Comment by noelwelsh | Hacker News Reader

Comment by noelwelsh | Hacker News Reader

I been thinking about technical publishing recently, and I don't think the rumoured tools from Apple go far enough. Let's start by assuming that publishing houses are essentially dead. Printing is on the way out, and distribution is handled by other online retailers (Amazon, Apple, etc.) Most technical books don't really need editors. Layout could still be an issue, I don't really think it will be -- read-on for why.

My argument:

- e-book readers are a dead-end. Tablets are going to replace them. The only thing e-book readers have going for them is e-ink. Tablet screens are going to be awesome. The 10" Transformer Prime is going to be HD soon. Rumours are the iPad 3 is going to be 2048x1024. They'll be good enough.

- e-book formats are essentially stripped down HTML, designed for the low-powered CPUs found in e-book readers. Tablets web browsers will be on par with PC browsers soon.

This means there will be no boundaries to formatting content as HTML and reading it on a tablet. We already have many tools for creating collections of HTML documents. They're often called blog engines. Non-technical will do just fine using blogging tools, just like they currently do. More technical people will use pandoc/asciidoc/whatever, just like they currently do.

Then you have to ask:

- Why release a book as a monolith? Releasing a chapter at a time greatly lowers the author's risk. They can start generating revenue straight away, and find out what the market is really interested in.

And then you have ask:

- Why even write a book? Why not just produce material, using whatever media is appropriate, and create a community (and revenue stream) around this, rather than working towards a some arbitrarily sized collection of words?

So that's where I think technical publishing is going. Smaller units of work, shorter cycle time, and more responsive to the market place. And not really a world that needs books, and book creation tools, per se.

Most technical books don't really need editors.

Um, no? Knowledgable editors make any sort of writing easier to read and use -- especially crucial if you're talking about textbook-style material, which is specifically about someone with subject matter knowledge communicating with people who don't (yet) have that knowledge. They also serve as a useful backstop of fact-checking and just plain "does this make sense?" checking.

I would say that very technical books need editors more than very non-technical books. Most technical books are for learning, reference, or both. Therefore, tiny mistakes in technical books can cost the reader in very real terms, whereas an incorrect pronoun in the new twilight book still gets the same idea across.

Most of the freely available technical books I'm familiar with (programming, machine learning, and maths) don't appear to have had an editor and don't seem to suffer from it. Perhaps it's because the people who write them (mostly academics) typically write a heck of a lot. I agree editors are useful but I don't think they're essential. If an author felt they needed one, they could be hired without going through a publishing house as an intermediary. Either way I don't think this point significantly alters my argument.

The most popular online Python book of years past, Dive Into Python, needed an editor badly.

Other online books have had technical editing done by the readers.

Have you ever seen the process transforming a set of lecture notes to a textbook? That process is almost inconceivable for the professor (who has teaching and research engagements) to complete alone. Often they have a lot of help from graduate students, but not always.

Worse, I've read a great deal of math books that were unedited. Arguments end up in the wrong orders, sections are missing, notation changes without notification or regard for readability, numbering fails to match up (not even LaTeX can help if you change your labels midway), figues go missing, indices are wrong, exercises are mislabeled (or accidentally impossible!).

Even with an editorial team there's often a hefty and vital errata for most major textbooks. It's just a lot of organization.

I don't think editors are going anywhere for a long time. The role they serve is crucial. I do totally agree that they don't need to be tied to publishing-as-a-process though.

I've been an editor on programming books. Believe me, most programming books have two editors - one for the spelling and grammar side, and one for the technical side.

I can't agree that e-ink is a dead end. Perhaps you have never had the opportunity to spend some serious time to compare reading on an LCD screen to a e-ink display.

Tablets are great, but as long as they still have LCD (backlit etc.) screens they can't even be considered an alternative for anyone who actually does any serious reading. You can also pick up an ebook reader where I'm from for about 1/5th the price of even the most basic tablet.

If anything I think ebook readers are going to become even more popular. As e-ink or similar technology is refined and becomes even cheaper to produce I can easily imagine them becoming almost like disposable "throw-away" devices.

Also, in my opinion, your initial logic is incorrect. You talk as if "full-featured web-browsers like on the PC" is the "end-goal" for future reading devices. Well, we have always had that -on PC's- and they were the problem, not the solution. The e-ink display is the "solution" to the eye strain (among other things) that come with reading on a backlit display. So to suggest that is the goal seems to be as if we are going backwards.

This.

I own an iPad and a kindle and use the kindle far, far more often because of its non-backlit screen. This argument has absolutely nothing to do with resolution, it's just far easier to read an eink screen for long periods of time.

> "I can't agree that e-ink is a dead end"

I would say that e-ink will stay around for reading, but there are critical differences between linear reading and textbook use. As far as textbooks are concerned, I would say that e-ink is a non-starter. The refresh rate is poor, navigation other than linear page-to-page progression through a single text is poor, annotation is poor, interactivity is non-existent, etc.

It's not a bad or doomed technology, it just isn't the right tool for this particular job.

> The only thing e-book readers have going for them is e-ink

E-book readers also have a sub-$100 price point. And e-ink includes readability in direct sunlight, high resolution, and eternal life for batteries.

I agree e-ink has advantages over LCD screens, but I don't think those advantages are enough to sustain the e-book reader market. I think tablets are becoming mainstream (they've "crossed the chasm") and I think to most people a tablet is an acceptable substitute.

And your eyes won't bleed after hours of reading.

Cheap e-ink devices will probably have their place, but tablets are quickly becoming more capable and cheaper. As they get under $300 and handle almost all of a student's computing needs, it will be hard to justify the savings of a vastly less capable e-ink device (at least in countries that can afford a $300 per student purchase).

Multimedia adds very little to your average Kindle book, but videos and interactive content add huge value to a textbook. Once you add the fact that a student can accomplish coursework and quickly make schools paperless, I think it's a huge value add.

I really like your train of thought. I only disagree with "Most technical books don't really need editors". I've never written a book myself, but I'd imagine a good editor can greatly improve your writing.

Indeed. I thought I was a good writer, one of the rare software types who enjoyed writing tons of documentation in addition to code.

About five years ago I got a good editor and realized how miserable my output was without one. This person took my stuff and made it focused, consistent and fun to read.

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