The End of Control

Last week I talked about Megatokyo [1] as an example of a "new era" book, a book which pages are released three times a week, for free, before the actual printed book is done and sent to the stores. I also did some kind of paralel between it and the music world, where bands are finding new ways of cutting off the middle man and interact directly with fans, making even more money and having their fans paying less. From getting paid to give music for free [2] to letting the fans decide the price of your album [3], the key in this new world is to know that you don't control your content, you just facilitate it to the former "consumers", now known as users.

Now, one of those know to advocate this new change of paradigm is Gerd Leonhard, that is now putting it into practice to the release of his new book "The End Of Control" [4]. The book, released as text (via mail, blog or RSS), PDF, mp3 or (real soon) video, will see a paper release, but only after the complete book is online, free. For now, you can read one chapter per week (to be released each monday), and I recommend you to do so, since the book seems to be a really good one... about this kind of things.

[1] - http://tinyurl.com/29fswb
[2] - http://tinyurl.com/2fvw2c
[3] - http://news.google.com/news?ncl=1121551540
[4] - http://www.endofcontrol.com