From: Chris Smith
To: ask_tim@oreilly.com
Subject: Preview books in development
Tim,
How about putting chapters or whole books up online prior to publication? The community would benefit from early access to the info (I'd love to see advance info from Doug MacEachern's forthcoming book on mod_perl) and O'Reilly would benefit from feedback early in the development cycle and by building an advance audience that is likely to buy the book as soon as it is published?
Chris
Chris,
We have done this from time to time, and we really ought to do it more extensively. Part of the problem is that once a book is finished enough to be shown, we're rushing to get it to print, and there isn't necessarily time for the conversion, followed by another feedback cycle.
But there are certainly books where there are chapters in good shape early enough that we could do this.
Thanks for the push. I'll urge Allen Noren, the managing editor of our website, as well as Linda Walsh, who's in charge of our online books program, to make this a priority.
-- Tim
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