In response to this post, I received news from Bill Trench
that he is in the process of finding an on-line home to make his book
source files available. If anyone would like to offer his source a home, or
provide advice on effective ways to do this, please get in touch with him.
On a side note, I'd like to get some information on this site about free options for on-line book source hosting and distribution. Options like github exist, but I have limited experience with them. If someone is willing to write a post let me know. Such information would be of great use to the community.
It strikes me that the most natural place to put the source files, if the book already has a website, is on that website. If an author doesn't have a website, I'd encourage them to create one for the book. If they don't know how to create a website, using a free blogging site like Blogger would get the job done, or there are sites like Weebly and Wix that will allow you create a "free" website.
ReplyDeleteGitHub is a nice option for LaTeX source files, since it makes it easy for others to "fork" the files and later bring in updates to the original. GitHub can be a bit confusing to use, though, since it requires installing a git client on your computer. There is no web interface for uploading a collection of files.
If one is using a site like Blogger and can't upload files, and doesn't want to use GitHub, one option is to put the files in Dropbox and use the "Share Dropbox link" option to share the files. I don't love this option, since Dropbox links feel like they lack a level of permanence. Google Drive would be another similar option.
Another option is to contact another open textbook author with a website, and see if they'd be willing to help host your book. For example, I have some web space I use for hosting many of my projects, including my open books, and I'm happy to provide file or website hosting.