Beta Books: Get a Book Before It’s Published

Posted June 10, 2005 * Comments(1)

Check out Beta Books. The basic idea is you get access to the unfinished book a couple of months before it comes out. You get a pdf and you provide feedback.

This sounds really great. Except you have to pay for it. The price of the regular book. When the book comes out, you get the phyisical book as well as the final pdf.

I was real excited about this until I found out you have to pay. Hmm. So I pay you and I provide feedback. So basically I’m doing review and editorial for you. And I pay you. Hmm.

Anyway, interesting idea. Those of you who have written books (Chris), what do think?

1 Comment so far

  1. Chris on June 20th, 2005

    I think you’re right about the pay part. The benefit of a (traditional) review copy is that it’s sent to a group which a) understands that the book isn’t finished yet, and b) is expected to provide feedback valuable enough to change the book before its final release. Accepting full payment for the book violates both those, because a) when I pay for a book and it sucks, I take it back, and b) many valuable reviewers won’t care enough about a new book to actually pay for it.

    That said, this program might actually work for Pragmatic, because the target audience understands the “beta” meme and may actually care about the new books enough to pony up in advance. Besides, they don’t really lose anything by offering the early-release PDFs.

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