Free Information Online

April 12, 2010 11:24 AM

What are some good books written about where to find free information on the internet? What are the legal implications about writing a book about a collection of internet websites?
posted by MechEng to Writing & Language (4 answers total)

"Information" is a pretty broad topic - I think pretty much any site not behind a paywall would qualify as "free information." IANAL, but it seems there wouldn't be any legal ramifications to creating a directory of websites - it's what search engines do.
posted by sanko at 11:46 AM on April 12, 2010

I've seen many books that are simply a collection of reviews/recommendations to other websites.
posted by Jacqueline at 12:12 PM on April 12, 2010

My only question would be what kind of market there would be for a book that indexes something likely to change as quickly as the web. Some sites will last, others (even seemingly good ones) might be defunct before the book hits the stands. The shelf life of the book won't be very long, either. A two year old fiction novel will still find an audience, but a two year old "Where to Find Stuff Without Using Google" book is not necessarily going to have any real value. Unless the book is intended to be updated regularly - as in, annually at a minimum - it's a lot of effort for a minimal payoff.

If you have a favorable response to a prospectus, go ahead - but I wouldn't plan on working this up and then marketing it to publishers. By the time any of them make a decision you'll have to update the contents, which is going to be off-putting to a potential publisher.
posted by caution live frogs at 2:22 PM on April 12, 2010

I owned a book like this when the Internet first started becoming mainstream. It was basically just a collection of good sites, sort of like a travel guide to the Internet, with short reviews. A very slim book that covered maybe a 100 sites. I'd think something like that today would be nearly impossible to put together and pretty much unusable in a couple years. I should probably dig that up some time just to feel nostalgic about the days before Google.
posted by peacheater at 2:29 PM on April 12, 2010