Fragments and Versions

I’m toiling away right now on the copy edits of my book. It is generally a pleasant kind of toil in that it requires very little brain power and allows me to take occasional breaks to keep tabs on the progress of the Tour de France.

It does prompt me to think a bit about all the parts of my book that didn’t make it into the final (and well over length) version. If I was a big time musician, maybe I’d include those bits as “outtakes” when I released a “complete” version of the book. If I was a big time author, perhaps I would find someone to edit the cut parts and release the volume as an “unrevised” or “unexpurgated” (is that a word?) text. As someone who is neither, this seems like an indulgence, but that also doesn’t make me feel better about the little pile of text that I have. 

Along similar lines, I’m already seeing ways to update and revise my book. I’ll spare my editors and resist the temptation to insert new chunks of text into an already “chunky” (in all kind of unflattering ways), book, but I do wonder whether there are good models for books that enjoy continuous (or almost continuous) revision over, say, a span of time (3 years? 5 years?). On the one hand, this sounds like a bit of an onerous task, but, on the other hand, it isn’t that different from how most authors approach writing and researching a book. After all, it often takes me 3-5 years to bring a book from a concept to a conclusion and during that time, I continue to try to stay abreast of developments in my field. Extending research time a few more years doesn’t seem like a particularly onerous proposition.

The question, then, is more one of mechanics. As we live in a world where operating systems and software update nearly hourly with well-established version controls in place, how far are we in doing something similar with scholarly writing?

(And, yes, I realize that there is a tradition of editioning and revising published books, but what I’m proposing here is something more dynamic).