Books on Rev

[Alan Golub]

----->
Richard Gaskin wrote:

Rev is in the "transition period" (or to use the better term, preparing to
"cross the chasm"), and during this period we have the common catch-22 with
regard to books:  the market may be too small just yet to cinch a deal with
a publisher, but indeed growth could be accelerated if there was a book.

Not to worry:  all successful products go through this moment.  The trick is
to focus on other activities to build market share and community, and in due
time publishers will line up with little prompting.

Along these lines, there is still much we can do to further the true goal:
sharing Rev knowledge and experience.

Web sites, Wikis, PDFs, Rev-based media -- all good options, all immediately
available.   No complications, no waiting, no fuss, no muss -- we have
everything we need right now to further this goal.

Several are already moving works forward, and there's more in the pipeline.
If we need a central index for such things, there's always RevNet...
------>

I couldn't agree more. As someone who contemplated a book on Rev, and
decided the time wasn't quite right, I think I can add something here.

A few years ago, I was shopping to the big-name tech publishers a proposal
for a book on WordPerfect for Linux. Peachpit Press was interested, but felt
the market wasn't there yet (a year after my proposal, they actually did do
a Visual QuickStart Guide, but with another author). SAMS was also
interested, but only if the book covered the entire WordPerfect Office
suite. I agreed, and in June 2000, published "SAMS Teach Yourself
WordPerfect Office 2000 for Linux in 24 Hours."

Both of these publishers, and a few others, including the publishers of
Linux Journal magazine, were on the fence about my proposal for one reason:
there was insufficient proof of a viable market.

As an unrepresented author (yes, there are agencies that specialize in
representing tech writers), I handled on my own all of the negotiations with
the various publishers, and with each of them, they wanted me to provide
proof of the market (the number of Linux users, the number of WordPerfect
Office users, the number of competing titles on the market, etc.), or proof
that my book could build its own market (I still haven't come across any
such proof -- indeed, shortly after my book came out, Corel sold its Linux
business off, and WordPerfect Office for Linux was dead in the water. My
book garnered some good reviews at Amazon, where you can buy a used copy
right now for about 40 cents, but only managed to sell a few thousand
copies).

SAMS eventually took the plunge with me (to my sheer delight -- they were a
pleasure), and ultimately took a small hit on my book. But a huge publisher
like SAMS can absorb it (indeed, it might even be helpful for accounting
purposes). Likewise, they can also afford to shoot high with riskier
projects in the hopes of getting in on the ground floor of a hot technology.
Would SAMS be interested in Rev? Perhaps, although ask yourself whether Rev
has greater or lesser public mind share than Corel's WordPerfect line of
products, of the Linux OS, for that matter.

My guess is that most publishers would like to see the market grow a bit
before taking Rev on. From my perspective, as an author who might one day
see some royalty revenue from a technical book, I'd also like to see the
market for Rev develop a bit more, so that I can make my pitch to publishers
armed with strong market info (and they all require it as part of the
proposal submission). I think it will eventually happen. Richard correctly
points out that there are many wonderful existing projects (his own Rev
resource at FourthWorld.com is one of my favorites) and several more in the
works.

Dan Shafer is about to release an e-Book about Rev -- it will be the first
third-party Rev book, and, if it's anything like Dan's HyperCard books (or
his newest CSS book, which is terrific!), it should be a success.

I'm hard at work on The Revolution Journal, an online magazine about Rev and
its user community. As I've stated in prior posts, one of my inspirations is
Marc Zeedar's RB University, an online project the success of which
ultimately made possible RB Developer, a full-blown, hard copy magazine
dedicated to REALBasic. I mention it again as a great example of starting
small, creating a market, and then using that market as the basis for
larger, more ambitious projects.

And that, I guess, is my point. There's some quality stuff coming out, both
from Rev, and from the user community. We need to pay attention to each of
these small steps and catalogue the successes so that one day soon they can
be used as the collective springboard for larger, greater works.

While I, too, would love to see some third party books here and now, my own
approach is to try to build the market to a certain level, and then see
where we stand.

Alan S. Golub
StoryCard Software, LLC