RSSI've been using Google Docs more and more, especially for collaborative work, both at Dorkbot DC and Make: Books. At first, I did so reluctantly, but I've become a real convert. So I was thrilled when we (Make: Books) published Google Apps Hacks. I'm learning all sorts of useful and fun stuff from this book. If you're a regular Google Docs/Apps user, or you want to become one, you really should check out this title.
My cohort at Make: Books, Brian Jepson, and the book's author, Phillip Lenssen, have written a two-part piece on how they went about developing the book in, you guessed it, Google Docs. Here's Brian's recent post on Hackszine:
When Philipp Lenssen started writing Google Apps Hacks, we made up our minds that we'd develop the book in Google Docs. A while back, Philipp wrote up Part I of the story of how we made the book. From Writing a Book in Google Docs:
Currently, my editor Brian Jepson and I are collaboratively writing the book (tentatively titled) Google Office Hacks by O'Reilly using Google Docs. I wanted to outline the process we came up with, and maybe it's helpful for you too for certain needs.I just wrote Part II of this story, and Philipp's posted it to the Google Blogoscoped blog. From From Google Docs to InDesign:
One of the tricky parts for us was getting the chapters into InDesign, the book layout program we use for our books and magazines. I know where we were coming from - Google Docs' HTML format - and where we were going to - InDesign's tagged text format.
From the Maker Shed:
Google Apps Hacks by Philipp Lenssen - all about Google Docs & Spreadsheets, Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Presentations, and more!
Price: $29.99
Buy it in the Maker Shed
