From: James Britt <jamesUNDERBARb@...>
Date: 2004-07-10T08:39:34+09:00
Subject: Re: PickAxe 2 licensing

Hal Fulton wrote:
> FWIW, the people at Sams were initially hesitant about _The Ruby Way_
> because of the relatively low sales of the pickaxe.
> 
> In an unabashedly self-serving way, I posited (true or not) that the
> open-sourcing of the book might account largely for its poor sales.
> They seemed to buy this idea.

When I was working on the ill-fated Beginning Ruby Programming, the 
project managers at Wrox Ltd were concerned about what they saw as poor 
sales for existing Ruby books, and we were discussing putting the book 
online while it was being written.

There seemed to be good arguments both for making the copy available for 
free (see Bruce Eckel, and various comments from Tim O'Rielly) and for 
not doing so.  I'm inclined to think that books with short discursive 
sections and (relatively) much reference material are much easier (and 
more practical) to read online than books with long sections of prose.

And then Wrox went bankrupt and the book went into limbo.

I think people are inclined to buy the paper versions of Eckel's books 
because they do not lend themselves to prolonged on-screen reading.  The 
Pickaxe, though, works very well as an HTML document, especially for the 
reference sections.  I have a paper copy of Programming Ruby, but rarely 
open it; the CHM and online versions are far more useful.



> 
> So in an indirect sense, the open-sourcing of the pickaxe was
> instrumental in getting TRW to press. Hmm, nobody much calls it
> the Coral Book but me. That's coral on the front, so I'm told. :)
> 
> When/if there is a 2nd edition TRW (which has been discussed but not
> made firm), I've been thinking of the possibility of open-sourcing
> the *first* edition. If the 2nd ed is significantly different (as it
> should be), this might be practical.

If the main goal of "open sourcing" (a weird phrase for a book; don't 
all books come with source?) is to lure readers into buying something, 
then it may make sense to hold back something from the free version 
(e.g., it isn't the current edition, or doesn't have illustrations).

(Online books already lack the quality of resolution one gets from 
proper book printing.)

James