The production of a book is usually very tightly controlled by the author(s) and publisher(s) that produce it. We have come to accept that as just the way it is. You want to write a book, then naturally you have the right to decide what the text of that book will be. Seems almost non-controversial.
So, it’s normal to be asked how can you exercise a similar amount of control over a book in Booki. Its an understandable question but very difficult to answer. Difficult because the answer has to cross paradigms – the first paradigm being the established book production and publishing model that we all know, and the second being book production with free licenses in an open system. So I usually find myself answering questions like this with a simple “You can’t,” and waiting for the reaction. It’s intended to be a provocative answer and the further the eyes roll back in the skull the more I know I have to unwrap the concept of ‘publishing’ in the new(ish) era of free culture for whoever it was that asked the question.
But the reality isn’t so simple – it’s much more interesting.
First, there seems often to be an unspoken assumption that control is necessary. Along with this comes the assumption that open content must be protected. Protected from harm – not just the malicious kind, but harm inflicted by contributions that lower the quality of the text. My experience from four years running an entirely open system (FLOSS Manuals) is that there is little to fear except spam. In four years running FLOSS Manuals, I have not seen a single malicious edit. It seems to be the case that if people are not interested in your book they will leave you alone. If they are interested, I have found that the approaches to the text are sensitive and respectful and more often than not they improve the work – sometimes in very surprising ways. On one book I worked on, a retired copy editor went from top to bottom of the 45,000 word text in his afternoons and made an incredible improvement to the text. I would like to have thanked him but I never met him.
The trick is not to protect the text but to manage it. To do this, first, you must make a decision on what kind of development process this will be and what kind of contributions you would like. From my experience, the best strategy is to try and relinquish as much control as possible in order to achieve the right kind and amount of contributions. To this end, Booki provides some very useful tools to help you. If you want to keep your book very quiet, then you can hide a book so that it does not appear on Booki at all, except on your profile page. Privacy through obscurity. If you want to keep things really really quiet, then you can grab the Booki sources and install Booki on your own server (or laptop) somewhere out of reach of anyone. Or if you want the book totally open for anyone to jump in, then that is the default position with Booki all you have to do then is get the word out as much as you can and invite people to contribute. If you create a new book or chapter then that information gets broadcast on the front page of Booki, however, it is often harder than you think to attract attention and contributions. It often relies on how effectively you can get the word out and how attractive you make the offer. You need to reach out to people and inspire them. The more direct the approach the better – personal emails work best – and emphasising concrete outcomes is very likely to improve results, as is making the offer fun, relevant and illustrating a real need. But the usual rules apply for attracting volunteers in any realm – it’s a mix of luck and getting the tone and channels right.
Once the contributions start rolling in, then it’s up to you to manage this process. To this purpose, there are a number of tools available in Booki – most importantly the history tab where you can view changes and roll back to earlier versions of any chapter as you wish. If things get out of control, you can clone (copy) the entire book and decide on a more moderate development approach. However, the best tool for managing input and getting the book to where you want it to be is social management. You need to coerce the contributors to come along with you and share your vision of what the book should be. At the same time, you need to also be able to make the process satisfying to them. There are tools available to help with this communicative process (chat, notes etc) but it’s often reliant on your tone and approach.
‘How to control’ a book is a question I would like to see asked more often with more nuance and colour to the question. However, I think if you can lose the feeling that you must control the book and instead relinquish as much control as possible, you will be surprised and very probably excited by the results. In a world of free culture, it’s all about the art of losing control…