Genii Weblog

Is planned obsolescence part of the problem?

Mon 13 Dec 2010, 01:16 PM



by Ben Langhinrichs
I had an entertaining tweet in response to a link to my post, Are there no dummies using Lotus Notes?, but after a quick laugh, I realized that the person might have a point:
 
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RT @blanghinrichs: http://bit.ly/iiSP0o - comparison with MS is unfair, they release products once in 3 yrs, so the book has a shelf life ! 
 
 
Perhaps the message here is relevant.  Perhaps the product cycle is such that a book is obsolete too quickly, before it has time to build a following.  It is tempting to ask authors to update more frequently.  For example, I have heard people for years suggest that Rocky Oliver and Brian Benz update their excellent book (see below), most recently in the comments to my last post, where Gregg Eldred mentions it.
 
 
But updating a book of that scope is a huge project, and if they didn't get sufficient sales or sufficient attention/leads/business because of the book, they are likely to skip it. So, perhaps we need smaller books that can be updated more easily.  I hope the Mastering XPages: A Step-by-Step Guide to XPages Application Development and the XSP Language book is like that, updated when necessary because it handles only one portion of the development possible.
 
It bears thinking about.

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What has been said:


928.1. Jason (13/12/2010 18:45)

Aren't printed books out of date almost immediately?

I'd like to see the xPages book published electronically as a beta (like the Pragmattic Programmers do), and then as ongoing releases.

DRM is bad for the customer, and passing around free copies of the book is bad for authors not sure how you square that circle. I don't think DRM stops copying but I think making things reasonably priced (e.g. piled high and sold cheap) and DRM free is an incentive to buy.


928.2. Ben Langhinrichs (12/13/2010 07:32 PM)

@Jason - I agree that eBooks are the way to go for most technical books. They can be updated more quickly. The price issue is a bit trickier, since there is a lot of work that goes into a Programming Bible or whatever. Perhaps if the books were on smaller, more digestible parts at lower prices, the reasonable price would encourage actually buying rather than using DRM. Either that, or going through Amazon's Kindle bookstore, which would allow use on the Kindle, but also on iPads, PCs and whatever. It is worth thinking about.


928.3. Brian Benz (12/13/2010 08:49 PM)

Speaking for myself, I'd love to update the book. I really enjoyed the process, but to say it wasn't really worth it would be a massive understatement :).

There are several things I would change if I were to do it again, including self publishing and electronic publishing. I'm not sure why technical books would be "published" any other way these days.