Comments about oreilly Every Book Is a Startup:

This is a work in progress and as such I cannot recommend it. There are six chapters currently written. In appendix A Todd offers suggestions for further chapters he will write. I don't find this approach useful for the reader.

Todd Sattersten is a very knowledgeable person and I am really interested in the future of publishing. Lots of interesting viewpoints are discussed. The style of the book does not work for me, though I will admit this is the first time I have read a 'work in progress'. What is interesting with this book is the attempt to transplant the startup ethos of tech startups to publishing and it may work. I have done quite a bit of reading about publishing and for me the leading voice is Thomas Baekdal who publishes over at baekdal.com. I recommend you take a look.

I don't recommend this book but take a good look at the contents. It may be just what you need, but I think you should wait until Todd has completed the writing process.

O'Reilly publishing approached me with a view of reviewing books for them. Having a lot of respect for them I agreed.

Comments about oreilly Every Book Is a Startup:

Multimedia has changed how we read and want books, this book talks about book creation in the same lines as entrepreneurship, rather than just ideas on a page. For tech books and their sometimes short shelf life due latest software and hardware updates, develpments, and versions, knowing which ways to put the book in the best possible situation at the beginning is helpful.

Sattersen has divided Every Book Is a Startup into different chapters with good answers to typical problems with book publishing. Black Swans, Long Tails, and Big Dreams is the first chapter, and delves into what averages are, and why some books due better over time. Help the Heroes is about failure and success. A Book Is a Network chapter goes into how networks can strengthen a brand. The fourth chapter, Add or Subtract, goes into the future of bookselling including niche markets and sustaining innovations.

This is a work in progress, with later chapters being written and offered to readers in the future. Overall, a good start for those interested in how to publicize writing.

Comments about oreilly Every Book Is a Startup:

Todd Sattersten presenta una descripción de las falencias del mercado editorial actual y esboza una estrategia para triunfar en el mercado actual.

La gran falencia del libro es que son solo dos capítulos que el autor promete ir actualizando en los próximos meses con el aporte de los lectores. No se entiende demasiado el porqué no completó la obra antes de publicarla y después le anexó los comentarios y sugerencias de los lectores.

Si como dice Sattersten un libro debe publicarse teniendo en cuenta lo que aporta al lector entonces mi consejo para ellos es que esperen antes de leerlo, así como está son solo una serie de consideraciones con mucho sentido común que no aportan nada nuevo pero dentro de un tiempo cuando el autor lo complete se va a transformar en una obra de consulta imprescindible,

Comments about oreilly Every Book Is a Startup:

I was very excited to be a part of this "grassroots movement." This book not only teaches how to rethink book marketing and publishing, but it also is using itself as a testing ground for the proposed principles therein. I think the tone of the writing is wonderfully clear, unassuming, and approachable. I really can't wait for the rest. As a book editor, I feel more empowered already to use many of these concepts in my day-to-day interations with my team, our authors, and their projects. The second chapter "Help the Heroes" is really outstanding. I only gave it four stars because I haven't read the end yet. :)

Comments about oreilly Every Book Is a Startup:

While this author definitely has things to say, his experiment with this book's publication is not well thought out. It sounded interesting -- buying a book with only the beginning written, with other chapters to follow. But what I expected were introductory chapters mapping out the author's main ideas, with succeeding chapters written to expand on them.

Unfortunately, the author does not know the difference between a book and a blog. He is structuring this book as a series of loosely related articles about whatever happens to strike his and his customer's fancy. So, instead of a coherent, unified statement from an important thinker, this book at its birth represents no more than a couple of interesting posts such as I would commonly find on the Web.

Beyond that, why should he ask the reader to bear the burden of downloading a succession of incomplete documents? Isn't one reason we buy books so that we don't have to collect small pieces a bit at a time? This plan might work for one book as a gimmick, but does he really think it's a scalable model for books in general?

There's also something dismal and depressing about the thought that new posts will be added according to requests by his readers. A book is supposed to represent intellectual leadership, not mere customer wish fulfillment. I want to read authors who tell me something I don't know I need to know. Instead, I got a product to be designed by a focus group.

I do believe that books can be developed over time -- which is what interested me in this book. I've done it myself, with topics that I originally treated briefly, and then expanded on over time. But each generation was a complete work and could be used alone. With this book, I feel the author has abdicated his leadership role and left his homework for others to do.