They look awesome…the books took 3 days to write in a Book Sprint (edited and illustrated as well). Output from Editoria to book-formatted PDF, send to the printers… printers took 3 times as long to print the books as it took us to write it and make the design-ready copy 🙂
So… you might be wondering … just what is this book all about? Well, it’s about some of the technology the Coko community is building. And what does that tech do? In the main, it helps you build publishing platforms… And why is that important? It’s important because the publishing industry has been crippled by expensive, dysfunctional, ‘big box’ platforms for a very long time. It’s really terrible – these systems have been sitting pretty and earning a lot of money off the backs of the publishing of critical information that, at the end of the day, needs to get out there so we can move the world along. These proprietary platforms slow down the sharing of essential information and make it expensive at the same time – and we are aiming to put a stop to that.
Publishing platforms have been a mystery to many – how do you make them? What should they do? How do we even think about it? It’s not easy because no one is sharing their learning. Why would ‘big box’ vendors want to share what they have learned about building publishing platforms with potential competitors? No good reason. In fact, quite the opposite – the harder it is for ‘others’ to build publishing platforms, the better for them, they can keep their clients’ data incarcerated within their systems that much longer, and that means one more year living the good life, raking in the revenues (their platforms are unbelievably expensive).
Many efforts have been made to get out of these systems but they have largely failed. Until now… Our aim is take these suckers down. We’ll do it one step at a time, one publisher at a time. We’ll demystify the process of making publishing platforms. We’ll build them faster, cheaper and better. We’ll turn them into something you can run for a tiny fraction of your current vendor agreement. …we’ll work it all out because the community is smart, experienced, talented and growing. Plus, they are having a great time doing it. That’s the thing about communities with a mission – if they are making progress and having fun, they are unstoppable.
That day is coming. The good news is… it’s all open source. You can’t buy it from us, cause we have nothing to sell. We are literally giving it away….
Write to me if you want a copy of the book 🙂 I’ll mail one to ya…y’know…when I back from surf’n….
