Symbian Wiki books – uses every resource available
By Paul Biba
Now take a look at this: create a book online using the Wiki format, then make it available as an ebook and then go on and use print on demand to make it a pbook and then revise the Wiki and make the newest versions available – is there any new technology these guys have missed! Take a look at The Symbian Blog.
My previous post about on-demand publishing in July gave some hints about why we think wiki books are so cool. With help from contributors like Pankaj and Bogdan, wiki books provide useful information to developers on our website as soon as each chapter is created. The book can then be shaped by the community from the start. Developers build a resource for other developers – the resulting book is as informative as up-to-date as it can possibly be.
Although a wiki is a great online resource, many people like to be able to learn offline, either electronically or simply from reading a print book. So when the wiki book chapters are at a stage where we think they’re ready for book publication, we’ll edit them into a print-ready format by taking copies of the wiki pages and working upon them offline. Satu will use her typesetting skills and software to create a manuscript that will be provided back to the community as a free eBook (for those that want to read the book in pdf format, perhaps on a handheld device or on their PC). The manuscript will also be submitted to our friends at Newsstand UK for those that want to purchase a print copy, which will be printed on an Espresso Book Machine.
The wiki pages for the book will be retained and updated – we hope the book will constantly evolve – so we’ll do a regular audit of changes that occur on the wiki after publication, and revise the manuscript. Because we won’t have printed books stored in a warehouse, and we have in-house typesetting skills, we can make important changes whenever we need to, to coincide with new versions of Python, for example, and put out a new edition of the book much faster than we’ve previously been able.
September 27th, 2009 at 11:03 am
This sounds kind of like the “networked book,” which we discussed on The Writing Show a couple of years ago. Show notes here: http://www.writingshow.com/podcasts/2006/08062006.html. I also wrote an article on the subject, which is available at the Kindle store and Lulu.com.
September 28th, 2009 at 2:26 am
At Symbian, our rationale for books is:
- get the content to developers as soon as possible
- make it free
- keep it valid
Use of wiki solves all that (and allows collaborative writing). The use of typesetting to produce print ready eBooks and print on demand, is a bonus.
That said, it’s often the artefact, the print book with your name on it, that encourages people to start writing in the first place. I reckon a wiki book project gets more uptake if the end point is a printed book on the bookshelf.