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List:       koffice
Subject:    Re: users book about KOffice
From:       Raphael Langerhorst <raphael-langerhorst () gmx ! at>
Date:       2004-02-16 7:20:34
Message-ID: 200402160820.34346.raphael-langerhorst () gmx ! at
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sorry, I was totally occupied during the weekend...

so here come some answers from me...

On Friday 13 February 2004 16:03, Thomas Zander wrote:
>
> [...]
> The problem is that with traditional publishers there is no in-between
> these two; you either publish it the slow way for print, or you do it
> online in e-book form for free.  I have seen an amazingly little amount of
> books that successfully came to print after being online first.

I believe that. How is/was the situation with ... for example ... the KDE 2.0 
Development book? Anyone knows that? Was it also "heavily" printed?

>
> From what I understand the main problem is one of cost, printing a book
> costs loads of money and with the problem of fast aging of content no
> publisher is going to invest in it without ridiculous contracts etc.
>
> The goal of sourcebeat is to combine all this into a working solution.  You
> can buy the always-up-to-date version on their website. Well; license it
> actually, for a year.  Price is quite low. (Just right IMO)
> This brings in money to keep the author(s) interrested in providing
> updates. This also brings in money to do a print of the content.  Printing
> 1000 copies in Germany and shipping it to all surrounding countries is
> viable. (traditional publishers can't be bothered with less then 50.000
> prints)

I didn't write a direct statement about sourcebeat so far... but I think it's 
an interesting model for publishing, but is it compatible with having a 
downloadable version on www.koffice.org? Or is it "allowed" to copy good 
parts of it between the manual and the book? Just asking to make sure it 
would work...

>
> All in all; you _really_ want to create a revenue stream from writing this
> book. If not for personal gain, then for printing and advertising the book.
> If you don't I'm pretty sure the book will never be finished.

That's surely an interesting point. I think that creating a "revenue stream" 
is partly a reason for writing a book. How big the part is depends on the 
person. The way I see it is that some things simply need to be done and I 
work accordingly. And if, by doing so, some money is earned, it is also ok. I 
personally just have to see that I do enough things for earning money to make 
a living. But as I have almost no expenses I currently am able to work 
according to my principle - do what needs to be done. In the case of such a 
book it would also be written out of neccessity, only to a very little extend 
out of earning money. But as I said, the case here is surely different 
between every person.

If a book gets written - what way ever - I would be happy, and probably others 
as well. But I alone wouldn't have the time for it, so if there are a few 
people here that would like to work on it I surely would also help when and 
where I can. And as discussed before, the online docs are also important, 
they should be OK before writing a book - but for KWord, KSpread and 
KPresenter they are already quite good, aren't they?


greetings,
Raphael
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