[FM Discuss] Please publish "Making Sugar Activities" and add a link to the "Read" page

[James Simmons]

Cara,

Last night I put together an "About The Authors" chapter with my own
bio.  I didn't add it to the Table of Contents yet, and I may not.
The book already has an Introduction that I'm reasonably happy with.

The idea of the cover picture was to sell the idea that older kids
could write their own Sugar Activities.  I like the idea of
posterizing the picture (kind of like the effect of the famous Obama
poster).  This would reduce the number of colors needed for the cover
and make the kid less identifyable.  Maybe shoot the kid over the
shoulder from behind while she works on a PC with sugar-emulator
running.

The older kids are the ones I most want to reach, followed by
teachers, then everyone else.  There are only two books on this
subject in existence, so I can't imagine someone not reading the book
because they didn't like the cover image.  On the other hand if it
looks like a book for teens then teens might check it out.

In any case, I have nobody to photograph at the moment and the book
isn't ready for Lulu yet.

Thanks,

James Simmons

> Date: Tue, 23 Feb 2010 20:04:04 +0100
> From: Cara Bell-Jones <carabelljones at googlemail.com>
> To: discuss at lists.flossmanuals.net
> Subject: Re: [FM Discuss] Please publish "Making Sugar Activities" and
>        add a link to the "Read" page
> Message-ID: <4B8426A4.1000604 at gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>
> Hi James,
>
> maybe put in a kind of foreword saying you saw the need for the manual &
> initiated the project, you wrote the basis for chapters on a, b & c  and
> that you hope that chapters on x, y and z will also be covered in time.
> Then it serves as an invitation to participate, not as a scarecrow ;)
>
> with the covers, so far we've kept them ultra simple, with bold futura
> fonts and clean bold icons on white background - but this doesn't always
> have to be the case (see the bookstore on the right of the READ page for
> existing examples: http://en.flossmanuals.net/)
>
> re: putting a photo of someone specific on cover, it could make others
> feel like the book is only for teens? it might narrow the audience?
>
> also lulu lets you use full colour on covers, size is 'comic book'
> 6.625" x 10.25" - the spine size depends on the number of pages.
>
> best,
> cara
>
> James Simmons wrote:
>> Cara,
>>
>> Thank you for your assistance.
>>
>> The idea about having an authors page is not bad.  Unfortunately, so
>> far I'm the only author.  If it looks like more authors will join up
>> this could be a good idea.  I'm a little concerned that if I blow my
>> own horn too much in the book that will prevent other authors from
>> joining later.
>>
>> I like the idea of this book being available on Lulu -- eventually.
>> The book isn't ready for that yet.  If you could point me to
>> information on creating a cover I would be interested.  If I just need
>> a cover image what would be the constraints on size, colors used, etc?
>>  What I'd like for the cover would be a photo, maybe posterized, of an
>> older child working on programming something.  I may have to pay a kid
>> to pose for it.
>>
>> Thanks again.
>>
>> James Simmons