Topic: I'm planning to write a book about Bitcoin, any ideas? (Read 3977 times)

Thanks.

No you can't, that question is closed since it's not really appropriate for the StackExchange site. Glad to see you're getting the feedback you were looking for elsewhere though

zhoutong. I like really what you are doing. At your age, that's really awesome. However, I don't think that you have enough credibility to write a book. You might be quite brilliant and the most knowledgeable expert in the field, but promoting a book requires more than that.

What I see is that you are trying to write a book for a non-specific parts of readers. They are not noobs, they are not casual people. They are like us, and I'm one of those interested to read this book just like reading this forum.

I would suggest that you make a blog instead. I have that need for writing. I want  to write. I participate in forums. You can participate in forums too or write a blog. I think a book should be dedicated for something. Like learning Forex or commodities trading. This has something specific and with value.

Write a blog. I'm sure you'll make more attracting your blog readers to your Bitcoinica service rather than taking on a new venture and starting from scratch with it.

Just my 0.02BTC

Part III:  What Do I Do With This Bag I've Been Left Holding?

Here's where I'm currently at. Things might move around.

Part I:
1. Introduction
2. How Bitcoin Works
3. Why Use Bitcoin
4. What is Money
5. Peer-to-Peer Technologies

Part II:
6. Satoshi Nakamoto & the Cypherpunks
7. Bitcoin's Competition
8. New Technology, Old Companies
9. Inflation, Deflation, and Stability
10. The Future

The first half generally deals with the basics needed to fully appreciate Bitcoin. It's geared towards people who have heard of Bitcoin but don't know very much about it. The second half contains more original research and analysis. My general goal is to relate Bitcoin to things people already understand.

I will probably publish them separately as ebooks and together in a paperback later on.


I guess by "business" I mean that I look at Bitcoin from the perspective of a business person rather than a computer programmer (i have no programming background). We both have the same goal of introducing Bitcoin to newbies, just in different ways.

I'd wait a few months to see if bitcoin falls more or stays as it is or increases... unless there's some new demand for it, I expect it will continue to fall.

Let's not forget the dummy series:

pyramid of wealth, bubbles, move along nothing to see here

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hx16a72j__8&feature=player_embedded

Thank you for letting me know. I knew that someone else could be doing the similar things.

I'm not exactly focusing on technical and philosophical aspects, basically the purpose of the book is to introduce Bitcoin to newbies, and present the revolutionary currency to them in an interesting way. If you want to target existing Bitcoin users, business will be a great way to go - Bitcoin needs more entrepreneurs. Either way is perfectly fine.

Do you have an outline you could share with us, Alex?

zhoutong, just to let you know I am currently working on a Bitcoin book that I will also be publishing as an ebook soon.

This shouldn't stop you from writing your own book as our books will definitely be different. There are a half-dozen books on Starbucks, for example. Each of them is unique.

From your outline, it looks like you are focusing on the technical and philosophical aspects of Bitcoin. I focus more on the business aspects. The more information out there on Bitcoin the better.

Good luck.

That's a good idea, but as I said, we have Wiki, but it doesn't help much in terms of content quality.

Reading a book should be an enjoyable process, so appreciating the author's writing style is quite important. The reason why I won't release the book before 50% progress is that the foundation must be good enough, with careful content design.

The best stuff (books or software) is almost always proprietary. Most open source projects are not newbie-friendly either.

I don't think we need initiators for.different kinds of projects that much, instead, we need people like Satoshi who can do a big thing on their own elegantly.

Why not make it an open source book?

Finalize the outline and publish it on github, and let members of the community send you pull requests as additions and/or revisions. Knowledgeable Bitcoiners can comment and vote on pull requests to the master branch. Not only would this satisfy the peer review requirement you have (beta book) but it would be a cool endeavor to publish a true "peer to peer" and open-source book about a peer to peer and open-source software project.

It would also be an abstraction of version control systems that you could enjoy as a programmer.

Here's my suggestion: Just Do It!

Here's my suggestion: don't do it!

Would a simpler approach be like how Doyle Brunson structured his How I Made Over $1,000,000 Playing Poker book? Each chapter was written by an expert of their best poker game--stud, holdem, omaha, etc.

Might want to expand your definition of what fiat is

Thank you!

Yes, I'm an Economics student, and I'm also a Rails developer, a trading enthusiast and a Libertarian Anarchist. I'm never like a journalist. I worry more about the boredom when I talk about too many things rather than the lack of scope of understanding.

If I finally decide to start the first page, I will start the Beta Book program after I have completed at least 50%. (Copyright license hasn't been decided yet, but it may be proprietary if the publisher requires so.) I'm not sure about the price, but I'm thinking about 5-8 BTC for the beta book which will include the final paperback edition. (Reviewers get the same price, but can access to the content earlier.) The price will only be used to offset the cost of publishing and some of my personal expenditures related to writing the book. If there's excess, I will gather ideas from everyone about what to do with them.

One worry is about the publishing. In order to reach out to more people, a publisher may be required (like Wiley). But I'm not sure about the the details.

Anyway, I'm completely open to the idea of open sourcing the book and making it freely available if publishing is an issue.

You're right. Bitcoin is an open community that accepts new ideas.

However, every needs a start. The difficulty of "joining the conversation" is keeping many newbies out of the real Bitcoin community.

I want a revolutionary way that helps them to understand the basics about Bitcoin *all at once*, instead of keeping ask questions that no one wish to answer. I'm helping them to find answers themselves. That's why it's a book, not a blog or forum post.

I will credit those who help, but the nature of my work doesn't require much of collaboration within the community. Because they are going to find their own answers anyway. I don't have to teach them how to build a mining rig or Bitcoin exchange, I just have to let them understand why Bitcoin is an idea worth spreading, and how Bitcoin works to solve some of our banking problems - these are personal understanding and general knowledge, not necessarily experience of many other people.

I'm not qualified professionally I admit, but I do have a wide scope of understanding - I think the community needs someone who knows Bitcoin fairly well in different perspectives (philosophical, economic, financial, cryptographic and political) to give the project a start. There may be experts around, but most likely they are not that newbie-friendly. Potential Bitcoiners are curious, but unfortunately some of our forum members are destroying their curiosity - we need to know what they want to know, before they lose their interest.

This book project should more practically a personal project. We have Bitcoin Wiki that every can contribute, but again, it's not that newbie-friendly. That's why I'm asking for ideas and feedback, not actual contribution on the content. I will do thorough research before claiming anything in the book, and I will publish some content (especially more controversial parts) on the Internet to generate comments and debates - and I will credit anyone who has ever helped.

Thank you for your feedback!