Boing Boing: Roughcuts: Read tech books as they're being written

Monday, January 23, 2006

Roughcuts: Read tech books as they're being written

O'Reilly and Associates, my all-time favorite tech-book publisher, has just launched Roughcuts, a service that sells you access to tech books as they are being written; once the book is done, you get a copy of it, too. This is an amazing idea: many of O'Reilly's books cover brand-new technical ideas for which little or no documentation exists; putting even rough editions of their material into readers' hands while it's being finalized is a brilliant way to extend and increase the value of O'Reilly's titles.

The Rough Cuts service is a separate transaction from your standard Safari subscription. When purchasing a book through this premium service, you gain access to an evolving PDF manuscript that you can read, download or print. Once you've purchased a Rough Cuts title, you will have a chance to shape the final product-you can send suggestions, bug fixes, and comments directly to the author and editors.
You have your choice in the Rough Cuts program of purchasing just online access, just the print book when it releases, or the best of both worlds - online access immediately and the print book later.

Link

Update: Justin sez, "Roughcuts reminds me of Pragmatic Programmer. You can usually always download their book in PDF form pre-publishing and help in the review process if you're so inclined. Once the book is published, of course you get a copy of that too."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:05:17 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

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