Books for Profit?

[Bill Vlahos]

I agree with Dan. There are several non-profit sources of information  
on Rev now (Geoff's WIKI, several search sites, Google search at  
RunRev) and they are great as far as they go. As much as I think  
electronic versions of documentation are fabulous (and I think Gene's  
done a great job with Rev's), there is nothing quite like a printed  
book.

Books are tangible and can be purchased and/or perused at bookstores  
and they can be taken anywhere. I think this is particularly important  
for a product like Revolution (and MetaCard) because they can't be seen  
or purchased at any store. They have no visibility on anyone's shelf. I  
think such a book would find its way to Apple Stores and Borders and  
Barnes and Noble.

Oddly enough, I think it might be more difficult to get this in stores  
like CompUSA or Best Buy because they don't sell Revolution so there is  
no tie-in to other products they do sell.

If I were contemplating writing a book I'd plan to make money with it.  
After all, I have the same motivation for the commercial software I'm  
writing.

Bill Vlahos


On Tuesday, June 3, 2003, at 07:57  AM, Dan Shafer wrote:

> Graham Samuel wrote:
>
>> At this stage I feel we're
>> nearer to a need for something close to non-profit-making
>
> I hope not! :-D
>
> While I certainly don't hope to get rich on my RunRev information  
> content -- which will take several different forms -- I sure don't  
> expect to put in this much time and effort as a pure labor of love,  
> either.
>
> I have not been able to get a sense for how big the installed base of  
> Rev and MC is, but I'm guessing that if it wasn't on the order of a  
> few thousand for each product, the companies would long ago have  
> stopped development. Some reasonable percentage of those users are  
> folks who will gobble up whatever they can get in the way of  
> information to help them work with the product better. I conclude,  
> therefore, that the key is pricing information in such a way that  
> modest numbers of buyers can still make the enterprise at least  
> marginally profitable.
>
>
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> Dan Shafer