Suggestion: update book facility

I have a couple of books on Blurb, but in spite of the fact that I meticolously proof read them, there are of course a couple of errors in each.

Now, I have read that it’s very easy to update a book: Upload the edited book as a new book and delete the old one.

But that is a pretty bad solution in most cases if you ask me!

- All current links to the book will break since its ID changes
– All embedded previews will break
– All the search engine cred it might have earned will be lost
– I will loose all information added to the old book and have to reenter it
– All comments to the old book will be lost
and almost worst of all
– A copy of the new book will have to be purchased before it pops up in the bookstore. In other words: if I don’t have a buyer for the book, I will have to buy a second copy myself for it to be exposed and hopefully start selling to the public!

All this makes very little sense in my eyes, and does not encourage you to publish new editions.

Is there smarter way to update a book with a new edition, which I haven’t found?

It would be much neater if I could just update the current book and replace the one on Blurb with my newly corrected edition. All information, comments and links would be preserved, and I would be able to continue with whatever advantages my book had built up after its first publishing.

If the online-ID of the book was saved together with my local copy, the Booksmart software would be able to ask whether I wanted to replace the old or create a new book. Being a developer myself I know that this will not be a trivial feature to build, but it would in my opinion be worth the work.

I would strongly suggest that such a facility was considered for the system. If it’s a financial problem (development costs, bandwidth or whatnot), then charge a fee for the update. I would personally be more than willing to pay such a fee of say 10-20 USD, rather than having to order a second copy of a 50-60 dollar (or more) book – which I already have.

Thanks a bunch anyway for Booksmart and Blurb, which is already a very nice and easy way to publish books. But there’s always room for improvements!

Martin

what_it_is,

Yes, I’m a bit surprised over the silence myself. I have made three books and two need changes. I haven’t got a huge following or lots of embedded views all over the web, but I would still like to be able to just exchange the current pages with new ones, and keep all the rest.

I have been using Booksmart for all three books, and even though the features are limited, I have been able to live with it, not least because they are all "simple" photo books. But my next project is a much more complex book with lots of text and illustrations and much more demand on the dtp-program. I used to use Indesign, but haven’t got a copy myself. It’s pretty expensive and not really interesting for me to buy. I have looked into Scribus, and might follow this open source line in stead.

Haven’t looked at Lulu, and would actually prefer that Blurb updated their features—both online and in Booksmart. I like both the company and the products.

Martin

Craig,

I fully understand the complexity of such a function. Being a developer myself, I can imagine the difficulties just seen from the user’s end. And you have all the "backoffice" parts to wrestle with too.

But I atill think it would be worth the effort for all the reasons that I sketched in my original post.

 Martin

Absolutely! The lack of this updating feature (and the need to delete the old version and then purchase the new version) is incredibly irritating. I’ve already purchased 30 copies. I’ve made a few minor updates to my book and it would be very very helpful if Blurb would allow me to replace the version posted online with the updated version.

Now, when I upload my updated version, all the links out there on the web are broken. That SUCKS! Please work on this and change it!