[FM Discuss] FM, books and you

Wed Oct 8 19:24:01 PDT 2008

Truly, this is an amazing day and it has been an amazing journey.

I went out for a run this morning and I realized it has been a year this
very week since I started my volunteer work with OLPC. This project was my
first foray into the open source world from a contributor standpoint, and I
can't believe how it has paid back at least tenfold in the people I've met,
the lessons I've learned, and the technology I'm now acquainted with.

What did it take? Time and faith, I believe. More than a year has passed
since my first open source wiki edits, and we now have a real,
hold-it-in-your-hands, put-it-on-your-bookshelf, book. With a cover designed
by someone who works at MOMA no less. (Wow, thanks Lotte!) With content
carefully authored by people who learned and knew enough about the
technology while also considering who would read the chapters and what they
want to do with the technology.

I'm happily and proudly displaying the distributable FLOSS Manuals bookstore
on my blog - take a look at www.justwriteclick.com. It looks great on a
Wordpress sidebar. If you copy and paste the code from Adam's email, you can
remove a stray extra > after 5px;"> just like below:

<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>

I've placed one order to give a copy to people in Austin who lent XOs and so
forth, and I am shipping book copies to BookSprint participants (but they
won't be signed, unless you sign it yourself, hee hee.) I hope to take this
BookSprint story to as many technology enthusiasts and technical writers as
I can talk to, and show off these books with pride. Thanks everyone for
making these books a reality.

Anne

On Wed, Oct 8, 2008 at 12:53 PM, adam hyde <adam at flossmanuals.net> wrote:

> 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
>
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> --
> Adam Hyde
> Founder FLOSS Manuals
> http://www.flossmanuals.net
>
> _______________________________________________
> Discuss mailing list
> Discuss at lists.flossmanuals.net
> http://lists.flossmanuals.net/listinfo.cgi/discuss-flossmanuals.net
>

-- 
Anne Gentle
email: annegentle at justwriteclick.com
blog: www.justwriteclick.com
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