[FM Discuss] FM, books and you

Wed Oct 8 10:53:42 PDT 2008

hi,

We now have a bookstore. It is actually a 'viral boosktore' (widget).
This means that you can host the bookstore on your own webpage. I have
designed it so that it fits in a 'standard' sidebar for a blog/cms/wiki
etc

To implement the Book Store just add this to your webpage:

<style>
  @import url("http://en.flossmanuals.net/bookstore/bookstore.css");
</style>
<img src="http://en.flossmanuals.net/bookstore/bookstore.gif"
style="margin-bottom:5px;"> >
<script type="text/javascript"
src="http://stores.lulu.com/feed.php?fStore=flossmanuals&fFormat=js"></script>

The idea is that we get the books out as far and wide as possible using
whatever channel online that is available. Its a 'web2.0' version of a
book shop...no central store, but a distributed mechanism for selling
the manuals.

So, if you can host the store on your site then that helps enormously. 

We have currently 2 books available. We have produced more in the past
but these two books are created entirely using the print on demand tools
we have recently built. We also have a Wikimedia Commons book maintained
by Brianna and we are awaiting clearance from the Wikipedia Foundation
for use of the trademark (for the cover) before we sell it. The other
books were created manually using desktop publishing apps (scribus).
This took a longtime (2-3 days), but now we have the same result in
about 3 minutes. I hope we can soon add the PureData book, Wikimedia
Commons (mentioned above) and Inkscape.

However the bookstore is open to any manuals produced in FM. If you
would like a manual hosted in the bookstore then you will need to use
the objavi tools:
http://www.flossmanuals.net/bin/objavi

Choose the manual from the drop down and press the submit button...thats
all you need to do to create the print ready source (PDF). Then if you
send the PDF to me I will upload it to the shop and ask Lotte (the FM
designer) to design a cover. If you have any trouble you can also just
email me and ask and I will help sort out any problems as soon as I can.
We have had one or two small issues regarding layout but they are pretty
specific so its unlikely you will encounter them.

You can also create an account in lulu.com (or another print on demand
service) and sell the book yourself. You don't have to use the FLOSS
Manuals store. However, there might be advantages using the FM store -
if we can get the widgets distributed, for example, we can maximise
possible sales of any book which is good for everyone.

Also now, we need to also discuss a little bit about the philosophy and
management of the book store.

On the issue of sales and income. We will always offer all the manuals
in FM for free in a multitude of non-print forms. Its not possible to do
this for print because we dont have the $ to make books without
recovering the costs. Its important to remember that FM is about
creating documentation, not making a profit from selling books. However
we must recognise that we can use revenue from book sales towards
fulfilling our aims. To achieve this balance we discussed this earlier
on the list and agreed that books will be available at cost and at a
markup. That way a purchase of a book at a markup is obviously a
donation.

Now, I have looked at this more and I can see it is going to be a
headache to maintain two versions of each book - lulu doesnt offer a
nice way to be able to set 2 prices on a single item. We would have to
create two accounts for each book. I would like to change the strategy
slightly to the following:
* always offer the print source for free
* sell manuals at a mark-up

The above is available easily with FM. Lulu enables the manuals to be
downloaded for free on the same page the book is for sale. This means if
someone really wants to spend the least possible to get a book (eg a
school) they can download the PDF create a lulu account and buy it at
cost. 

As for mark-up, I am setting a 2 euro mark-up for now. We can change
this as we go. Its an arbitrary amount, but I wanted something low but
still capable of generating an interesting revenue. We wont really know
a good level until we have some experience with sales but I recommend we
stay with the 2 euro mark-up for now.

It would be good to get some thoughts on this...

Next, income from the books. Any income through the FM bookstore is
currently attributed to each manual. So if one manual sells 300 then
that revenue is credited to that manual (ie. its not a single pool of
income). I would like this income (as discussed before) to be managed by
the maintainers for that manual. FLOSS Manuals will keep the money in
the FM bookstore account for release when the maintainers have consensus
on what to do with the $. I recommend we reinvest money back into the
manuals. It would be nice, for example, if manuals could have
self-funding book sprints. Or it might be interesting if one manuals
income could be put towards a book sprint for other manuals in the same
area (eg. Audacity income being used to support a book sprint about
Ardour etc).

Another use for money could be if there are dev teams writing manuals
for their project then if that $ goes back into their own code
development - that would also be a fantastic outcome.

It would also be nice if the maintainers donated some funds to the
ongoing operating costs of FLOSS Manuals ie. to pay for hosting,
marketing materials, tech dev, and perhaps some wages somewhere down the
road. At some point, for example, I think it would be good to employ a
fulltime general writer to write and maintain docs for softwares that do
not yet have a dedicated maintainer/team.

I have no problem with maintainers using the $ to pay people. eg
themselves. However the manuals are a community effort in many cases and
the distribution of the income has to keep this in mind. We will have to
discuss at some point how this is managed. For now it is not an issue,
we can go as we are for a little while. But if we see an increasing
number of sales and larger amounts at stake it will be important to set
in place some ground rules to keep things clear and clean. I don't think
this is the moment to do it but that moment may well come within the
next months/year once we have some experience in this new area of
operations of FM.

I really hope we can take this book store and make it work for us. I
hope it will contribute towards the continued development of
documentation and the promotion and adoption of free software.

I also hope we can maintain the goodwill and good faith inherent in this
community to make this work. Introducing $ into OS projects has some
interesting, and not always positive outcomes. However we are very much
on new ground. There is no other community like us on the net. We might
seem like just a list, and people working on disparate manuals, but
actually this list is the heart of a community that is going onto very
new and exciting ground. I hope we can avoid the pitfalls, keep our feet
on the ground, and make the bookstore a success. In a large part it is
up to everyone on this list to make this experiment work. So I am really
appealing to everyone (that means you!) to promote the bookstore,
contribute to the discussion around the books, and help work out the way
we will manage the very interesting issues that lay ahead...

adam

-- 
Adam Hyde
Founder FLOSS Manuals
http://www.flossmanuals.net