How to write a book using a wiki

Why Write a Book? Probably not for book sales

First of all, why should you try to write a book?

To aim for making money with book sales is probably the worst reason. While I think books are the best form of media to spend money on for a number of reasons, and virtually the only form of media I spend money on, the prospects of making an ROI from book sales are very low for most authors, especially first time authors.

There are a few reasons I decided to write a book.

• Online Media is typically ephemeral and short lived, a hedonistic treadmill. A book is designed to be the opposite: a permanent expression of an idea that lasts for a long time, even if it represents one snapshot in time.
• Online Media is "Hyperconnected", everything is very interactive and online. Books slow down this cycle to a conversation pattern that is more manageable.
• Books are an accessible form of media to create. While they require a ton of revision, it is easier to write a book, than edit a movie, for example.
• Writing is a very time efficient media for consumers

Why a wiki is a great tool for writing a book

One of the challenges of being an author, is the difficulty in visualizing what the final product will be like in a readers hands. While the changes from raw text file to a fully formatted document may seem to be minimal, they are very significant for the overall experience a book provides. A wiki is an excellent tool that can serve as a bridge between raw and final formats. It can also make it easier for you to share a work in progress book, seek feedback and revision, and generate interest.

How to setup a wiki

If you are interested in setting up a wiki, I can give you more specific direction on twitter/x(ratedisparity), or by email.

Basically, I would recommend some form of shared hosting provider, and then selecting some wiki software, like MediaWiki, or FossilSCM.

Fossil is great in the sense that it is a version control system designed by the author of sqlite, a database system for testing an local projects and smaller projects. Fossil is probably the easiest to setup, but it looks and feels a little less polished.

Media Wiki is the software that was originally developed for wikipedia. In my opinion it has one of the best professional looks out there for wiki software, as well as having an intermediate level of difficulty for setup and installation on a server.

A simple way to Format Text

While LaTeX may be the option of choice for serious typesetters, creating a wiki or other website you can subsequently print to a pdf file is a good intermediate option, and is much easier to learn, use and install, than a full featured LaTeX system.

I think that printing to pdf is one of the most underrated and useful features of modern web browsers, as it converts the web, which typically has "just in time" non-deterministic rendering, into a deterministic format, which makes it much more consistent and easy to debug.

There is a strong case that using web development simply for the "print to pdf" feature, is a better and more accessible practice than trying to build fully responsive web pages.

Responsive web development involves lazy or non-deterministic formatting, in that the media or artistic canvas is the last variable which is chosen. Imagine if any other artist were to create a work, like a sculpture or painting, before deciding their material or canvas. This means that web development is incredibly difficult, as determinism is what allows you to debug programs. While on the surface web pages appear simple, in practice it is one, if not the, most complex applications of software, based on this non-determinism or lazy formatting.

That's the final reason to write a book: because it's easier than making a traditional website, even if you use a website like a wiki or other content management system, you can use an existing system with minimal customization and setup, and only the content needs to be unique.