Show HN: Softcover – A publishing platform from the author of the Rails Tutorial

http://www.softcover.io/

by mhartl • 12 years ago

208 61 12 years ago

softcover.io

HistoryInAction• 12 years ago

Interesting, especially in context of the FG Press announcement. Good luck!

mhartl14• 12 years ago

Thanks!

benatkin• 12 years ago

I saw this go to the second page. I don't think it's enough to link to https://news.ycombinator.com/newest rather than the story from twitter to avoid being penalized. I think saying that it's on Hacker News might be the way to promote it without getting penalized. I think this is right up HN's alley though so I expect it to stay on HN for half a day. :)

markbates2• 12 years ago

Congratulations on the launch.

As the first author on the platform, http://conqueringthecommandline.com, and as the author of two other books (http://books.markbates.com), I can say that this was the easiest, and nicest tool chain I've worked with.

It took me from saying "I'm never going to write another book again" to "I have so many books I want to write now!".

webwanderings• 12 years ago

Very nicely done. Just finished reading the whole. Hope you'd write the sequel.

markbates2• 12 years ago

Glad to hear you like it.

avolcano• 12 years ago

Seems like an alternative to https://leanpub.com/ with much better design. I'm very impressed.

Anjin6• 12 years ago

Thanks, I manage the front-end design and development so hearing that warms my heart!

jimhart30002• 12 years ago

As the frontend dev, any insight as to why you didn't go responsive with this? It's a nice looking site and you did a great job, but I'm surprised - since this is a publishing platform that obviously caters to multiple devices - to not see a device-agnostic approach to the site.

SanderMak• 12 years ago

Indeed. So as somebody who justed started thinking about self-publishing a book, that raises a question. Should I go with the 'established' platform or this upcoming platform that seems more advanced? Will I suffer from a lack of recognition by potential buyers? Are there other non-technical (financial) differences between the two?

Looks like it's time to start reading and comparing.

prateekj• 12 years ago

Looks like a nice product! Congrats on the launch.

One of the main concerns for any new book is marketing. Are you planning to address this issue?

mhartl14• 12 years ago

The Softcover sales platform includes a marketing page with slots for author bio, testimonials, FAQs, etc. (See, for example, Mark Bates's marketing page at http://conqueringthecommandline.com/) Softcover also supports an optional free HTML version of your book, which can be a great marketing tool. Finally, we are planning to develop a step-by-step "Marketing Wizard" to give authors detailed advice and guidance in their marketing efforts.

thaweatherman2• 12 years ago

Do authors have the option of providing a book preview for free online rather than the entire thing? Or does that feature only allow for the entire book to be made free online?

Ash-k• 12 years ago

This is cool.. congratulation

rastokes• 12 years ago

Is the logo an ouroboros?

Anjin6• 12 years ago

It is! Idea was to signify our desire to consume traditional publishing with a new publishing model. Publishing eating publishing.

peterarmstrong• 12 years ago

"New publishing model"? You could have just used a photocopier.

callmeed• 12 years ago

I remember meeting Michael Hartl in the airport prior to RailsConf a couple years ago. Great guy & I recall he mentioned this idea. Nice to see it launch–best of luck!

mhartl14• 12 years ago

Thanks, Erik! I remember that meeting fondly—in line at Long Beach Airport en route to Austin, if I recall correctly. I hope all is well!

rafeed• 12 years ago

This is awesome! Well defined, and I like the design and intro video. I wish there were something like this for writing journal articles. Right now, it's a total pain.

acangiano2• 12 years ago

This is very interesting and well done. I have a few questions.

1. Am I allowed to sell the files elsewhere? For example, sell the .mobi file on Amazon Kindle and publish a printed version via CreateSpace.

2. Are the files watermarked at all with Softcover's branding?

3. Is this open to authors everywhere or are there restrictions?

4. Will this handle sale taxes for authors? I'm a Canadian author with a PST/GST account, will I be able to collect that from Canadian customers?

PS: The Browse and Setup links on conqueringthecommandline.com are meant to point to softcover.io, so they are broken at the moment.

mhartl14• 12 years ago

Great questions, Antonio. I've just deployed an update to the front page at http://www.softcover.io/ answering some of them, but for convenience I'll answer them below as well.

1. Am I allowed to sell the files elsewhere? For example, sell the .mobi file on Amazon Kindle and publish a printed version via CreateSpace.

Yes, you retain copyright on everything you make and can do anything you want with the files. They get built on your system by Softcover's open-source toolchain, so you have complete control.

2. Are the files watermarked at all with Softcover's branding?

No, the books have no Softcover branding. The online version has an inconspicuous Softcover-branded footer by default, but even that can be removed with a simple config setting, as described in the manual (http://manual.softcover.io/book/marketing#additional_informa...).

