Interview: Ask Tim O'Reilly

Tim O'Reilly is, of course, the founder and guiding light of O'Reilly & Associates, which publishes stacks of books about programming in general and Open Source programming in particular, along with authoritative Linux manuals and a whole bunch of other stuff. Want to become an O'Reilly author? Ask Tim how. Or ask him anything else. Moderators will select the 10 - 15 questions we forward on Tuesday. Answers will appear Friday, and we cordially invite Tim to join the discussion Friday (if he has time) and add more comments or respond to any questions he found interesting but weren't moderated high enough to make the "first cut."

Poor binding on O'Reilly books...

Are there any plans to improve the binding on your future books? Many of us use O'Reilly books to death and the binding is the first to go. I know I certainly wouldn't mind pay slightly more for a stronger version of some of the most heavily used titles.

Advice for the Linux Documentation Project (LDP)?

Tim,

Given some of the recent discussion surrounding the Linux Documentation Project (LDP), I began to wonder about its long-term direction and viability.

I "grew up" with Linux by reading *many* of the HOWTOs and other documents that were part of the LDP. In many ways, I'd have been lost without the LDP. But with the growth of Linux mind-share and increased demand for texts that help newcomers get acquainted with the various aspects of running their own Linux systems, there seems to have been a stagnation in much of the free documentation. I can't help but to wonder if many of the folks who would be working on LDP-type material have opted to write books for publishers instead.

Where do you see free documentation projects like the LDP going? What advice can you offer to the LDP and those who write documents for inclusion in the project? Might we see electronic versions of O'Reilly books (or parts of them) included in free documentation projects.

Thanks.

Electronic Publishing Formats

I was just given a copy of The Unix CD Bookshelf as a gift. At first, I was suprised at the price (List price of $69.95 for six tittles - UNIX Power Tools, 2nd Edition; Learning the UNIX Operating System, 4th Edition; sed & awk, 2nd Edition; UNIX in a Nutshell, System V Edition (with a dead-tree copy included); Learning the vi Editor, 5th edition; Learning the Korn Shell). Then I was shocked to find out that the books were published in HTML with an optional Java based search engine. This leads to several questions.

First, in this day and age, electronic publications (e-books) seem to be synonymous with encryption and proprietary data formats to protect copyright. Why did O'Reilly & Associates decide to use an open, and technically unprotected, format? Do you think this is a big risk? What advantages outweigh possible risks?

Secondly, this CD set provides an amazing cost savings. UNIX Power Tools alone lists for about $60. Are electronic formats cheaper to produce? Or are the CD sets considered accompanyment to already sold paper books? Is there a risk of cutting into existing traditional book sales?

I'd like to quickly say how much I like the CD set. The open format makes using it a breeze - I got a chuckle at Lynx being listed amoung the acceptable browsers (very cool). An electronic copy makes it so much easier to keep my reference material close-at-hand (no more "damn... I left that book at home / work"). I've really enjoyed this format; please consider offering more tittles on CD.

Budding Authors Want to Know

Although I am majoring in Computer Science, I have been trying my hand at a little bit of Technical Writing here and there.

My questions are:

• What techniques/tips do you have for future Tech Writers?
• What books would you recommend a budding writer should read and study?

And somewhat unrelated: Do you read every book you publish?

Do you have a least favourite book?

Are there any books that you look back on and wish you hadn't bothered with? In particular, I'm thinking about John Bloomer's Power Programming with RPC [oreilly.com], which is the only book I feel tarnishes O'Reilly's good name. It the only one I've read (and I've got most of them, to be honest :-) that I feel is poorly written and difficult to read. For a programming book not to include a simple "Hello, world!" type program until chapter 6 or so is, IMHO, pretty unforgivable.

Online Books?

Why haven't more of your books made it online? A fair amount have, but it's still a fraction of the total offering. Certainly piracy could be an issue, but isn't there still some real profit to be made here? I don't think I know a single geek-sysadmin that wouldn't jump at the chance to, for example, have his company buy him an "O'Reilly Support Contract" for a couple hundred a year, which would enable him to browse and search - with regex's, of course :) - of every book you have online. Let's face it - several hundred dollars is a lot more than many of us spent on ORA books in the last year. And of course this opens up the doorway for tons of new features - books that update themselves through the notes that other readers would be able to leave on their virtual pages, etc.
And how about the ability to create possibly the most comprehensive, one-stop shop for computer info on the planet? I think we'll find soon enough that most of the technically oriented progamming terms in your books will actually have chapters in other books that document them in that easy-to-digest, ORA vernacular that we've all come to know and love. Going for the obvious, imagine if you linked all the regular expression discussions in 'Progamming Perl' to their corresponding lengthier, better documented examples in 'Mastering Regular Expressions.' I can't imagine what a Perl/Regex guru I would've been by now if I had had the latter at my side while reading the former.
Well, anyways, these are just some of the possiblities I see. Keep up the great work, and when you get a chance put a marmoset on one of your books. :)

What are your thoughts on current IP law?

