Understanding the Importance of Release Early, Release Often

or

What Often Happens when Commercial Source Developers "Go Open"

This is a pretty common tenet in the Open Source world and where commercial developers often go wrong.  If you are an ex-commercial developer then you want desperately to reach a "1.0" stage or a "near functional", "mostly baked" stage before going live.  You wouldn't want to release something piece meal, would you?  After all -- that's the way it's done.  Isn't It?

Actually no. 

==> Read Story <==

Comment: My first real long piece in a while as I settle into my new home and get back to concentrated work (lots and lots and lots of coding this weekend and some writing too).  This is one of those pieces that evolved from am email almost full born from the process of writing an email.  By the time I was done I realized that it might be worth blogging.

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Amazon EBooks and Self Publishing

Hmm... Interesting.  Matt has the damn good idea that perhaps an alternative to the "Computer Book Writers Hell" is self publishing on Amazon.  Good thinking Matt, thanks!  I see that LockerGnome is doing it.  Anyone know how to be a publisher to Amazon's eBook division?  [ Go ]

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Well I'm not sure how I missed it but the 1.0 of phpOpenTracker just shipped a few days ago.  This is a comprehensive web site traffic analysis solution built in php:

phpOpenTracker is a framework solution for the analysis of website traffic and visitor analysis.

It features a logging engine that, either invoked as a web-bug by a HTML <img> tag or embedded with two lines of code into your PHP application, logs each request to a website into a database. One installation of phpOpenTracker can track an arbitrary number of web-sites. [ Go ]

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Why Computer Books Suck

Thanks to Simon I ran across Why Computer Books Suck [ Go ].  I'd have to agree with her points 100%.  Having been a co-author this year on a computer book for today's leading publisher, I'd just comment that not only is the whole book process messed up but I'd also rather have all my fingernails pulled, eat glass and drink acid before writing another computer book.  I absolutely loved this section:

There's no money in it

Let's say you pour three months' worth of blood, sweat, and tears into your 500-page computer book. After taking three more months to reformat it, the publisher sends you galley proofs so you can review them and create an index. Of course, you get only a week or two for that. You mark a few minor, last-minute corrections on the proofs. You must then use the hard copy (that's right, hard copy) to create an index manually (that's right, manually). Of course, you can have the publisher do it for an outrageous fee, but most authors choose to index their own books. And most authors do a lousy job of it. By that time the author is too burnt out to do it justice, even though everyone knows the index is the single most important section of any computer book.

Finally, you're finished. The publisher dawdles for another month or so, occasionally sending you messages asking for files you've already sent them twice, and that sort of thing. Finally the book goes to print. If you're lucky, you see a couple of copies on the shelf at Border's.

Now suppose the book's list price is $40. Typically, the writer's cut is a percentage of the "net" which is a fancy way of saying half the list price. Supposedly this is to cover the cost of publishing the book. (Why does it cost that much? I'm not sure, but maybe it has something to do with the fact that three months' labor is required to reformat a book.) What this means is that if your royalty is 15%, you get 15% of $20, or $3. But that's only for domestic retail sales. Chances are, your contract contains lots of loopholes for things like international sales, book clubs, and anything else you can dream up, so on average you might get $2. That's 5% of the revenue from the sale of the book. The publisher gets the remaining 95%. Think about these two facts for a momont:

You researched, wrote, reviewed, revised, and indexed this 500-page book. You developed and tested the examples.

The publisher's cut is 95%.

Are you now suffering from severe cognitive dissonance?

Yup.  Right on the money.  When I emailed my editor asking about sales of the book -- AFTER he emailed me about it first he never even responded.  As near as I can tell, royalties for a computer book might cover sales tax on a decent dinner out but not necessarily the dinner itself.  And, finally, when I asked a professional literary agent about writing computer books, his response was "The game is rigged by publishers against the authors.  If you can write ANY OTHER type of book than a computer book that's what I recommend". 

Writing Computer Books?  Not Recommended.

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