3. Is this open to authors everywhere or are there restrictions?

Softcover is open to anyone, and there are no restrictions.

4. Will this handle sale taxes for authors? I'm a Canadian author with a PST/GST account, will I able to collect that from Canadian customers?

I don't know about this one. If you join the [Softcover Google Group](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/softcover-publishing), I'll introduce you to my cofounder Nick Merwin, who is in charge of stuff like this. If we don't currently support collecting Canadian sales tax, we might be able to add it.

acangiano2• 12 years ago

Thank you, Michael. I joined the group.

taylorlapeyre• 12 years ago

This has the potential to become the definitive way to publish and buy books online. Amazingly well done.

aalpbalkan• 12 years ago

Congrats, looks good. Will it remain free? What will be the restrictions in the future.

mhartl14• 12 years ago

Thanks! The Softcover production system is available for free as open-source software under the permissive MIT License. Softcover just takes a cut of sales, so we only make money when you make money.

thaweatherman2• 12 years ago

I love it! One comment I do have though is that the space alloted to the video on the page is quite large. Larger than the default zoom in Firefox at least. While it isn't a huge deal to not be able to see the whole picture and there is a full screen button, it might be helpful to some to make the video smaller on the page.

mhartl14• 12 years ago

Thanks! I think the video issue has been fixed. Let me know if you still run into trouble.

Anjin6• 12 years ago

Yeah... I wanted to do a big full screen stretching video. But probably easier to constrain it. Changed!

siculars• 12 years ago

Congrats on the launch. Looks great and is tempting me to take a real stab at writing I've always flirted with. Q: is there planned integration with print? Could you send out text to a printer and get an actual book made? DO you have relationships with any printers?

mhartl14• 12 years ago

Thanks! Glad it looks tempting.

We've definitely looked into print. It's a tough nut to crack, and the ecosystem might not be mature enough yet for automatic integration. Lulu, for example, built an API, but not enough people used it, so they closed it to new developers. I'd love to offer a print solution at some point, though, so we'll keep an eagle eye on it.

In any case, the Softcover production system uses LaTeX, which is designed to make print-quality PDFs. The default output is optimized for tablets, but adapting it to a print-ready version is fairly straightforward. I expect we'll incorporate that into the typesetting system at some point. But unfortunately right now you'll have to do a lot of work by hand no matter which production system you use.

mikekij• 12 years ago

@mhartl FTW! Great work.

Kind of reminds me of a LaTeX for the web. Source code files -> properly formatted documents. I may use this in a future project. Looks awesome!

barkingcat• 12 years ago

I'm running into error with "softcover server" not sure if it's my set up or if it's something in softcover.

I'm on os x, using ruby 193

mhartl14• 12 years ago

Sorry for the inconvenience. If you join the [Softcover Google Group](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/softcover-publishing) and post the error message there, I'll take a look and see if we can figure it out.

rpicard• 12 years ago

I'm so excited about this! I'm currently drafting the last few chapters for Explore Flask (web development book funded via Kickstarter) and the whole self-publishing process is a mess when it comes to formatting. It looks like the Markdown + Latex solution with things like boxes, code blocks and tables pre-configured is an awesome way to do things. I'm almost certainly going to switch to this toolchain from pandoc.

I'll also look into using the sales / hosting platform too. I'm a little hesitant to put that in someone else's hands, but you guys have done such a great job that I'll probably end up giving in.

Can't wait to start working with this!

mhartl14• 12 years ago

Great to hear it! Don't worry about sales & hosting platform; Softcover supports custom domains, so you're never locked in. You could switch your domain over to your own website at any time. I just know from experience what a pain it can be, so we figure lots of people will be happy to pay a small percentage in exchange for the convenience of not having to build and maintain everything yourself.

infocollector• 12 years ago

Very cool project. Just in case if people are interested in Python for something like this, I've been using some code to do this (slides): http://bit.ly/pythonclass - Its in alpha and I've been using this to teach my python class. Haven't pushed it to github/bitbucket, but I would love to share (or work together with others) if there is demand.

lizk• 12 years ago

This is awesome!

desireco42• 12 years ago

This looks amazing and further increases my respect for Michael Hartl. I don't really have publishing intentions, yet making this as seamless as it is should allow people who have talent and desire to publish their works easily.

I see that Michael is answering questions here, so here is one. If someone decides to publish... let's skip anarchy, let's say erotic and porn novels, is this still game?

