I just wanted to say that Robert, Don, and I have been discussing an OSG
book a lot recently, and I think I speak for the three of us when I say that
we're very interested in seeing it happen. I'm even willing to predict
that such a project will get underway before the year is done,
barring invasion of Earth by Blob-like creatures from outer space. (No, wait,
that's my OTHER book idea...)
One impediment not yet mentioned is
that OSG is a moving target. Consider 8-9 months between completion of the first
draft and a published book. (During that time the book goes through review, some
rewrites, a couple edit passes, typesetting, final review of the "blue pages",
etc. This all takes time, and the posts to osg-submissions don't stop.)
The bottom line is that the book might be obsolete as soon as it hits
the shelves.
One solution to this problem could be
a Gems-style book. Contributors typically get no pay, they just get recognition.
The royalties would go to the editor, responsible for consistency and
look/feel. Although I love the idea of doing a Gems-style book because of the
high content quality and fast turn-around time, I think it would not do as well
now as it would if there were already OSG programming/reference manuals on the
shelves.
On the subject of
funding...
OpenGL Distilled was about a
1000-hour effort. I understand my royalties will be approximately $1 per book
sold. The book was published in March and I have not yet seen the first royalty
check. I suspect about 1500 copies have sold to date. Self-publishing,
rather than a big-name publisher like Addison-Wesley, would increase the royalty
percentage, but would limit marketing and distribution (translating into lower
sales).
On one hand, a book as Robert
describes will be significantly more work than OpenGL Distilled and
will correspondingly take much longer. On the other hand, both Robert and Don
already have a lot of content from the courses they offer, and there is
already a lot of example source code available. Nonetheless, to fund the
creation of such a book at a pay rate that will keep the project at the top of
the author's priority list might take $100,000 or more. That's a lot of
capital!
The authors need to factor in that
much of their payment will come in terms of self-promotion, which unfortunately
doesn't translate into money until much later.
Robert, I love your ideas on funding.
>From my recent experience raising money for VISIONWALK, corporate sponsorship is
a very effective way to generate capital. Perhaps companies with OSG-based
products could contribute, say $5,000 each, and get 5-10 pages of the book
devoted to how their app uses OSG. However, we'd need to keep a cap on this. I
wouldn't want to devote more than 20 pages to such material.
Authors typically get some
complimentary copies from the publisher; perhaps the authors of an OSG book
could give those away (signed) to individual donors that pony up $500, for
example. Plus those people would get prominent placement in the
acknowledgements, like a paragraph about them, their company, and their
involvement in OSG.
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