Each team approaches joint projects in a unique way, depending on the chemistry between the authors and the strengths each brings to the project. One person might be in charge of one theme which runs through the book while the others act a accessories, each contributing minor excerpts to support the main thread. Or the group might become decentralized where every author writes a chapter or section of the book independent of the other parts. Sometimes there are researchers and writers. The researcher finds all the supporting evidence and the writer mashes it, stirs it, and produces a cohesive final book.

Today there are books being written by many people, 144 characters at a time, on Twitter. Brandon Mendelson wrote The Falcon Can Hear the Falconer in Twitter. Instantaneous writing and reading. Ever sit on pins an needles waiting for the next installment of a sequel? Imagine the story is unfolding, tweeting out to your desktop, as your working. And these Twitter novels don’t have a plan, an outline, to speak of. How could thousands of people write to an outline, instantly, in 144 characters? The content reflects real time, it’s certainly not static. Current events make their way into the story as the event occurs. The downside to this is managing the contributors, writing time, and the danger of loosing the main theme.

Collaboration takes another twist in an Agile environment. For those of you who don’t know Agile development, on one foot, it is development to small goals within a limited time frame, usually a week to three weeks long. Certain small goals are set and worked towards. Then the project is reanalyzed and new goals set for the next round or sprint. Writers have to adapt to a new writing cycle between themselves and among the Agile team. Publishing collaborative works follows the general model, if you don’t look too closely. The introduction of writing sprints changes everything. Publication dates become part of a sprint. The piece might be “published” many times before it reached its intended audience.

The next model is slightly more complicated. I’ll be looking a single sourcing information and its relevance to commercial publishing.

Oh eBook, let me list the kinds: Sony Portable Reader, Bookeen Cybook Opus, PocketBook 301, 302, 360, HanLIn eBook V5, Polymer Vision Radius, Hanvon WISE Readers (a whole family), Azbooka WISE Reader, Amazon Kindle, COOL-ER Classic, txtr reader GmbH, NUUTbook Neolux, iriver Story, Barnes and Noble Nook, iTex DR800SG, iLiad, Digital Reader 1000, Astak Mentor Electra, Plastic Logic Que, and many older devices.

And you expect me to make a buying decision on what? Color? Size? Who knows how long these devices are supposed to last? If I buy one now, I already know it will be obsolete by February (probably as soon as I test drive it, it will be obsolete). Some features standout. The Sony Portable reader comes in pretty colors. That’s important. A 5 inch reader fits in my bag easier than a 6 inch reader. But my old eyes can see the screen on a 6 inch reader better than on a 5 inch reader.

• Weight -  The device can’t be heavy. It has to be light enough for me to lug around, and yet it also has to be sturdy.

• Touch screen – I like using a stylus on the Nokia N97 phone. So I anticipate that I’ll like a touch screen on a reader.

• Memory – this is probably the most important feature in my book. I want to store lots and lots of books. I’m always in the middle of reading 2 or 3, sometimes 4.

• Interface – this is second most important. How am I going to get my eBooks onto the device? If I have to mess around with lots of drivers, forget it.

• Supported formats – this is right up there with memory. No, I do not want to be limited to Kindle format. Can I get a reader that supports all formats? Don’t think so.

• Font size – my old eyes need help. This can be a deciding factor if all other factors are equal.

• Text to Speech – this is not important to me. But, however, wait a minute, as soon as I get one without text to speech I’m sure there will be a great need to have it.

Notice I said nothing about price? They all run in the same range, which is why I have not yet purchased one. Sigh, anyone want to give me an eBook reader to test? I’ll try my best to use it in adverse conditions. I’ll test boundary conditions. Until the time I scrape up the money (or someone takes pity on my poor whining self) I’ll have to be content with drool laden pictures of the latest eBook readers.

I remember the world before InDesign. I had PageMaker. FrameMaker was slowly making inroads in the book publishing industry. QuarkExpress commanded a major share of the market. When InDesign appeared on stage it introduced a highly extensible platform based on an object-oriented architecture. It made possible the creation of many custom solutions for publishing newspapers, magazines, catalogs, and other non-book literature. I did wonder why PageMaker, my favorite at the time, was being shunted aside. But I’ve found the change to not only be good, the change was revolutionary. It spawned many third party vendors and service providers. Talk about stimulating an economy.

Check out Rufus Deuchler’s blog 10 Years of InDesign and the original Adobe InDesign 1.0 and InDesign 2.0 press releases.

Some great blogs to read include:

• InDesign Secrets
• Adobe Education Technologies
• Adobe Education Leaders

French Creek Press uses Adobe InDesign and FrameMaker for documents and books of different lengths. Our book covers are laid out in InDesign. For the moment our books are laid out in either FrameMaker or InDesign. We are a new publishing house with very deep, old roots in Adobe products.

My faith in Adobe as a company has only been strengthened by their quality products and their response to a customer service problem. Much success Adobe! Looking forward to 2012 when you turn 30!