So I just discovered that if you wanted to, you could now read Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms for FREE at Amazon. They just added the “Search This Book” feature to the page, and even though you only get to see three pages per search, if you keep searching for a word at the bottom of the third page, you get the next two pages and the next two pages etc. Some work, but it can be done. At the very least, the cool thing is you can now search it.

Even though the book has been doing really well (second printing was done just six weeks after release and it looks like a third is on the way) I’ve started telling people at workshops that they really don’t need to buy it to figure this stuff out. (Brilliant marketing strategy, I know.) All I’ve done is put it in a neat package. But there are other folks who are starting to do this with wikis. And while there is a part of me that struggles with this whole idea (especially since I actually went ahead and wrote the book) I say more power to them. If I could turn my book into a wiki, I would. But I can’t under the contract I signed with the publisher.

The interesting news is that I’ve been offered another contract for a book about writing and reading in hypertext environments. I’ve asked to have discussions about other forms of the book being made available and giving it away online to those who might want it that way, but I haven’t had any response yet. So I haven’t signed the contract. And I’m starting to wonder if I will. I’m starting to think it might be more fun to write it in a wiki and ask other people to contribute to it in the process and then leave it up there for folks to read if they want. And to offer it up as a print text for those that want it, publisher or not.

We’ll see…