Books for Profit?

[Danny Grizzle]

On 6/3/03 9:57 AM, "Dan Shafer" <dan at shafermedia.com> wrote:

> 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've never negotiated a contract with a publisher. From an author's
standpoint, I see two advantages:

1) Advanced fees
2) Marketing clout

At the same time, with the current state of print-on-demand technology, I
can't see why more people don't self-publish. Most of Danny Goodman's
titles, this is the only way they remain available.

A book specific to Runtime Revolution inherently appeals to a market which
is a subset of the RR user base. Therefore, RR is a more important marketing
partner than any publisher. I'm sure RR will not share e-mail addresses from
their user database, but they should support, encourage, and foster the
product by making mailings on behalf of a book, and they should feature
3rd-party RR titles on the RR website.

Amazon also sells print-on-demand books, so no loss there.

Where traditional publishers might do better is brick-and-mortar marketing,
Waldenbooks, Barnes & Noble, etc. Still, the market is a subset of RR users
-- nobody buys computer books for software they don't own.

This list could probably do a RR book as a group project, with different
individuals contributing various chapters. Of course, by the time we had
passed around copies for peer review, the market for the book would be
diminished.

Danny Grizzle