print, is only part of what is intriguing about this publishing experiment. The work is a collaboration effort between two authors who now use Google Wave to update their guide and receive public input on the future releases. The authors intention is to "Release early and Often". The guide will be updated and refined in public as Google Wave is changed and improved before a full public release of the product. The softcover print version is coming in early 2010.
1 comment:
At FastPencil we're finding that many authors are using our collaborative writing tools to create eBooks, without any thought of ever distributing in print. It depends on the subject matter, of course, but something like a technical manual is well-suited to distribution as an ePub or PDF.
When the book can be modified at any time and print runs can be as short or as long as needed, the author(s) get a lot more control over distribution.
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