As a publisher, copyright law is obviously an important topic for you. Do you see the Net as a threat to copyright? What do you think of Congress' current fascination with mucking with and extending intellectual property laws? Isn't copyright supposed to be a tradeoff, granting protection now in exchange for eventual release into the public domain? Doesn't extending the copyright period by 20 years every 20 years defeat this? And do you have any thoughts you'd like to share on the database "protection" bills pending in Congress, or the UCITA extensions, or software patents? (I'm most interested in your thoughts on the latter.)

OK, I know, that's more than one question.

horse vs penguin

Have you ever felt funny about having a horse as the animal on your linux books, when everyone would probably regard a penguin as a much better choice?

-Will the Chill

Quick turnaround

With the technology changing so quickly, it seems it would be difficult to keep up, especially publishing books. Yet, you keep right up. What tricks do you use?

When is the X series gonna have a GTK+/Gnome book?

Nearly all the X programming series books grace my bookcase at home (including the XView ones ...). But when are there going to be companion volumes on GTK+ and the Gnome libraries? Get David Flanagan et. al. on the case now. Please!


Chris Wareham

O'Reilly books on Microsoft subjects..

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it makes perfect sense to say that it was mainly O'Reilly's focus on Unix and Open Source subjects that helped the company become the popular and respected publisher it is now. O'Reilly's newest catalogs have an increasing number of books featuring Microsoft technologies-and I'm not talking about the "annoyances" series I love most, but books on VB, ASP etc. I, for myself, welcome these additions since market conditions require us to use MS technologies sometimes, although we are true Linux believers at heart. On the other hand, based on my assumption that your "core audience" is mostly Unix/Linux programmer/admins (which might be mistaken, of course); I am curious about the responses that reached you about these latest Microsoft technology-centric O'Reilly titles; and how they are selling. Would you say that O'Reilly plans to become an important publisher of books on MS technologies as well? Finally, thanks for all those great titles you've provided our community. I guess I will stay a loyal O'Reilly customer until the day you run out of weird animals to put on the covers of your books, and start to use pictures of bacteria and virii. (I nominate "Escherischia coli" or the HIV virus for the cover of a possible book about Microsoft SMS)

heh...

dude i've always wondered what it is with you and animals, please tell.

Becoming an author

How does one go about writing for your company?
Is topic selection open or are there a set or topics you would accept?

How often are books revised? Open to the author?

E-books

Back in the December of 1998, Linda Walsh answered
my email on the "Ask Tim" section of your website, regarding O'Reilly's support of e-books.

Her answer is here: http://www.oreilly.com/ask_tim/electronic_books.ht ml

Basically, she just says that you'd be announcing
your plans "soon."

Nine months later, I don't believe O'Reilly has
made any announcements one way or the other ...
I've been holding off on e-books since then, to
find out what O'Reilly is going to do.

Will you support multiple e-books, or will you
sign an exclusive deal to work with only one
company? If not, which e-book do you personally
think handles O'Reilly material better?

Thanks,
WW

--
Why are there so many Unix-using Star Trek fans?
When was the last time Picard said, "Computer, bring

books

- How does a real O'Reilly bestseller (like Programming Perl) sell in comparison to some of the lesser known books? Generally, how often does a normal book sell (dimension)?
- Are your books, and computer books in general, that expensive because the impression numbers are low or do you price them that high just because you can?
- What is your opinion about electronic publishing?

writing an O'Reilly book

I am amazed that the O'Reilly books stay so current with the industry, and each book usually has only one or two authors. If you went with more people per book (like one per chapter or something), do you think you could get books out on new technology faster?

I haven't seen anyone ask the question everyone is dying to know: how do you get an idea green lighted by O'Reilly? [what prompted the question: Right now there are no books on Real's SMIL (their multimedia XML spec), and I've been getting into it for the last couple months.] So if I wanted to be considered for a book on it, should I crank out an outline and a couple rough drafts of chapters, then try to contact someone at O'Reilly?

How on earth did you guys decide to do a Lego Mindstorms book? (I'm looking forward to reading it, but I was surprised you published it)

O'Reilly book pricing

I know that I can't expect you to reveal the marketing behind the pricing of various books published by O'reilly & Associates, Inc., but, I was wondering what factors were built into the pricing scheme? As a college student/ORA book lover I often find myself unsure whether to buy the seemingly smaller book on topic A or the book on topic B that's 2x as big for only $5 more.

Justin said this.

Re:Becoming an author

Folks who want to ask questions about how to write for O'Reilly should probably read the excellent resource that they have already provided:

[oreilly.com]
http://www.oreilly.com/oreilly/author/intro.html


Most of these questions have already been answered. I'd hate to waste a question that will probably have the answer: "read the FAQ"

Textbooks and O'Reilley

Not sure how to phrase this, but, well, what is the status of O'Reilley and marketing books to schools and colleges for use as textbooks. Our textbooks suck, and if there textbook versions of ya'lls books it would rock.
-Crutcher

Computer humor books by O'Reilly?

