Entries tagged with “o'reilly” from Tools of Change for Publishing

New on O'Reilly Labs: Open Feedback Publishing System

Andrew Savikas
May 21, 2009 | | Comments (2) | Listen Speech Icon

O'Reilly engineer Keith Fahlgren has formally launched our new Open Feedback Publishing System over on O'Reilly Labs:

Over the last few years, traditional publishing has been moving closer to the web and learning a lot of lessons from blogs and wikis, in particular. Today we're happy to announce another small step in that direction: our first manuscript (Programming Scala) is now available for public reading and feedback as part of our Open Feedback Publishing System. The idea is simple: improve in-progress books by engaging the community in a collaborative dialog with the authors out in the open. To do this, we followed the model of the Django Book, Real World Haskell, and Mercurial: The Definitive Guide (among others) and built a system to regularly publish the whole manuscript online as HTML with a comment box under every paragraph, sidebar, figure, and table.

You can see the system in action at the site for our upcoming book Programming Scala.

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Ebook Piracy is Up Because Ebook Demand is Up

Andrew Savikas
May 12, 2009 | | Comments (9) | Listen Speech Icon

My email, twitter, and "real-world" information stream is abuzz today with references to a New York Times story about the increase in piracy of ebooks:

“It’s exponentially up,” said David Young, chief executive of Hachette Book Group, whose Little, Brown division publishes the “Twilight” series by Stephenie Meyer, a favorite among digital pirates. “Our legal department is spending an ever-increasing time policing sites where copyrighted material is being presented.”

John Wiley & Sons, a textbook publisher that also issues the “Dummies” series, employs three full-time staff members to trawl for unauthorized copies. Gary M. Rinck, general counsel, said that in the last month, the company had sent notices on more than 5,000 titles — five times more than a year ago — asking various sites to take down digital versions of Wiley’s books.

The reason there's an "exponential" increase in piracy of ebooks is because there's an exponential increase in demand for ebooks:

That's not a bad thing! It's an indicator of unmet demand (and in particular for non-DRM encrypted content). I know I have no interest in buying an ebook that's locked to a single vendor or device, and I'm sure many of these "pirates" feel the same. This is a good time to revisit Tim O'Reilly's seminal Piracy is Progressive Taxation, which includes the following lessons:

  1. Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy.
  2. Piracy is progressive taxation.
  3. Customers want to do the right thing, if they can.
  4. Shoplifting is a bigger threat than piracy.
  5. File sharing networks don't threaten book, music, or film publishing. They threaten existing publishers.
  6. "Free" is eventually replaced by a higher-quality paid service.
  7. "There's more than one way to do it."

I'm not suggesting publishers stop sending those DMCA notices; but 3 full-time staffers? Putting those resources toward building new ways to meet that demand is a much better investment.

Coincidentally, our research report Impact of P2P and Free Distribution on Book Sales is now available.


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Twitter Boot Camp Coming June 15 in New York

Mac Slocum
May 12, 2009 | | Comments (1) | Listen Speech Icon

Twitter seems simple on the surface, but it takes practice to harness Twitter's audience development power. That's why we're hosting a one-day Twitter Boot Camp in New York City on June 15.

Join O'Reilly Media founder and CEO Tim O'Reilly, Edelman Digital SVP Steve Rubel, Twitter expert Sarah Milstein and others at this one-day educational event. Speakers and instructors will reveal best practices you can immediately apply to engage your audience and grow your business.

Full event information and registration details are available here. Use the discount code "toc" to get $50 off the registration fee.

