tech publishing dying
2004-03-16 19:48:43.25974+00 by Dan Lyke 2 comments
Scoble had a link to Jason Mauss: Fawcette and other TechPubs: The writing is on the wall, about how weblogs are killing technical publications.
Probably a decade and a half ago I was writing an article for Dr. Dobb's Journal, and as we went through the revisions I realized that the editors were asking me to remove the style of writing that I wanted to read. The money was something of an influence, the article brought me about a week's pay, but mostly my wanting to get published was an ego trip. Now I have other outlets for the ego trip, so I'm no longer interested in writing for such publications, and I get better technical information written in a style I prefer from other people who write in similar forums to my own.
The paper has become irrelevant, and it turns out that the editor had value primarily on getting things to paper, not on content advice.
Mauss suggests solutions like switching to producing instructional videos (uhhh... I'm not likely to watch in real time something I can read about much much faster) and doing surveys on more than just salaries (Is "Cowboy Neal" going to be one of the options?), but he's missing the point: I'll still pay for good filtering, but the editor has to be knowledgeable in the field, and has to stop making the writing flat and lifeless. To stay knowledgeable in the field, the editor can't really be full-time editor.
Which means that the collaborative filtering mechanism of weblogs wins.