This interesting manifesto argues convincingly for a change in how books are written and published: It’s The Lean Publishing Manifesto.
The rise of blogs and related web technologies has disrupted journalism and authorship model, where authors wrote and readers consumed, into a model of dialog, debate and discussion. Many authors are now blogging as an adjunct to writing. Many of us who blog find a voice without making writing our main craft or business – we are part of the ‘long tail’.
This manifesto calls for extending the dialog and feedback model to its logical conclusion, proposing a ‘publish early, publish often’ model for books that turns book-writing into a feedback-driven process.
It’s inspired in many ways by the ‘lean startup’ concept, noting that book publishing and startups sharing similar traits and challenges: Both are product and market-driven high-risk endeavors, in businesses that are somewhat ‘hit driven’. To mitigate those risks, an iterative process to develop both the product and the market (aka Customer Development) is required. An author doesnt need to write their book in obscurity, he or she can write a ‘minimum viable book’ (akin to a startup’s minimum viable product) based (possibly) on writing developed in blogs, and further refined and edited.
I’ve embraced the Lean Startup concept and would recommend Eric Reis’ “Lean Startup”, which teaches the need for fast iterative learning for startups. Certainly the analogies between startup and book-writing activities are valid: Hard, focussed, risky activity that can be lucrative if it is valuable and ‘scales’ to a wide audience. Iteration and feedback mitigates the risk.
As far as leveraging blog posts, I have seen good and bad examples. On the plus side: The 4-hour workweek had a new version published, and what was interesting is that the 2.0 version touted “new information”. What was it? Added commentary, that typically came through the book’s blog. It was a bulkier and better book for it. On the minus side: A ‘book’ that was little more that taking blog posts and stabling them together, was perhaps the least useful book (on startups no less) that I have read. (Oh dear, it’s one of the books on the LeanPub booklist.)
We are awash in information. Information is free. So why pay $20 for a book? It’s not what is added, but what is substracted – get rid of the extraneous, low value, less important stuff. Omit needless words. Create exception product quality. Books that save us time are valuable because our time is precious – time savings will be paid for.
I will go one step further than the lean publishing manifesto. They make a great case for iterative lean-style book publishing, but the other element of blogging – the dialog and collaboration – can also be taken to its ultimate conclusion. Book writing would and could migrate to a different model of collaboration, enabled by the web, where a book is co-written by a wide number of authors. There is of course the grandest prototype of that vision: Wikipedia, written by a cast of thousands.
My vision is humbler. Instead of thousands in a sprawling encyclopedia, what about tens of people on a single specific targetted book? Some academic books are co-authored in a manner in which each author gets a chapter to write. I became a co-co-author of such a book. In general, they cover a space with a set of articles that may be aligned or may be disjointed. The effort per author that is that of a 10-20 page paper, something doable in a few weeks to a few months.
The web, the right kind of flexible and focussed CMS, enables the permissions, feedback, dialog, blogging, commenting needed to make many sorts of collaborative publishing and authorship models to work. The Lean Publishing Manifesto proposes that the right model is to publish early and give users opportunity to feedback as much as possible. That is valid, although feedback is no substitute for genius, insight and creativity. Iterative publishing combined with collaborative authorship will revolutionize how books are created, made and sold, and as I ponder what could be done here, I am left to consider that “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” How it play out depends in part on those who lead the way.