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Over 160 O'Reilly Books Now in Kindle Store (without DRM), More on the Way

Andrew Savikas
April 17, 2009 | | Comments (24) | Listen Speech Icon

I'm happy to announce that more than 160 O'Reilly books are now available on Kindle (both Kindle 1 and Kindle 2), and are being sold without any DRM (Digital Rights Management). Though we do offer more than 400 ebooks direct from our website, the number for sale on Kindle will be limited until Amazon updates Kindle 1 to support table rendering ("maybe this summer" is the most specific they would get). The text-to-speech feature of Kindle 2 does work with these books. A list of currently available titles is below.


screen_shot-50931

There's a lot of overlap between the kind of early-adopter crowd likely to buy a Kindle and the audience for our books. So it's no surprise that we received a lot of requests to add O'Reilly books to the Kindle store, and it's great to finally be able to get those readers the books they want. We expect to add another 100 or so titles in the coming weeks; those have needed a more detailed analysis of the table content to identify good candidates.

There were two main reasons we held our books back from sale on Kindle:

  1. Poor rendering of complex content. Kindle 1 was optimized for the simple text of mainstream trade books (think airport-bookstore fiction and non-fiction), and lacked support for properly displaying tables or computer code, two very common elements in O'Reilly books. We knew customers would be disappointed to find much of the content of our books unusable (and likely to complain to us about it, rather than to Amazon). In this case, Amazon actually agreed with us, and after they saw how those tables looked on a Kindle 1, told us they weren't comfortable selling many of our books until they've updated Kindle 1. (More details below the fold).
  2. Compulsory DRM. We strongly believe DRM (Digital Rights Management) encryption adds unwelcome cost and complexity to any digital system, frustrates legitimate customers who respect copyright and want to pay for their content, and is demonstrably ineffective at preventing unauthorized copying -- much of it done by people who either (a.) wouldn't otherwise pay, or (b.) resort to piracy when there's no legitimate sales channel. Other publishers are free to make their own decisions on DRM, but Kindle's compulsory DRM was inconsistent with our views on digital distribution.

Although we've been working for some time with Amazon to resolve these issues, as a stop-gap we'd been directing Kindle owners to oreilly.com, where all of our "ebook bundles" include a Kindle-compatible .mobi version that can be uploaded or emailed to your Kindle. While the table and code issues remained, readers at least had the other, richer formats (EPUB and PDF) for reference. We've now updated all of the .mobi files for sale at oreilly.com to display properly on Kindle 2 (basically undoing many of the hacks we'd done to get something passable the first time around). If you own a Kindle and have purchased ebooks from oreilly.com, visit oreilly.com/e from the Kindle browser to download the updated .mobi files directly to your Kindle. While we will also update our ebooks with Amazon as changes are made and errors fixed, they currently have no way of updating that content for customers who already purchased it.

While the rendering in Kindle 2 still leaves a bit to be desired, we felt it was an acceptable baseline, and look forward to continuing to work with them to improve the display of technical content on Kindle. (Ironically, the Kindle 2 web browser displays complex content like tables and code quite well -- check out the Bookworm mobile version if you have a Kindle.)

Our thanks do go to Amazon for working with us on this. They're a favorite target of criticism (often right here, and often for good reason), but this is a good step and they do deserve some kudos. While we'd prefer that Amazon directly supported the open EPUB standard, this is real progress in giving readers easy access to digital books without locking them in to a single vendor.

If you want to tell Amazon to hurry up and update your Kindle 1, or to improve their rendering of technical content to match Sony Reader, Stanza, Bookworm, Calibre, and others, you can drop them a line at kindle-feedback@amazon.com.

Current Available Titles

(As of April 16, 2009)

The Tables problem

Here's some screenshots showing the table problem:

How Kindle 1 (mis)handles tables:

screen_shot-50931

The same table on Kindle 2:

screen_shot-50931

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Experimental O'Reilly Ebook iPhone Integration with Stanza

Andrew Savikas
November 25, 2008 | | Comments (2) | Listen Speech Icon

UPDATE: The Stanza integration is no longer experimental. All of O'Reilly's ebook bundles are now available for sale in the Stanza online catalog.

Back in August, I showed how to read O'Reilly EPUB ebooks on an iPhone (or iPod Touch) using the popular (and free) Stanza reader app. I'm pleased to announce that you can now directly download EPUB ebooks purchased from O'Reilly on your iPhone to Stanza. The integration is experimental for now, as we iron out some kinks and work to make our own site more iPhone-friendly.

