[FM Discuss] FM PR about Bookstore

[adam hyde]

On the issue of PR, on Monday I will send this out. Please fwd to anyone
you think might be interested. Comments or edits also welcomed.

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FLOSS Manuals Book Store Open 

FLOSS Manuals is proud to announce the opening of our new Book Store.
This is a viral shop, situated entirely online, and it sells print on
demand versions of our free manuals. 

The manuals provide instructions for using Free and Open Source
Software, and all of the material has been produced by a community of
writers using the FLOSS Manuals wiki. The opening of the shop reflects
some months of development by the small FLOSS Manuals team to tie
collaborative wiki authoring to print on demand services. It's all in
place now and the first titles available include two manuals about the
One Laptop per Child laptop and software. 

All manuals produced in FLOSS Manuals are available free online;
however, many people prefer to read paper versions. Hence the launch of
the FLOSS Manuals Bookstore. "It's all about promoting free software"
says Adam Hyde, founder of FLOSS Manuals. "Documentation is a fantastic
marketing and educational tool. There are many many people that won't
use or know about free software unless they can read about it. That's
why we need free documentation and free documentation writers. With time
this sector will flourish - it's just in its emergent stages now, but we
hope that the tool set available at FLOSS Manuals will provide a boost
to the development of manuals and books, and these in turn will promote
the adoption and use of free software." 

The FLOSS Manuals Book Store can be embedded in a website by cutting and
pasting a few lines of code, and we encourage anyone to add it to their
own blogs and homepages. This is truly Web 2.0 meeting the publishing
world: "We don't need a physical shop to sell the books when we have the
web." says Hyde. "If we can convince all those free software fans to
host a FLOSS Manuals Bookstore on their site then we have the biggest
shop window you can imagine. A viral book store like this is a fantastic
opportunity to put the software in front of people that would not
otherwise know of it." 

The Book Store has been designed to fit neatly into navigation bars and
the sidebar of blogs and it can be modified to fit the look and feel of
any webpage. 

For more information see: 
http://www.flossmanuals.net/bookstore 

Contact : 
Adam Hyde Founder 
FLOSS Manuals 
adam at flossmanuals.net 

About FLOSS Manuals 
FLOSS Manuals is a non-profit foundation based in Amsterdam. The
foundation creates free, open source documentation for free, open source
software. FLOSS Manuals is also a community of free documentation
writers that publish free manuals about free software across multiple
languages. 
http://www.flossmanuals.net/about 

About Free Software 
Free software has developed outside and alongside of the more
restrictive licenses and copyrights of the proprietary software
environment. Free software can be used by anyone for any purpose: users
can study the source code, adapt it to their needs, and whether or not
they modify it, they can redistribute both the software and its source
code. 
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html



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