Here’s how you write an online book

December 17, 2007

Here’s how online books usually go. A book is published online, or happens to be in the Public Domain and resides as a text file (.txt) or a collection of HTML files loosely coupled with a table of contents. If you are me, you find the book, but are immediately depressed because of the dreadful way the page is built, the annoyance of reading on a computer monitor, or somehow the book design is offensive to your tastes.

Most books published do NOT have an online counterpart. It is believed that doing so will hurt sales. Plus it’s doubling effort if you do it incorrectly. Both of these reasons may be true for certain books and bad methods. But you still will find some writers and publishers that have made the jump and offered both. Some even offer the online version for free and still make plenty of cash for the printed version. Books are tactile, they are fun to own.

Just today, I encountered a book that in my opinion is the best possible form of online release. This book is about a website development framework called Django. But you know what, that’s not important. What’s important is the way their online book has been made.

Here’s where they got it so so right:

1. The web address was made just for the book. Djangobook.com
2. It’s designed with a darkened background and a content reading area that looks like a page.
3. Released under a free license that allows copying. I can share it, I will brag about it, everybody wins
4. Simple ‘About’ page, explains the reasoning, who wrote it, why it matters etc. I like this better than a regular book because after reading hundreds of “Acknowledgement” pages I’m ready to skip them. (side note, if you ever write your own book, do us a favor and dump the “acknowledgements” to the back of the book, unless it’s just a one line ‘For Tracey’ or something.) I’ll mention their Eratta page too, which identifies corrections from the dead tree version.
5. Each chapter points to a single HTML page. You don’t enter a chapter and then have to jump through 20 sub pages. It gets to be overwhelming having subpages in online books because you’re not able to grasp the whole, like you can a paper copy. You’re worried how long it will take to get through this thing and how you’ll remember where you left off.
6. The best comments feature ever conceived by man or machine. There is a thin sidebar next to the content area. When you hover over it, there are bubble popups that will either let you leave a contextual comment yourself, OR read comments from others. A reader can express a clarification which will help a later book version, or maybe offer a related example to go with the text. These would be great to use while the book was in earlier writing stages to get opinions and make edits. Comments in blogs are one thing, but if they can line up with the text?! Bitchin dude.
7. Simple “Buy” link at the top. Shows you how to buy the book on Amazon, because they know some of us will get fed up with the screen version. We want the printed book to mark up, to fold over, to give away to somebody. Some of us even do it to support people financially we appreciate. So take THAT economists!
8. Very tasteful and appropriate content layout. They have many code examples in this book. In a lovely way, they share them in a special code box that has a proper font. I’m actually pretty happy they didn’t do syntax highlighting either. There’s really no need. If you wanted to go overboard you could offer a hover - highlight for the panel. I’d also like to express my love for their note boxes. Lovely icon identifier. These changes or breaks within the text help with reading enjoyment. They give you momentum in a way. Help remind you that you are cranking away making progress. Black on white text files do NOT offer this. Real books are already motivating because you can see how many pages you have traversed.
9. Beautiful diagrams that match the side. Really love this
10. Faded navigation. In small ways they keep things not hidden, but subtle until you roll over them. They used nice clean “next” links at the bottom right for navigating through chapters. Perhaps I wouldn’t be so excited over this if I haven’t seen so many hideous arrow navigation for LEFT, RIGHT and confusingly DOWN.

Oops, I guess I have created a top-ten list. I swear it was unintentional. Please forgive me there. And give those Django book guys some compliments if you agree with me. I’m hoping that I can borrow this method somehow if I have a book of my own to post online.

Posted in books, design