Writing an open artifacts book

I’m considering writing my first book in the open under a Creative Commons license, and these are my thoughts about it.

The first information I found about writing a book as an open project was an article by Baptiste Pesquet in which he describes his experiences writing and publishing The Javascript Way. His project was always intended to be self-published, so I think it’s a good model if you’re thinking in those terms.

That pointed me to another article: How to negotiate a Creative Commons License: Ten steps by Michael Mandiberg, which mentions a lot of good points about working with a traditional publisher. I feel like it might be outdated at this point, however. I’m not really clear what the latest feeling is on open books, but I feel like a lot has changed since 2011 when this article was written.

I’ve been interested in what I’ve been hearing called a “hybrid model,” where “books are published online and in print.” Specific publishers have hybrid options, though in most cases, the idea appears to be called “open access” now:

• CRC Press (now Taylor & Francis, part of Routledge)
  • Routledge also has something called Open Plus Books
• Palgrave Macmillan
• Springer
• Springer Nature
• O’Reilly
• OTexts
• Princeton
• Cambridge University Press

There appear to be a couple of different definitions of “hybrid” in a publishing context. One, described in Wikipedia under the Hybrid publishing title, describes a type of publishing where the author takes on more financial burden in publishing the book, but the publisher still supplies many of the services that a traditonal publisher does.

Tools

I have some experience working with LeanPub. These are some other suggestions I’ve found:

• Bookdown