Online Textbook Publishing Platform?

About a week ago I posted a link to a free data mining textbook. Hacker News got wind of the book as well, and I am guessing a flood of traffic hit the textbook’s site. The flood happened to take the site completely down for a couple of days. It was a shame because the book is really good.

If you frequently read this blog, you will notice it has quite a number of links to free online textbooks. Each free online textbook is available a bit differently. Most are PDF downloads (either by chapter or the entire book) hosted at some person’s personal website or somewhere on a university’s website.

Here is my question. Does the web have a publishing platform for textbooks? Is there a startup working on something like this?

I am aware of wikibooks, but I just don’t hear much about the quality of the books. As a matter of fact, I just don’t hear much about wikibooks.

Originally Posted

March 14, 2013

Data Science 101, Learn Data Science

Ryan Swanstrom

Last Modified:

November 11, 2020

Tags:

books, startups, textbooks

Comments

8 responses to “Online Textbook Publishing Platform?”

wubr2000

March 14, 2013

Check out Flatworld Knowledge

Reply
1. Ryan Swanstrom
  
  March 15, 2013
  
  http://catalog.flatworldknowledge.com/ – link for anyone interested
  
  I was unaware of Flatworld Knowledge, so thanks for sharing. They are close to what I was thinking, but Flatworld takes bound, completed textbooks and makes them available online. I was thinking more of a platform that allows an author to write the book online and share the progress as he/she goes along. Flatworld is definitely a big step in the right direction.
  
  Thanks again,
  Ryan
  
  Reply
Paul

March 18, 2013

Lulu publishing http://www.lulu.com/publish/?cid=en_tab_publish

Reply
1. Ryan Swanstrom
  
  March 18, 2013
  
  thanks
  
  Reply
BookGator

March 20, 2013

Flatworld knowledge is good. Few startups are doing this but we’ll see some huge changes soon. Apple has began its Publisher platform as well and its gaining followers, too.

Reply
1. Ryan Swanstrom
  
  March 21, 2013
  
  Thanks for commenting. You mention some huge changes coming soon. Can you say any more about that?
  
  Thanks,
  Ryan
  
  Reply
Michals

March 26, 2013

Hi Ryan,

try http://www.academia.edu/

Reply
1. Ryan Swanstrom
  
  March 26, 2013
  
  Michals,
  Thanks. I have account there, but I thought it was mostly for sharing journal articles. I will take another look.
  
  Thanks,
  Ryan
  
  Reply

Online Textbook Publishing Platform?

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8 responses to “Online Textbook Publishing Platform?”

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