

A book is a startup, so use lean startup principles - swombat
http://www.peterarmstrong.com/?p=81

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hristov
Sorry, the parallels do not work that far. Listening to your customers as you
go along is a great idea for a startup and a really terrible idea for a book.
If you listen to your customers you are guaranteed to get a very mediocre
book. A good book has to continually challenge and surprise the reader.

Imagine if Dostoevsky had listened to his customers when he wrote "Notes from
the Underground." Most of the people reading the first couple of lines would
say "please change the main character." By the way here are the first couple
of lines:

"I am a sick man.... I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I believe
my liver is diseased."

So this would never have been written if Dostoevsky actually listened to his
customers. And yet it is one of the best books ever written.

But releasing early and often is an interesting proposition for books. A lot
of writers had to do that, because they published their books in serial
fashion as they were writing them. Many other writers would continuously
rewrite their drafts and would never release anything they had not completed
and edited. And you can definitely notice when you are reading a book that a
writer was writing and publishing it as he went along. But it is hard to say
which one is better. The books that are published as they are written tend to
be less organized and with less cohesive story arcs, but they can also be more
original and pleasantly surprising.

~~~
peterarmstrong
In some senses you're right, in that great art is usually created by ignoring
the conventional wisdom etc.

However, even then feedback is important: as Paul Graham has repeatedly
argued, great artists don't usually work in total isolation (the Renaissance
was concentrated in Florence, etc).

However, my point applied more to non-fiction than fiction: it was based on my
own experiences writing Flexible Rails (self-publishing, getting early
customers and feedback, etc) and then Hello! Flex 4 (traditional publisher
approach). And we even did release Hello! Flex 4 while it was being written,
but I didn't build the community of "earlyvangelists" around it that happened
with Flexible Rails. Part of this was the content (Hello! Flex 4 is an
uncontroversial introductory book; Flexible Rails was arguing something and
was something largely new), but part of it was affected by the dynamic of
self-publishing vs. using a traditional publisher.

With Flexible Rails I created a Google Group that had hundreds of readers,
while the book was still in-progress. I felt I had a closer connection with
them, and I learned what worked and what didn't work in my book, etc. So that
post was about those experiences.

Finally, a disclaimer: I'm not an artist, and certainly not a Dostoyevsky, so
I really have no idea what kind of feedback that type of talent wants.

(P.S. I love Dostoyevsky btw; I read Notes from Underground and The Brothers
Karamazov while working a summer job in university at Walmart -- before I
switched from Philosophy to Comp Sci.)

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swombat
I suspect much of this won't work at all for fiction... but then again, is
that true?

Would you read an incomplete piece of fiction and provide feedback to help
shape its direction?

And, as an author, would you take people's advice about how you're supposed to
change _your baby_ to suit their demands?

For non-fiction books, though, this is a no-brainer.

~~~
spatten
Peter and I are both really curious about how fiction books will work with
Leanpub. As you say, we think it's a slam dunk for non-fiction books (both
Peter and I have written non-fiction books, so we have a bit of experience
here).

For fiction, I think it's a really interesting and open question. Dickens, for
example, wrote all of his books in serialized format and wrote them a chunk at
a time, publishing them as he wrote them
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Dickens>). This was an unusual way to
write serialized novels, but Dickens was no slouch and he (in my opinion)
stands the test of time.

Did he receive and welcome feedback as he wrote? I don't know the answer to
that (I'm a coder and physicist, not an English Lit major :), but I can
imagine that he got feedback whether he welcomed it or not.

My guess is that for certain types of fiction, and certain types of authors,
Leanpub will work really well. Others will run screaming from the very thought
of it. Hopefully Leanpub will help us find out more.

~~~
peterarmstrong
As Scott points out, some great novels have been published in serial form.
We're not claiming that this has to be the rule though.

However, there's another interesting question: how many good or great novels
are sitting half-written on hard drives right now as Word documents, with a
discouraged author about to give up on them?

If those novels were published as they were written (with automatic
distribution of updates and a community of a few passionate readers / fans),
maybe some novels worth reading will get created that otherwise might not
be...

That said, the obvious market for the Lean Publishing approach is, of course,
technical books. Scott and I have both written computer books, so we're very
much scratching our own itch here. Another great market for using Lean
Publishing principles is cookbooks, we feel. Lots of people are blogging and
even tweeting cookbooks (although I want more than a 140 character recipe!),
and this is definitely something that could be published using a Lean
Publishing approach.

Neither of us have any idea if it will work for fiction :)

Obligatory plug: we welcome computer books, cookbooks and even novels on
Leanpub :)

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jrockway
I disagree. A book is just highly-creative contract work. You get paid, you
deliver text.

A startup means you need to take on every aspect of a business; finding
customers, supporting customers, listening to customers, and oh yeah, making a
product. I imagine the time spent on most startups is about 30% stuff-you-
want-to-do and 70% stuff-you-have-to-do.

A book is 100% stuff-you-want-to-do. If not, you've done it wrong.

~~~
peterarmstrong
I defy you to say that adding index entries to a 500 page manuscript is stuff-
you-want-to-do :)

~~~
jrockway
My publisher did this for me. I'm pretty sure that's how it usually works.

