[FM Discuss] final TOC

[Andy Oram]

I do find that argument a good one. Thanks. I believe the reason some editors at computer publications are talking about providing updates is purely for competitive reasons. We know that people are saying, "I won't buy a print book because the information will be out of date; I'll just get it online" and we feel we can provide a better product than what comes up in a web search, but we need also to compete on the basis of staying current.

Andy

----- Original Message -----
From: Joshua Facemyer <jfacemyer at gmail.com>
To: discuss at lists.flossmanuals.net
Sent: Wed, 25 Feb 2009 13:28:18 -0500 (EST)
Subject: Re: [FM Discuss] final TOC



Andy Oram wrote:
> Thanks, those are good ideas. The reason people who buy a book should get updates is that the normal book-for-sale model is a closed one. The book is not freely downloadable. So a publisher can't ask someone to just go online for updates. To have the whole book online is a different model--and we do that with some books under a CC license.
> 
But I think you've made my point by distinguishing between the two 
models.  If you're offering a book online as well as a printed version, 
you're working with two different models - there's no way, really, to 
avoid it.

People who view a book online only expect what is told to them about 
updates - if I offer a book and say it will be updated, they'll want 
updates.  If I just offer a text and say nothing about updates, nobody 
can rightfully want updates.

This is even more true for a printed book, to the extent that most 
people who buy printed books likely assume that they've gotten 
everything they've paid for - unless you explicitly indicate that they 
will be provided updates.

I don't believe this would be a problem, if you wanted to tell them that 
they can get updates online.  But it would be a problem if they were 
expecting online updates as part of their purchase, and you provided none.

Anyway, I think it's best to keep the distribution models separate 
(really, I don't think there's a choice).  If you want to bridge the 
gap, you'd start to consider selling e-books, which theoretically could 
allow providing the customer updates easily to his purchased product.

Anyway, I really think that anyone purchasing a printed book would be 
absolutely out of his mind to expect any sort of update unless one were 
at least strongly implied in the product description.  There is no such 
implication contained in a printed book that derives from an online 
book.  And, seeing as this would only be expected in certain types of 
publishing (maybe medical or academic where that may be standard in some 
instances), I wouldn't foresee any problems with keeping the standard 
models.

JF
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Andy Oram  O'Reilly Media                     email: andyo at oreilly.com
Editor     10 Fawcett Street, Fourth Floor         voice: 617-499-7479
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