Show HN: GitBook WebEditor

https://www.gitbook.com/blog/releases/webeditor

by friendcode • 12 years ago

86 15 12 years ago

jplahn• 12 years ago

I've been using this to write a book and really enjoy it so far (though I also enjoyed the desktop version, for what it's worth).

One thing I've noticed (and that I tweeted earlier) is that having my github hooked up to my book, every time I save (via cmd-s, which I do out of habit every minute or so) it automatically pushes to my repo. So without realizing it, I had something like 50 commits after working for 15 minutes. Not a big deal, but it might be nice to separate the two.

The other thing I've noticed is that saving also builds the book. So in this same 15 minute period of working, I went to the status page of my book and noticed I had 50 or so builds currently being processed, with almost all of them failing in a flurry of emails an hour later. (Side note, any reason for this?)

So the only thing I would say is that I'd like to see a separation of the saving, committing, and building, much like the desktop version had. I'd like to build my book (and commit it) at the end of the session, not on every save. But maybe that's just me.

foreign-inc• 12 years ago

Am I the only one who thought this was a GitHub product from the LnF of their website?

knicklabs• 12 years ago

They even send out an "Explore today on Gitbook" email which looks an awful lot like the "Explore today on Github" email.

It's a cool product, but they could use some original direction in their branding and marketing.

krick2• 12 years ago

I'm pretty sure it's intentional, although they obviously wouldn't admit it.

dahdum• 12 years ago

Nope...took me a long time to figure out it's a separate company.

benatkin• 12 years ago

Has this company licensed the Git trademark? http://git-scm.com/trademark (2.3)

nacs• 12 years ago

Looks good. Any plans for Bitbucket support?

atonse• 12 years ago

Err maybe I'm misunderstanding this but the pricing says 80% royalty? That means they take 80% of your profits if you sell a book authored in this tool? Is this normal in the book world?

Edit: I think I misread, the writer probably gets 80% royalty.

krick2• 12 years ago

Pretty high in any case I would say.

jarcane• 12 years ago

80%-cost is higher than any other POD service I know, that's potentially quite good.

Through my current publisher I get 70% after cost, so it depends on what their fee is (and it irritates me more that they don't specify what that fee is).

I'm also more than a little uncomfortable with the monthly fee angle, especially with it being mandatory to have your books listed on other services. I'm a firm believer in 'money should flow to the author,' and it makes your book's public availability outside of a niche site with poor discoverability contingent entirely on continually providing said site with more money. Your book now no longer pays for itself, but rather must make at least enough to cover the cost or else it vanishes from the public eye.

It's a small fee, but having been through it and seeing what the long-tail of a book can look like, it's something that can add up and be problematic in the long run, and it also hampers the service's utility for those who wish to offer their book free in digital. You can also probably bet on the likelihood it will get bigger, not smaller, over time.

This is, in small scale, why vanity publishers were awful and why everyone jumped on board with POD in the first place.

friendcode2• 12 years ago

I'll add more details about what are the fee and that the author is keeping 80%.

friendcode2• 12 years ago

We are taking 20% and you keep 80% of your profit.

Fees are only fees on PayPal payments (not on credit card transactions).

s3nnyy2• 12 years ago

I've just wrote something for about an hour, then went to make a new outline point via "add article" on the left pane. As a result, the editor refreshed to the new empty outline-point and my previous written text disappeared, which is a big no-go, I guess.

s3nnyy2• 12 years ago

One of the co-founders replied within three hours on a Sunday to this inquiry with a notification that a code-change has been pushed such that this issue can't happen again.

I am impressed.

killercup• 12 years ago

This looks interesting. It reminds me of http://prose.io/ which is basically a general-purpose Github-based web editor and that I used some time ago to edit my markdown files.

Show HN: GitBook WebEditor

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