Will O'Reilly and Associates have any plans to publish more computer humor books? I have been struck with the User Friendly Productivity Virus, and I also have read a few humor web pages along the way (mostly segfault.org). I would love to read something in the line of a compilation of the best stuff from the best of the funnies I have bumped into while reading /.

Profiting from Free Software

You've turned a nice profit selling books on free software. As I see it, this is much akin to hardware companies such as AMD, who sell their processors largely to Linux geeks, and RedHat, for obvious reasons. What other profitable markets or 'support industries' do you see emerging from the free software arena?

e-publishing

Fatbrain.com has recently announced that it will offer an electronic publishing service, E-matter [fatbrain.com]. What do you think about offering documents for download for a fee? Is this something that O'Reilly might be undertaking in the future?

The post that launched a thousand flames...

Not to start a free SQL server war here, but I notice there is a (quite good) book on mSql and MySql, but nothing for PostgreSQL. Are there any plans to cover it in the near future?

BSD

Mr. O'Reilly:

One of the biggest compaints aong critics of the BSD operating systems is the lack of available books. Since O'Reilly is the leader in Open Source documentation, you are well positioned to enter the BSD market. With that in mind, why hasn't O'Reilly published any BSD books in recent memory?

Thank you, Jamie

The Pulpit and the Marketplace

In an article explaining the differences of opinion between yourself and RMS, you once asserted that his approach was "religious" but yours was "scientific", and added that you felt free software/open source should be tested not at the pulpit but in the marketplace.

Now, where commercial interests and ethical demands coincide, that's great. Where they differ, RMS believes that ethics takes precedence; you seem to be asserting that being "scientific" means prioritizing making money over any ethical concern.

Since the interests of ethics and of commerce do sometimes differ, don't you think it's good that we have people like RMS to talk about the former? And weren't you unfair on him in labelling this behaviour "unscientific"?
--

Free software needs free documentation?

The GNU project believes that the free software it releases needs free documentation to be really free for all to use. O'Reilly seems to primarily profit from selling books for free software. Since it seems that in general O'Reilly books are slanted toward the free software movement, do you have any concrete reasons for disagreeing with the GNU project on this point, aside from the obvious reason that this is how you make money? Are you planning to release any future O'Reilly titles online for free?

Open Source Project Infrastructure in a Nutshell..

Possibly too close to the one about RCS/SCCS.

This would be a shame. Can't believe that.

Ever considered erecting an open source project?

Next to a server with 24/7 conection to the Internet there is a certain set of infrastructure software you simply have to have:

1. The Apache web server
2. a CVS server for access to the repositories of the project source and the sources of the web site (very useful)
3. Majordomo mailing lists
4. ssh / scp for secure telnet, ftp and CVS access
5. Gnats or Bugzilla bug tracking systems
6. The GIMP for some nice site graphics
7. For documentation the docbook suite and related tools

I wonder why nobody wrote such a Infrastructure in a Nutshell yet (gimme a mail, Tim :-)

On the other hand I am not surprised not to see a Kernel Hacking in a Nutshell yet.. that stuff is too much in flow for Linux as well as for FreeBSD.

How about contributing editing advice?

IMHO one of the strength of your company is the care that you put in reviewing book content.

Would you consider reviewing parts of the LDP project and providing good editing advice to the authors of some selected documents of this project?

Do you think that your company could review regularly (let's say xxx pages worth of technical documentation per year) as kind of payback to the community?

[e-mail]

Freely redistributable books -- Linux NAG

You've said that the Linux Network Administrator's Guide sold significantly less than would normally be expected as a result of the text of the book being freely available on the net. By what sort of margin? How many copies did it sell, and how many would you have expected to sell under normal circumstances? Would you release another book in a similar manner if the author accepts that they'll make less money from it? Did the book actually make a loss, or just not make as much profit as expected?

Opening up Previous Editions

Would you ever consider making previous editions of certain books free for download when supplanted by newer editions?

For example, when Larry Wall finally gets around to writing the 3rd edition of the Camel (probably about the same time as Perl 6), would you consider making the second edition available in electronic format?

I realize this has the possibility of forking documentation, but it's hard to find anyone more qualified than Larry, Randal, and Tom, for example. It would only work for certain books.

--
QDMerge [rmci.net] 0.21!

They *do* publish BSD books

why hasn't O'Reilly published any BSD books in recent memory?

Maybe I just have a better memory than you :-) They published the complete 4.4BSD docs, although many of them are now out of print, and I can't find mention of them on the O'Reilly web site.

• The design and implementation of the 4.4BSD operating system [amazon.com]
• 4.4BSD PSD [amazon.com]
• 4.4BSD USD [amazon.com]

My girlfriend's boss has the complete set (in part because the company uses BSD/OS extensively). That said, O'Reilly could do with some more recent BSD docs, covering {Free,Net,Open}BSD.