I have not given up any of my copyrights. These are all interesting ideas, but the issue really is scale.
Back in the day, I could print and sell thousands of Pocket Guides, and my publishers all printed a minimum of 5000 on any run, most of which I sold directly. So while there was a chance of not even covering the tangible production costs, I guessed correctly and sold them all out. Today, we could sell what, a few hundred? While I still love the community, that doesn't sound like a great return on investment. My hope, which started in 1995 when I put my Pick/BASIC book up for free on my site, was that an effective micropayment system would emerge, allowing me to sell work in small bits for amounts both fair and below what I envisioned as the "blink factor". But this didn't happen, so neither did new writings. For a while, I had a "Donate via Paypal" button on my Pick/BASIC download page. Even now that book accounts for half of my site traffic and is downloaded hundreds of times a month. (Who are those guys?) Take a WAG how many people donated in the year the button was displayed? In any case, thanks for the good vibes generated by this thread. I had no idea people were still lugging around my antique books. Best regards, jes http://jes.com jes.com Anthony W. Youngman-3 wrote: > > In message <col107-w66ce4bea66ba98420166ce2...@phx.gbl>, Jo Lester > <jp.les...@hotmail.com> writes >> >>I haven't bought an old pick book by Jonathan Sisk for weeks. If Jon >>printed, or released existing books, however old to Kindle, I'd buy. >>This goes for you too, Tony. You write well. >> > I don't know if Jonathan still owns his own copyrights. > > However, I would have thought, if he does, publishing them via a "print > on demand" publisher like Baen might be a good idea. Dunno if O'Reilly > would do something like that. > > Cheers, > Wol > -- > Anthony W. Youngman <pi...@thewolery.demon.co.uk> > 'Yings, yow graley yin! Suz ae rikt dheu,' said the blue man, taking the > thimble. 'What *is* he?' said Magrat. 'They're gnomes,' said Nanny. The > man > lowered the thimble. 'Pictsies!' Carpe Jugulum, Terry Pratchett 1998 > Visit the MaVerick web-site - <http://www.maverick-dbms.org> Open Source > Pick > _______________________________________________ > U2-Users mailing list > U2-Users@listserver.u2ug.org > http://listserver.u2ug.org/mailman/listinfo/u2-users > > ----- http://jes.com On-demand 1 on 1 private training for all MultiValue platforms and languages. -- View this message in context: http://old.nabble.com/Pick-Pocket-Guide-tp27982214p27995283.html Sent from the U2 - Users mailing list archive at Nabble.com. _______________________________________________ U2-Users mailing list U2-Users@listserver.u2ug.org http://listserver.u2ug.org/mailman/listinfo/u2-users
