Web 2.0 Book
I’m happy to announce that Richard MacManus and I are writing a book about Web 2.0 for O’Reilly Media.
As many of you know, I’ve swallowed the Web 2.0 bug here at Bokardo and Richard has what is probably the most popular Web 2.0 blog, as well as a Web 2.0 column on Digital Web that we co-write. We’re really excited about taking all of this much further and fleshing it out into a book, especially for O’Reilly, who publishes most of the books on our bookshelves.
I can hear some of you groan, however, and ask “Why a book about such an amorphous topic? It’s all hype!”. Yes, there definitely has been a Naming Backlash, but I think that we’ve seen the term “web 2.0″ take root now, and for better or worse it is working.
Our approach going forward is to use our blogs as a sounding board for the chapters as we write them. So expect posts to be more in-depth and detailed in the future here at Bokardo. It’s probably apparent that lately I’m simply writing whatever is in my head at the moment, and there isn’t much cohesion or context given for anything. I hope to change that by writing article-like posts that make much more sense. There won’t be as many, but they’ll be better.
As Richard noted, we’ve been really impressed with Chris Anderson’s Long Tail Blog. He’s going to write a tremendous book on the topic because of the feedback and discussion that the folks on the blog have generated (besides being a terrific writer in the first place). Our goal is to simply approximate that in some way. Even though we’re the ones who have to sit down and pound out thousands of words, most of the ideas aren’t in our heads. They’re in everyone else’s heads.
And I also hope that all the readers here at Bokardo challenge each and every word. One thing that I’ve always found really interesting is how all bloggers that I’ve talked to eventually realize that their readership is way more knowledgeable about everything than they are. I’m looking at you, Lurker.
And yes, you heard right. Unless you’re really lucky, you won’t get rich writing a book. For me personally, this is about describing a topic in the best way that I can, and hopefully learning a lot about writing in the process. Also, I hope there are ways that this writing will feed into our web research at UIE, so I can get a little economy of overlap going on.
And some of you out there are probably like us, wondering how people become authors of a book and how they might do it at some point in the future. All I can say is that book publishing is indeed open to everybody, most particularly open to people who are interested in a particular topic, especially if you’ve already written about it. So, if you’ve got a topic, make a blog about it, write up an outline for a book, and send it to a publisher. My guess is that fear is what stops many would-be authors.
I hope it doesn’t stop us.
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Comments
1. Bill H-D 8:18am, Sat 10th, 2005
Congrats Josh! I am really happy to hear about this. I think the two of you will do a fantastic book, based on the writing that you’ve already done about it.
Will an audience of the book be the new hybrid class of users-qua-developers who have dreams of applications built from open data and low-friction API’s? (I hope so!). Some sample apps, etc. That would be great!
Looking forward to the chapters!
2. CM Harrington 10:04am, Sat 10th, 2005
I think perhaps the problem that everyone sees in “Web 2.0″ is the eventuality that was “Web 1.0″. Right now, we’re too early in the life of W2, but soon, we’ll have “bubble 2.0″, “aeron chair 2.0″, “cubicle nerf fights 2.0″, etc. From my eagle eye (heh), this is history repeating itself, and as the technology has matured, the cycle will be faster. Luckily, we’ll still get some good stuff out of it.
Looking forward to the book. It should be interesting. Please however, try to avoid drinking your own kool-aid. The idea of using existing technologies in new and innovative ways (W2 philosophy) is commendable, and I am fascinated by the applications that have so far come of it. However, Richard’s writing style on his weblog comes off as a bit too colloquial and jargon-filled, similar to that of an aging hipster desperately trying to retain relevance. This isn’t to say the writing has no value –quite the contrary. My problem is in the presentation. An entire book in that style would be unreadable. Of course, on a weblog, you don’t have editors.
Much luck, and I hope we get to see snippets of the product from time to time, Ã la Edward Tufte.
3. Richard MacManus 7:08pm, Sat 10th, 2005
CM said: “However, Richard’s writing style on his weblog comes off as a bit too colloquial and jargon-filled, similar to that of an aging hipster desperately trying to retain relevance. This isn’t to say the writing has no value –quite the contrary. My problem is in the presentation.”
Ouch! But feedback gratefully accepted. Actually as Josh pointed out in this post, we both will be trying to write more in-depth, analytical posts on our respective blogs – on Web 2.0 theory, ideas, themes, etc. This is actually the style of writing that I started out doing on my blog R/WW, but you’re right to point out that over the past 6-9 months I’ve drank the Web 2.0 kool aid – and my blogging over that time reflects that. In my defence though, I’ll point out that I started writing about Web 2.0 well before it got super-hyped – and the reason my blog is so popular right now is because I have introduced this topic to many different types of people. That was a deliberate choice, because I think Web 2.0 is much more than just developers, designers, social scientists – it affects everyone from teachers to librarians to media to…
But really, you’ve articulated the things that I myself have concluded about my blog (except for the aging hipster bit!). Expect to see more in-depth and analytical posts on R/WW in the coming months, as Josh and I work on our book.
4. Alex Barnett 12:16pm, Sun 11th, 2005
this is cool news. Congrats to you both!!!
5. mike 10:32am, Sun 13th, 2008
it’s funny to watch in past to view web technology