Publishing the Community Manuals

Hello,

As some of you may be aware, Command Prompt operates Open Docs
Publishing (http://www.opendocs.org) I have been considering for some
time publishing the latest docs in printed format and allowing them for
purchase. I was thinking that a % of the proceeds could go into an
account for advocacy.

What are people's thoughts on this?

Sincerely,

Joshua Drake

--
Command Prompt, Inc., home of Mammoth PostgreSQL - S/ODBC and S/JDBC
Postgresql support, programming shared hosting and dedicated hosting.
+1-503-667-4564 - jd(at)commandprompt(dot)com - http://www.commandprompt.com
Mammoth PostgreSQL Replicator. Integrated Replication for PostgreSQL

Josh,

> As some of you may be aware, Command Prompt operates Open Docs
> Publishing (http://www.opendocs.org) I have been considering for some
> time publishing the latest docs in printed format and allowing them for
> purchase. I was thinking that a % of the proceeds could go into an
> account for advocacy.

DOSSIER already does this, though they don't donate to our advocacy (the Linux
Fund, I think). http://www.ptf.com/dossier/

I doubt the market is large enough to support competition.

--
-Josh Berkus
Aglio Database Solutions
San Francisco

>DOSSIER already does this, though they don't donate to our advocacy (the Linux
>Fund, I think). http://www.ptf.com/dossier/
>
>I doubt the market is large enough to support competition.
>
>
>
Well there are a couple of things that we can do differently that may
change that:

1. We would assign ISBN's allowing any and all bookstores to order them.
2. We can put them in distribution through Baker and Taylor
3. We can print on demand... in as little as 25 copies which makes it
very easy
to handle updates to the docs.

??

Sincerley,

Joshua Drake

--
Command Prompt, Inc., home of Mammoth PostgreSQL - S/ODBC and S/JDBC
Postgresql support, programming shared hosting and dedicated hosting.
+1-503-667-4564 - jd(at)commandprompt(dot)com - http://www.commandprompt.com
Mammoth PostgreSQL Replicator. Integrated Replication for PostgreSQL

Joshua D. Drake wrote:
>
>> DOSSIER already does this, though they don't donate to our advocacy
>> (the Linux Fund, I think). http://www.ptf.com/dossier/
>>
>> I doubt the market is large enough to support competition.
>>
> Well there are a couple of things that we can do differently that may
> change that:
>
> 1. We would assign ISBN's allowing any and all bookstores to order them.
> 2. We can put them in distribution through Baker and Taylor
> 3. We can print on demand... in as little as 25 copies which makes it
> very easy
> to handle updates to the docs.

It looks as though the Dossier books are based on 7.2.

If you can produce books based on the latest release, and stay
reasonably in sync with the releases going forward, I think that would
be great.

Joe

Joshua D. Drake wrote:
> As some of you may be aware, Command Prompt operates Open Docs
> Publishing (http://www.opendocs.org) I have been considering for
> some time publishing the latest docs in printed format and allowing
> them for purchase. I was thinking that a % of the proceeds could go
> into an account for advocacy.

People have been asking for that for years. Start tomorrow!

On Fri, 19 Dec 2003, Joshua D. Drake wrote:

>
> >DOSSIER already does this, though they don't donate to our advocacy (the Linux
> >Fund, I think). http://www.ptf.com/dossier/
> >
> >I doubt the market is large enough to support competition.
> >
> >
> >
> Well there are a couple of things that we can do differently that may
> change that:
>
> 1. We would assign ISBN's allowing any and all bookstores to order them.
> 2. We can put them in distribution through Baker and Taylor
> 3. We can print on demand... in as little as 25 copies which makes it
> very easy
> to handle updates to the docs.

Any chance of a subscription service? It would be quite nice to be able
to have a standing order of the latest release docs (major points, 7.2,
7.3, 7.4 etc...) and a variable order of the latest development docs
(every 3 months or something).

>Any chance of a subscription service? It would be quite nice to be able
>to have a standing order of the latest release docs (major points, 7.2,
>7.3, 7.4 etc...) and a variable order of the latest development docs
>(every 3 months or something).
>
>
>
I don't see why not, but it would be fairly expense. The PostgreSQL manuals
aren't small ;). Let me get some numbers together and see what we can
really do here.

Sincerely,

Joshua D. Drake

>---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
>TIP 2: you can get off all lists at once with the unregister command
> (send "unregister YourEmailAddressHere" to majordomo(at)postgresql(dot)org)
>
>

--
Command Prompt, Inc., home of Mammoth PostgreSQL - S/ODBC and S/JDBC
Postgresql support, programming shared hosting and dedicated hosting.
+1-503-667-4564 - jd(at)commandprompt(dot)com - http://www.commandprompt.com
Mammoth PostgreSQL Replicator. Integrated Replication for PostgreSQL

On 2003-12-19, Joshua D. Drake <jd(at)commandprompt(dot)com> wrote:
>
>>
> Well there are a couple of things that we can do differently that may
> change that:
>
> 1. We would assign ISBN's allowing any and all bookstores to order them.
> 2. We can put them in distribution through Baker and Taylor
> 3. We can print on demand... in as little as 25 copies which makes it
> very easy
> to handle updates to the docs.

As a former small-press publisher and bookstore employee, I can tell you the benefits of this
in practical terms:

When someone goes into a bookstore and asks for a book on "Postgres",
the clerk will look it up in a database. Because it has an
ISBN, it will turn up. The clerk will say "We don't have that in stock,
but we can order it for it for you".

Many bookstores will only order through major distributors like "Baker
and Taylor", so getting carried by a big distributor is a big deal too.

Print-on-Demand sounds ideal for documentation of constantly changing
software.

Mark

--
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Mark Stosberg Principal Developer
mark(at)summersault(dot)com Summersault, LLC
765-939-9301 ext 202 database driven websites
. . . . . http://www.summersault.com/ . . . . . . . .