Now that I think this through, someone can use toolchain and get their stuff published anyway, I would just like to know, where are boundaries of your service?

mhartl14• 12 years ago

Thanks for the kind words. We might not choose to highlight titles that could invite controversy (especially not early on), but our intent is to produce a flexible publishing tool that is limited only by the imagination of the author. If that imagination includes, e.g., erotica, I wouldn't in principle have any objections, especially if (as I would generally recommend to most authors) they opted to use a custom domain name.

ogdenyogly• 12 years ago

Bookmarked this for when I complete my novel :)

Anjin6• 12 years ago

I know you are joking a bit, but if you were really thinking about jumping into writing a novel, being able to publish nicely formatted HTML chapters as you write them for free to people is a great way to get people interested from an early stage.

It's a model that has worked in the past for some people, including this recent example I heard about on NPR: http://www.sciencefriday.com/segment/02/14/2014/andy-weir-th...

He slowly published each chapter, then when he finally finished the book, he posted the ebook versions for free on his site. Eventually he added it to Amazon (and had to attach a price to it because they don't let you give away ebooks) to help people load the ebook onto their Kindle with less friction than making them download and transfer the file, he found that he was selling more copies of the book than he was giving away for free on his site.

It's exactly that model of openly sharing what you are working on with the people that are going to use or be entertained by it that we want Softcover to encourage.

bowerbird2• 12 years ago

thanks for point to that, i hadn't seen it before, and it's a great example of the experience many have had, namely that giving away an e-book can spur sales of it.

-bowerbird

yixizhang• 12 years ago

Backend has become simple enough that you wouldn't have to pay much attention. The great design of this website has anything specific to do with its Rails backend?

habosa• 12 years ago

This looks excellent, congrats on the launch.

Also if anyone out there hasn't read Michael's Rails Tutorial, read it now. The best and most thorough tutorial I have ever read on any topic, it opened my eyes to modern web programming.

the4dpatrick• 12 years ago

Congrats on launching!

Reminded of when of a youtube video where you talked about this idea and how you solved your money problems through the rails tutorial.

globalpanic• 12 years ago

How does this differ from leanpub?

mhartl14• 12 years ago

Softcover is based on the Rails Tutorial model, which differs from Leanpub in several key ways. I actually think Leanpub is a great service if it meets all of your needs as an author, and in fact if it had met all of my needs I might not have bothered building Softcover. (Of course, Leanpub didn't exist when I first started publishing the Rails Tutorial in 2009, but I might have used it for follow-on products.) Here are some of the important differences:

- Softcover comes with an industrial-strength, open-source production system. This means you can write heavily formatted books with cross-references, code listings, tables, etc., and interactively build them locally, all without being locked in to a proprietary system.

- Softcover's HTML books are first-class citizens. The online version of the Rails Tutorial is a key part of its marketing strategy, so it has to be polished and prominent.

- Softcover gives you your customer list. Letting customers opt-in to share their email is fine for more casual authors, but it isn't ideal if (like me) you're trying to build a business.

- Softcover supports custom domains. It's important to me to use a custom domain for branding/SEO and so that I own my own traffic.

hrjet2• 12 years ago

This looks great. I was not able to find out myself: Where is the source-code hosted?

Anjin6• 12 years ago

That is totally up to you. You can write your book and push changes to GitHub, store the book files in your Dropbox directory, tempt fate and just store them locally, etc.

Softcover just pulls in the HTML and eBooks that are compiled from the source code, as well as the book config files, and generates the views and links.

hrjet2• 12 years ago

Thanks for that info, but my question was about the source code of Softcover itself.

macobo• 12 years ago

Awesome. I'll look into this when writing my thesis.

ryderm• 12 years ago

This is very well put together, and makes me excited about the possibility of writing in the future. mhartl, I did your rails tutorial a few years ago with very little programming background, and it singlehandedly got me interested in programming enough to switch majors and spend all my time learning and building things. Thanks, and congrats on the launch!

mhartl14• 12 years ago

Awesome, glad to hear it!

marukokinno2• 12 years ago

Congratulations! Will use it. By the way, thank you very much, Mr. Hartl, for the rails tutorial. It was life changing for me, a former completely non-tech guy, now running my customs brokerage business trough a collaborative database tool horribly coded by me myself :) edit: misspell

marukokinno2• 12 years ago

I noticed that when changing from one chapter page to another, it loads much faster than the original rails tutorial, that takes forever. Nice improvement, still note a little latency though. It will be nice for people to study the Rails Tutorial Book when published on Softcover's new platform. Is going to happen?

mhartl14• 12 years ago

There is already a version of the Rails Tutorial book that builds on Softcover, and in the coming weeks I plan to move the full tutorial over to the Softcover platform (taking care to preserve things like legacy download links). Watch for an announcement once the change-over is complete.

Show HN: Softcover – A publishing platform from the author of the Rails Tutorial

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