Mark Rauterkus <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> The book(s) are a different matter. You really need a critical mass
> of info to get started there. So, for start-up reasons, it is way
> easier to get moving on the radio show ideas.
Perhaps a critical mass of books could be obtained by first using
already existing material, instead of having to start from scratch.
For example, reprinting old out-of-print books under a copyleft, or
publishing some of the free books that exist only online. An author in
the middle of writing a book, who has either done most of the
background research and planning, or has finished the book but not
found a publisher, might want to copyleft their book if given a strong
argument for it, therefore providing material that is also "new" in the
sense of not being previously available.
A publishing FAQ could start out small, and grow as the number of
published free books increases.
Michael Stutz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Listing out the various ways that free books have been successfully
> (hardcopy) published will help get more of them out, and will reveal
> the various models that publishers and authors have used.
Even just showing that it's been done, and not just an ideal that may
or may not be feasible in practice, will be useful.
> Not counting older public domain material, there still are very few
> print-published free books. No fiction or poetry that I know of, and
> even little non-fiction outside of technical works. Most of it is
> computer related.
And I think that areas like fiction and poetry (as well as nonfiction
focused on telling a story, such as biography) are key to starting a
free book movement with mainstream appeal, because unlike reference or
other utilitarian works they try to reach readers on an emotional
level. If readers empathize with a character in a story, or appreciate
a philosophical insight in a poem, they are more likely to care about
the book enough to consider it important whether it is free or not.
> You could probably list the publishers who've done it on one hand:
> FSF, New Riders, No Starch, O'Reilly. Also Green Tea Press. There's
> been progress but still a lot of work to be done. I know that in the
> old days ('95?) SSC reprinted some LDP docs, like the Linux Network
> Administrator's Guide. I seem to recall that someone else (InfoMagic?)
> reprinted some of those books, too. Don't think the authors got any
> royalties on those.
All of these are publishers specializing in computer-related material,
but on the other hand, it's a good sign that five different publishers
in the same field have published free books. If every subject had five
publishers putting out free books, that would add up to a lot of books.
> (I've been thinking about a DSL FAQ, incidentally, so that people can
> see exactly how to use it, why they might want to use it for X,
> proposed improvements, etc.)
This would be helpful, for example in explaining what could be
considered "source data" in different media.
Joel Schlosberg
