First Pearson Book on Rough Cuts

Early this week we finally got our first book up on Safari’s new Rough Cuts program¹, where electronic versions of unfinished books are made available for readers to view online and/or download in advance of the official publication date.

Theo Schlossnagle’s long-awaited book, Scalable Internet Architectures, has the distinguished honor of being the very first Pearson book in Rough Cuts. ASP.NET 2.0 Unleashed followed shortly thereafter later in the week.

I guess it’s likely that the ASP title will sell a bit better in the short run than Theo’s book, just because there’s probably more current buzz about the new version of ASP. But it’ll be interesting to see how much interest — and useful, thoughtful feedback — Scalable Internet Architectures generates in advance of the expected print publication date sometime in July 2006. I expect it’ll do well.

Unfortunately, Teach Yourself Ajax in 10 Minutes, which quite certainly would have been a guaranteed Rough Cuts bestseller, was actually scheduled to come out too early in print form — the Safari people wanted at least a three-month interval between the title’s first appearance on Rough Cuts and the print publication date. First time ever I’ve published a book too soon.

¹Safari Books Online is a 50-50 joint venture between O’Reilly and Pearson, and includes books from both companies as well as others.

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