fogus: C.S. on the cheap

The famous book publisher Hayward Cirker, the founder of Dover Publications built a fortune on finding obscure books that had either gone out of print or escaped publication altogether, and printing them himself. Among his many successes you’ll find amazing books on mathematics and physics including The Theory of Relativity, The Thirteen Books of the Elements and Number Theory.

Since I was a kid I’ve read, and loved, the Dover series on mathematics. Very often (although not always) the books were written in a gentle way, guiding the reader through an understanding of the basic principles and then building on them throughout the book.

Now imagine a series of computer science books along this vein.1

Reprints

Due to the difference in the publishing model of computer science texts it’s unlikely that there are many good books out there that not only follow a Dover-esque model, but that have also gone out of print. However, that’s not to say that there are not amazing books to be had given the existing material. Imagine this book:

The fantasy book “Augment” might include:

• The essay “As We May Think” Vannevar Bush
• The essay “What Makes a Life Significant” by William James
• The essay “Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework” by Douglas Engelbart
• The essay “Engelbart’s Violin” by Stanislav Datskovskiy

Now, I have no idea if a book like this could ever see publication due to the rights involved, but I hope that the intent is clear. Another:

Might conceivably including:

• The essay “The Early History of Smalltalk” by Alan Kay, reformatted and cleaned up
• The essay “Design Principles Behind Smalltalk” by Dan Ingalls
• A literate version of a minimal Smalltalk parser and interpreter written in JavaScript

I would buy these books in a heartbeat.

Concepts

Additionally, I would love to see a series of new books geared toward solidifying a base level of knowledge and building toward more complex topics. For example:

And of course:

Or what about:

I’d like to read:

And also:

The possibilities are endless.

Existing books

There are books that right now fit into this model, including, but not limited to:

The goal of such a small publisher like the one that I have in my dreams3 is to provide like-quality/accessibility books at a fraction of the price. In summary, the publisher would need to follow the following track:

• Accessible, yet comprehensive books on focused CS topics
• Low prices
• A mix of new material and out of print material
• Quality authors
• Timeless topics (i.e. no AJAX, no webdev)
• Leveraging online and EBook technology to the max

Can it be done?

Self-publishing

There is nothing stopping someone from going on to LuLu or Leanpub 4 and publishing these types of books right now. I would love to see them happen whether they come from a publishing house or through self-publishing channels. Just make it so. My money awaits.

:F 5