These instructions assume that:

To download one of your O'Reilly ebooks to Stanza, follow these instructions (if you're reading this post via RSS, you may need to click through to the original post to see the screenshots):

  1. On your iPhone (or iPod Touch) open Safari and go to http://members.oreilly.com

    mm_signin.jpg

  2. After signing in, navigate to the Electronic Media tab.

    emedia_tab.jpg

  3. If you zoom in, you'll see that among the download options, there's now a "Stanza ePub" button. Press the button to begin downloading (to scroll the list of titles, use a two-fingered vertical drag -- again, this is experimental, and we are working on a better iPhone UI).

    stanza_button.jpg

  4. Pressing that button will open Stanza and download the book.

    book_downloading.jpg

This kind of integration was simple and straightforward in large part because many of the moving parts around Stanza are based on open standards, including EPUB and the Atom Publishing Protocol (both successful and important XML standards that publishers should be paying attention to -- find out more at January's StartWithXML forum in New York).

Thanks to Marc Prud'hommeaux at Lexcycle for working with us on the integration, and to our own Nick Pilon for connecting the plumbing on our end. Marc will be talking about Stanza and about reading on the iPhone at February's TOC Conference.

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Joe Wikert Joins O'Reilly Media

Andrew Savikas
October 13, 2008 | | Comments (8) | Listen Speech Icon

Joe WikertWe couldn't be happier to announce that Joe Wikert has joined O'Reilly Media as the General Manager of the O'Reilly Technology Exchange (OTX) division, which publishes our flagship "animal books."

Readers of this blog know we're big fans of Joe's work on his Publishing 2020 and Kindleville blogs. Joe's perspective is very much aligned with our own, and we're thrilled to add him to our list of innovators who believe in re-inventing the future of publishing. From the press release:

"Joe brings deep experience in technology publishing to his new position, but perhaps even more important, he embodies the innovative, adventurous 'alpha geek' spirit we believe is key to succeeding in today's publishing environment," said Laura Baldwin, O'Reilly COO and CFO. "His vision of the future of publishing is very much aligned with O'Reilly's. I'm delighted to bring his leadership to our flagship OTX division as we focus on building new ways to disseminate information to today's technologists."

The OTX division, which publishes O'Reilly's storied "animal books," serves the developers and system administrators who have been a key O'Reilly constituency throughout the company's 30-year history. Wikert is spearheading the expansion of the OTX publishing program into a broader offering that spans print, online, and in-person products and services.

Joe is already a member of the advisory committee for the 2009 TOC Conference, and stay tuned for more from him here on the TOC blog. Welcome Joe!

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First Frontlist O'Reilly Ebook Bundle (Including EPUB) Now Available

Andrew Savikas
October 9, 2008 | | Comments (4) | Listen Speech Icon

iPod: The Missing Manual, seventh editionWith today's release of iPod: The Missing Manual, Seventh Edition, by J.D. Biersdorfer and David Pogue, we're beginning the release of nearly all new (frontlist) titles as ebook bundles. SharePoint for Project Management, by Dux Raymond Sy, will be available tomorrow, and Web Security Testing Cookbook, by Paco Hope and Ben Walther, will be available next Tuesday (Oct. 14)

As with our pilot program, each bundle will include Web-optimized PDF, EPUB (for your Sony Reader or iPhone), and .mobi (for your Kindle) files. These ebook bundles will generally be available up to two weeks before the printed book is on store shelves (most of our books are also available on Safari Books Online before they're in stores).

As always, these files are DRM-free, and customers receive free updates to reflect any published changes in the book (more info on the bundles here). There are several other ebook projects and experiments in the works that I can't talk about just yet, but stay tuned between now and February's TOC Conference for updates (I can say that we'll be rolling out bundles for most of our backlist titles during that time frame).

