Sorry if my tone came across as being more irritated than I actually was; and I appreciate your clarifications. Also, I didn't notice that you were mentioned in the grandparent; I probably would have interpreted your remarks more charitably if I had known that you were involved in the leanpub project.
Love On Bullshit! But that takes me back to my original point; I love my Kindle, have read all of cstross's articles on the challenge of ebooks, and don't have any problem calling an ebook a "real" book. And from both a technical and philosophical perspective, I understand and sympathize with leanpub (and thanks for the links; this is the first I've heard of your company, and it's great to see you've put so much thought into it).
My original point was simply that I can appreciate the interative nature of writing a manuscript, and getting feedback is essential. But I think there are large swaths of literature which are simply not suitable for the average consumer to provide that kind of feedback, because the very process of reading the draft ruins your ability to enjoy the end result. And since many of my colleagues in the software business don't tend to read those sorts of books (or ebooks), I probably should have made more of an effort making my point, rather than being snarky.
Thanks for replying. I agree that publishing in-progress is an easier sell to a technical book author or a business book author (or any non-fiction author, frankly) than to a novelist. This is especially true since in a non-fiction book where the subject matter is changing so fast, publishing in-progress is the best way to avoid your words being obsolete when read.
However, for a fiction author, publishing in-progress has its merits too. First, given the number of writers in the world, it's a mathematical certainty that there's a really good story that exists only on some author's laptop right now, and all that s/he has to show for it is rejection letters. (Or the author could be so shy that they haven't even submitted it to anyone yet.) Lean publishing on Leanpub could help this author get their work out there and overcome the fear of publishing. (It would be really cool if one day Leanpub enables some great work of literature to be discovered...)
But publishing is special. Even if you've been creating lots of previews and have no interested readers, the first time you click the publish button and make your book available for purchase it is a scary thing to do. (This is a lot more so than tweeting or blogging.) I was even nervous clicking publish on my in-progress manifesto book, and I'm the cofounder of Leanpub! I think this is because most authors (myself included) have a deep respect for books and publishing. Saying that your words are worth reading is one thing, saying that they constitute a book worth reading is a big deal.
That said, we believe that the Lean Startup principles do apply to books, and that releasing more often can create a better work. Publishing in-progress can give authors some of the feedback that really good editors can provide. With my first book, I actually got really good feedback both from readers when I self-published and from my technical editor once I signed with a publisher after the first book version was done. But frankly, the reader feedback was more important: a reader found a security bug in my code, I got to ask my readers how important they thought REST would be to them (this was many years ago), etc, etc. Now, most readers gave me no feedback. This is expected. But the level of feedback I got from the most engaged readers was superior to what I would have gotten from even a good development editor. (The technical depth of these readers was equal to that of the technical reviewers, who are only typically engaged near the end of a technical book's development.)
Finally, publishing in-progress has another advantage: it helps avoid writer's block. This is because once you get in the habit of publishing, it removes the fear from it and just leaves the endorphin rush. This is similar to how continuous deployment in lean startups works, or how regular exercise at the gym works. Lean publishing makes releasing new versions a habit, and habits are powerful things...
Love On Bullshit! But that takes me back to my original point; I love my Kindle, have read all of cstross's articles on the challenge of ebooks, and don't have any problem calling an ebook a "real" book. And from both a technical and philosophical perspective, I understand and sympathize with leanpub (and thanks for the links; this is the first I've heard of your company, and it's great to see you've put so much thought into it).
My original point was simply that I can appreciate the interative nature of writing a manuscript, and getting feedback is essential. But I think there are large swaths of literature which are simply not suitable for the average consumer to provide that kind of feedback, because the very process of reading the draft ruins your ability to enjoy the end result. And since many of my colleagues in the software business don't tend to read those sorts of books (or ebooks), I probably should have made more of an effort making my point, rather than being snarky.