O’Reilly’s calling it “Rough Cuts” and it’s a really neat concept. While a book is being written, drafts are posted in electronic format and you can download, read, and comment on the book. I think both readers and authors alike will benefit from this arrangement. Especially for topics like Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript And XML), Ruby, and Ruby on Rails where people are learning more and more very quickly and books-in-progress might be the only way to give and get information.
The introductory description on the first page says you get to help Shape the book (scrubbing out the term Edit) and I like that. Books can be molded and sometimes sculpture terminology works better than flat paper metaphor. Think of ways you can shape your current writing projects. What are your ideas for works-in-progress? Do you like what O’Reilly’s doing here?
Thanks, Erik, for sending that to me!