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A Q&A on O'Reilly’s "Up-to-Date" Publishing Experiment

Mac Slocum
April 2, 2008 | | Comments (0) | Listen Speech Icon

There's a common conundrum in the computer book world: software companies often release updates on a monthly or weekly basis, yet many programmers rely on printed references that can take months to write and produce. There are online options, but we also know that many readers still want something printed.

To try and tackle the problem, O'Reilly has launched a new experiment with the just-released Essential Silverlight 2 "Up-to-Date" edition (Silverlight is a new technology platform from Microsoft). Readers get a book that's current when they purchase it, but also get access to updates that can be physically inserted into the book.

I recently spoke with four members of the Essential Silverlight 2 project team to get their take on the development of this book as well as their view on the broader "updateable" concept.

Essential Silverlight 2 Up-to-Date editionQ: How is Essential Silverlight 2 different from traditional books?

Laurel R.T. Ruma, co-editor: The book is in a durable plastic binder that has three hole punches with metal pins. The binder can hold 425 pages, so there's room to grow.

Q: How does the update process work?

Ruma: You buy the book through a bookstore or online and then you register it through O'Reilly. When Microsoft releases a new beta, Christian [Wenz, the author] starts writing. Around 6 to 8 weeks later, a PDF of the update will be posted online and you'll be notified because you're registered. You can download the PDF for free and print and trim it yourself, or you can purchase printed and punched copies for an additional cost.

Q: When will the first update be available?

Ruma: Updates will be available online April 21 and in print the first week of May.

Q: What were the challenges in developing this book?

John Osborn, co-editor: There are unique challenges because it's a retail product -- security, display, etc. We needed to work with the binder vendor to create a security seal so people don't steal pages.

Laurel Ackerman, Director of Marketing, O'Reilly Open Tech Exchange: We needed to consider how it would integrate into a bookshelf. The dimensions of the book [7 inches x 9 inches] are designed for a retail shelf.

Christian Wenz, author: It was quite a challenge to plan the whole book structure. When writing a regular book, you can change the structure until very late in the process. Here, we had to create a flexible structure that would allow us to add content later without having to ship a whole new book with every update.

Ruma: We had to think about things like page numbering, because different pages and sections can be updated. We used a system that goes by section, chapter, and page number [e.g., 1.3.1]. We also had to shift all the templates because of the pins. Really, we wanted to make it so the reader will have to replace as few pages as possible. We want them to replace in a thorough way, but not a wasteful way.

Q: Was the production process different for the Up-to-Date edition?

Ruma: A standard book takes 6 to 9 months to write and 12 weeks to produce. We did this one in a little more than a month.

Christian and John had worked on a Silverlight 1.0 PDF. Christian incorporated his book updates into his 1.0 document within two weeks. Production on the book took another two weeks. And then it went to the printer for two weeks.

The book had to be done for the Microsoft MIX conference in March [2008]. We knew we would have an audience that is extremely interested in the subject matter and would give us unbiased and honest feedback.

[Editor’s note: authoring and production for this title was done using DocBook XML and a customized version of the open source DocBook XSL stylesheets.]

Q: What has the feedback been like?

Osborn: Generally the first reaction was 'Wow, this is a great idea." From there it was tons of feedback, most of it really good.

Ackerman: All of the feedback we've gotten from programmers is relief and delight. There's a lot of frustration out there with people waiting for books between releases. They're thrilled to be getting the content so they can start working.

Q: What type of content is best suited an Up-to-Date book?

Osborn: I see two scenarios: One is like Silverlight, which is a product in beta. Knowing the software release sequence and knowing the end point works well. In the second scenario, I could see something where you pick a core technology, like Visual Basic, and then offer updates. If anything new comes along, we'll provide it.

Q: Do you think other publishers will move toward updateable books?

Ackerman: I think it's inevitable that publishers will be going this way. At TOC, the two big topics were on-demand publishing and the value that publishers bring to information. Both of those things are in this book.

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