In (I think) April of 2012, I signed a contract with Manning to write a "second edition" of Rails 3 in Action, which almost immediately changed names to "Rails 4 in Action". The goal was to update the code for the book to Rails 4 as that was going to be released soon (it ended up being released in June 2013, but still!). A short period of time later, I quit the project because of many reasons, mainly my frustrations with their tooling. The same tooling which I've offered to help them fix over the years, only to be told that they're already working on something. Nothing has eventuated from that in over 4 years. I have seen emails on the internal "Agile Author" mailing list showing that they've been working on this tool since at least the beginning of 2012.
Anyway, about the book: Nothing happened for a while on the book (about a year), so I emailed Manning asking about it in January '13 and I asked about getting the rights to the book:
I've noticed that there hasn't been a lot of activity on the Rails 4 in Action book recently. I am curious if Manning is still interested in publishing the book, or if you are too tied up in the other numerous books you have to care about this one. I know this book was never a bestseller, right up there with the books like jQuery in Action. But I still deeply, deeply care about it because it was a part of my life for so long.
I'd like to propose something. I want to take the rights for the Rails 4 in Action book and self-publish it, with a different name and a different cover. I understand that this is an unusual request, given that we've signed contracts and what not.
My main reason for doing this is two fold. 1) I want a decent reference for the Rails community that I can put my faith in and 2) I still care a ton about this book, but frankly not enough to come back to Manning to finish writing it.
I understand that there'd probably be some messy legal issues around doing this from your end, but I'm genuinely interested in taking the entire project off Manning's hands completely.
My main contact at Manning, Mike Stephens, wrote back to me:
Ryan,
Sorry ‘bout the delay. Another Manning editor has been responsible for moving the revision forward, and it took me a couple days to get an accurate status. I didn’t want to reply until I had all the data. Short version is that we have someone solid lined up to do the R4 revision in a timeframe that I’m happy with.
Let’s talk later this week is we can find a workable time and I’ll fill you in.
Mike
I can't find the conversations that we had past that email (I'm guessing they were on Skype), but the outcome was that Manning was not interested in giving away the rights to the book, no matter how much I asked for it and explained how much it was something I deeply cared about it. I was, and still am to this day, very upset by this.
Then Steve Klabnik joined the project and did an amazing job upgrading the book to where it is today: with Rails 4 support. Steve has lost interest in the project and moved on to other things, helping out the Rust community and all the other stuff he's doing. I don't blame him for it because writing is (inherently) boring. To have stayed the course as long as he did is a spectactular feat in and of itself.
I have been wanting to write a more up-to-date version of Rails 4 in Action covering the construction of the book review tool called Twist that I wrote specifically as a way for readers of the book to read it and leave notes in a super-easy fashion. I didn't want to work on updating Rails 4 in Action because Manning's tooling drives me to tears and that's more than a metaphor. I thought a book covering this would be a fantastic addition to the current collection of intro-to-Rails books out there. More example applications and books can only make things better. I've got about 8,000 words for this book already.
In order to cover my legal bases, I found the initial Manning contract that I signed back in 2010 and it states in Section 5:
For a period of three years following the publication of any edition of the Work, the Author agrees not to, without the prior written consent of the Publisher, write for publication or post on the Internet any other book-length work which covers the same subject as the Work and which is directly competitive with the Work.
It may seem like I'm in the legal clear here because Rails 3 in Action was published in September 2011, which is more than 3 years ago and therefore that means I'm allowed to publish my new book. This would be wrong, because it could be argued that Rails 4 in Action is published, because its content is available online. If this is the case, then the next time that I can publish a new Rails book would be 3 years after the last edition of Rails 4 in Action has been published.
That same clause states that I can ask for permission to publish a new book, and I have asked Mike Stephens for that permission last Tuesday (Oct 21), but have received no response back.
There's a clause later on which states that if the book is declared out of print by Manning, then the rights revert to the authors. Manning has declined my offer to declare the book "out-of-print".
I am effectively legally "trapped" by Manning's contract and my options are 1) forget about Rails 4 in Action, write the new book 2) talk with Manning about the rights to Rails 4 in Action or 3) put aside my differences with the tooling and keep working on Rails 4 in Action.
So I set out to get rights for my book. I talked to Manning this Tuesday gone (Oct 28) and it started out poorly with a lot of shouting and accusations from both sides. I talked with Mike Stephens and had Steve on the call too. I demanded the rights to my book and Mike kept saying that it doesn't work that way. Then I conceded and we moved on to a more productive discussion.
That discussion was about Manning's tooling. During this conversation, I kept making the point that Manning's tools are bad, and both Steve and Mike agreed. I said I would like to keep working on the book, but I outright refused to work at all with any of Manning's tools.
I am pleased to say that we have reached an agreement to continue working on the book under these conditions. Steve and myself will continue working on the book with help from Rebecca Skinner and David Workman, two Rubyists who help out quite a lot in the #rubyonrails channel. We are all collaborating on the book via GitHub, and we're going to write the book not in DocBook, but in AsciiDoc. Mike from Manning claims that they have a way to convert any AsciiDoc to their PDF (and other) formats, so they seem happy with that. I wish I knew about that option earlier.
The work that needs doing on the book sounds pretty simple: upgrade to Rails 4.2 and RSpec 3. It isn't going to be so straightforward because we need to go through all the code examples and surrounding text and update it. The book will also contain some installation guides for the major operating systems, and some other minor changes as they're required.
Last weekend I went through the first three chapters of Rails 4 in Action and took notes of things that need upgrading. There are a lot of things. So far, 70 within the first 91 pages. So there's definitely work to be done on Rails 4 in Action.
I'm glad that we were all able to come to a decision and now we get can get down to the work of finishing the best Rails book ever.
I would say 👎 to Manning, they are the most unprofessional publisher on Earth! I've been approached by them 4 times on writing a book on Spree and each time is different person with same content (it seems to me they are spamming every one). I rejected their offer 4 times with the same reasons like you had above (their tooling is a joke and their rate is no where near what I think fair). And then on another occasion, I got approached to review another book and been told that the author will get in touch in exact 1 week after, yet it's like their previous jokes, no ones got in touch despite of the fact that I have to arrange my limited time for this favour.
I am glad that you could be able to continue working on the book. But if you can, please try to get away from this stupid trap. All the best.
Trung