Advice On Creating an Open Source Textbook? 178
Occamboy writes "I wrote a slightly successful (30,000+ copies sold) computer communications textbook a number of years back that was published via the traditional textbook publishing route. The royalties were nice, but, frankly, the bigger money came from the boost in my professional standing (I'm a practicing engineer, not a professor). I also felt bad when the publisher hiked the price dramatically every year because students were stuck once a professor adopted a text — $50 for a smallish paperback seemed very high (although I like to think what they learned was worth it!). I'm thinking of writing another textbook, this time about the practice of software engineering in critical systems, using the experience I've gained in the decades I've spent developing, and managing the development of, software-driven medical devices. Poking around on the Net, I've found several intriguing options for distributing open source texts, such as Flatworld Knowledge, Lulu, and Connexions. This concept of free or inexpensive texts intrigues me — the easy adoption and lack of price-gouging. Do any Slashdotters have experience with this new paradigm? Any suggestions or experiences to share from authors, students, and/or professors, who've written, read, or adopted open source or low-cost texts from any source?"
unfortunately... (Score:5, Insightful)
Make sure you're clear on what you want to do (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you want to write a free textbook, manage an open source textbook project or host/start a wiki textbook?
If you want to write a free textbook, go for it. There are several examples you can find, some by pretty big names.
If you want to manage an open source textbook project be warned that if you want a professor to use it you're going to have to assume the role of editor and put up your reputation to vouch for whatever goes into it.
If you want to start a wiki textbook project, there's no shortage of wiki sites, but nobody is going to use it in an official capacity. Just like Wikipedia doesn't fly in academia, wiki texts don't either.
Perhaps O'Reilly's Open Books (Score:2, Insightful)
I understand O'Reilly publishes a number of books under "various forms of 'open' copyright [oreilly.com]".
Re:Make sure you're clear on what you want to do (Score:2, Insightful)
Key fact Wikipedia is as accurate as Britannica [cnet.com]. This is even taking into account the risk of vandalism. I don't care about the detail; there seem to be ways of counting which make Wikipedia win and ways that make Britannica win; what matters is that this means that statistically, a fact in Wikipedia is much more likely to be true than not. If you wouldn't worry when using a different Encyclopaedia, then you shouldn't worry when using Wikipedia.
Now, if you care about a fact enough that you are worried even in this situation. A; typical example where this might be true is when involved in academic studies; then you need to check the sources of the fact. This is where Wikipedia's citation policy [wikipedia.org] is a killer. Whilst you should still check the fact in multiple sources, knowing the original source tends to make it much easier to be clear when a fact is wrong. Why was it wrong? What is the original source of the misunderstanding etc. etc.
The only thing to be aware of in Wikipedia is that it's more likely that a fact is maliciously and deliberately wrong. In this case, it helps to check the history of the fact and see who added it; again something not possible in Britannica. If that doesn't matter / isn't likely for the fact you are interested in then again you just go back to statistics, which are in your favour.
My experience (Objective C for Apple) (Score:4, Insightful)
With help from Alex Clarke and Philippe Mougin I wrote a tutorial on programming in Object-C, aimed at absolute newbies. It was released as a PDF and a great success. Over 200k copies were downloaded by people interested in programming for the Apple Macintosh (or perhaps iPhone). You can find it here:
http://www.cocoalab.com/?q=becomeanxcoder [cocoalab.com]
It was translated by volunteers in several other languages, amongst which Chinese and Arabic. Cool!
Bert
Re:RTFS (Score:3, Insightful)
I think there are some people who just can't fathom not "monetizing" everything they do to the point that they can't even imagine other people ever thinking about it.
Freeload Press (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Speaking as a professor... (Score:3, Insightful)
For what it's worth, I would not be a fan of a purely electronic textbook. Electronic resources are great, but having a written reference on the side is still very useful - if only because you may need to see the reference while looking at stuff on your screen.
The lazy ones, though, make that pay off for them. It becomes the equivalent of the gamestop exclusive DLC, to damage the used book market. When you get one who actually tries to REQUIRE it (I did), you either rebuy the book brand new (eating the cost of the used one) or drop the section/class.
Re:Make sure you're clear on what you want to do (Score:2, Insightful)
No, the problem is that it is an encyclopedia. References to specific versions are essentially trivial:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Help:Page_history&oldid=308799187#Linking_to_a_specific_version_of_a_page [wikipedia.org]