A quick search turned up Lulu (http://www.lulu.com/).

From the Lulu site: "Publish and sell easily within minutes. No set-up fees. No minimum order. Keep control of the rights. Set your own price. Each product is printed as it is ordered. No excess inventory."

Looks like they offer hardcover and paperback and are fine with "open-source" books. More info at Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lulu.com On 12/11/06, Kirsten Chevalier wrote:

On 12/11/06, Andrew Wagner wrote:

...

I think there are some great ideas here, and it would be a fantastic project to do as a community, via a wikibook. I, for one, have been studying haskell for several months, and am just starting to see a little bit of light when it comes to monads. I think it would be beneficial to work through a non-trivial construction of a new monad, and the larger examples given would be good opportunities to do that.

If you (or anyone else who's been participating in the discussion, or anyone else) would like to do a wikibook, that would be great. Personally, I'd like to write / be involved in organizing the writing of a dead-trees book. (In theory, it could be both, but it seems to me like short of being Larry Lessig, there's not really a way to get a publisher to publish something that's already released under a free documentation license -- but correct me if I'm wrong.)

Cheers, Kirsten

-- Kirsten Chevalier* chevalier@alum.wellesley.edu *Often in error, never in doubt "There's no money in poetry, but there's no poetry in money, either." --Robert Graves _______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe

What do you mean by "real publisher"? As long as the quality of the final product is good, does it really matter what publishing company has their name stamped on it? I'm not sure about Lulu and distribution, but there's also BookSurge (http://www.booksurge.com) which is owned by Amazon. From their "distribution" page: "Through BookSurge, your book is given a unique ISBN (a sales distribution number) and is made available for sale through the world's largest distribution channels. Our authors receive the highest royalty rates in the industry, without smoke and mirror accounting - you receive royalties as a direct percentage of your book's list price on all retail and wholesale channels." There are plenty of details to figure out, but I wouldn't dimiss the "open, electronic book" -> "dead-tree book" idea just yet. On 12/11/06, Kirsten Chevalier wrote:

On 12/11/06, Matt Revelle wrote:

...

A quick search turned up Lulu (http://www.lulu.com/).

...

From the Lulu site: "Publish and sell easily within minutes. No set-up fees. No minimum order. Keep control of the rights. Set your own price. Each product is printed as it is ordered. No excess inventory."

Looks like they offer hardcover and paperback and are fine with "open-source" books.

I suppose I should have clarified that I meant a dead-trees book with a real publisher, but again, if other people want to organize something different based on this thread, they should go ahead! I can only do so much :-)

Cheers, Kirsten

-- Kirsten Chevalier* chevalier@alum.wellesley.edu *Often in error, never in doubt "...There is no mystery; there is only paradox, the incontrovertible union of contradictory truths." -- Edward Abbey _______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe

I have taken the liberty to read into the definition of "practical Haskell;" if I'm off target let me know so I can tweak my claims to fit whatever it is I thought I was discussing ;). Two cents: 1) This wouldn't be the first book introducing functional programming to imperative programmers. It would seem wise to investigate existing literature and see how the "good ones" handled that: which examples, when to introduce what, etc. The purity issue probably will be a novelty to a Haskell book though. 2) This wouldn't be the first book introducing Haskell to functional programmers. It would seem wise to investigate existing literature... I've read (and heard) a lot of claims that the existing "learn Haskell" books don't teach you "real Haskell." I believe it's because the existing books tackle both 1 and 2 above, leaving no room for 3) This would be the first book introducing the nuances of large systems development in Haskell to Haskell programmers. Explaining well various monads (e.g. how to use mtl), or other things necessary for "practical Haskell" (e.g. ByteString, database interface, web app, parsing, and many other systems libraries), requires of the audience a rather thorough understanding of Haskell's type system (MPTC and other extensions for mirth). In summary: If this is to be a reasonably sized book, then I think it must assume some working knowledge of Haskell. There are a number of good books to learn the basics, but there doesn't seem to be a standard "read this book for Haskell systems development". Eschew the basics to make room for the good stuff. If this is not to be a reasonably sized book (i.e. it will go from knowing Haskell 0% all the way to writing "real world programs"), then I think the good existing literature should be the inspiration for the "learn Haskell" section. I love the analogies as much as the next programming languages researcher, but I think introducing Haskell in text has been done and done well--it doesn't need a new approach. So don't reinvent the "learn Haskell" text; that way you can spend time on the good stuff. Nick ps - I'd be happy to participate in varying degrees with any collaborative effort. On 12/11/06, Kirsten Chevalier wrote:

On 12/11/06, Matt Revelle wrote:

...

What do you mean by "real publisher"? As long as the quality of the final product is good, does it really matter what publishing company has their name stamped on it?

It matters to me; if I'm going to put work into this, then that's what I want the result to be. I'm happy, of course, for projects that I am not involved in to use whatever publishing mechanisms that the people involved in those projects prefer.

If you want to help with the writing project that I have in mind, then discuss that on the list. If you want to start another writing project whose primary goal is to produce an open-content, electronic book, then announce that on the list too. If you want to debate the merits of open-content versus traditional publishing, well, I'd love to have that debate too, but this list probably isn't the right forum for that.

Cheers, Kirsten

-- Kirsten Chevalier* chevalier@alum.wellesley.edu *Often in error, never in doubt "There are many places in computer science where it's actually helpful to procrastinate." -- Eric Brewer _______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe

Sorry, wasn't sure I had clearly expressed that it's possible to have an "open" book end up as a dead-tree book. Either way, I'm interested in helping. On 12/11/06, Kirsten Chevalier wrote:

It matters to me; if I'm going to put work into this, then that's what I want the result to be. I'm happy, of course, for projects that I am not involved in to use whatever publishing mechanisms that the people involved in those projects prefer.

On 12/11/06, Andrew Wagner wrote:

Ok, well I think we can all agree that such a book is a good idea. I suggest we take the discussion to some kind of collaboration tool. It's pretty hard to do just on this mailing list. There are a lot of options, such as finding a forum somewhere, creating a wiki book somewhere and having a mailing list too, using google's collaborative authoring tool, or whatever. Suggestions?

Yes, I think it's quite clear now that there's enough interest in this, and we shouldn't get distracted by the licensing equivalent of bikeshed-coloring. I should have enough web hosting space to set up a wiki and a mailing list for discussion, so I'll go ahead and do that sometime over the next couple of days, and follow up here. Cheers, Kirsten -- Kirsten Chevalier* chevalier@alum.wellesley.edu *Often in error, never in doubt "Science fiction is not predictive; it is descriptive."--Ursula K. Le Guin

G'day all. Quoting Kirsten Chevalier :

I suppose I should have clarified that I meant a dead-trees book with a real publisher, [...]

Something more like this, then: http://phptr.com/perens Maybe we should come up with an outline and a sample chapter or two, then talk to Bruce? Cheers, Andrew Bromage

On 12/11/06, Andrew Wagner wrote: I think there are some great ideas here, and it would be a fantastic project to do as a community, via a wikibook. ------------...... On 12/11/06, Kirsten Chevalier wrote: there's not really a way to get a publisher to publish something that's already released under a free documentation license -- but correct me if I'm wrong.)

I have on my shelf, copies of "SICP", "Thinking Forth", "The Icon Programming Language", and "Programming with Unicon", just to name the ones that I can think of and all of them are available on line. I like someone at the beginning of the thread, said "I just like the feel of paper...no ink". I read what I have to in online docs, but I do like to have to sit back with a book. There is, I believe a book publishing entity on the net that will publish, on demand, so to speak, any book submitted to them. I can't for the life of me remember the name of that resource, but it makes the idea of turning a wikibook into a hard copy feasible... no matter what the topic. I would surmise that due to the somewhat limited audience of even the already "TOP" Haskell books, such as "Craft" and Hudak's book {title has slipped my mind}, that most high volume publishers would have never picked even those up. Getting rich by publishing any book on Haskell is probably not a good motivation for writing it. But I do believe that people like myself are out there, and ready to buy a good book, especially about an at time dense subject, in hard copy. I for one just like to get away from the whine of the box fan, that is the cooling device right now on my computing machine, sitting 22" from my ear canal, and read a good book that is potentially this useful. happy computing, gene