I am one of the authors of the book that started this discussion. UCITA and your rights aside (not to dismiss them, I just don't have any expertise in that area), I thought I should explain the decision behind putting part of the book on the CD.
Originally this book was supposed to be under 400 pages, and as we were writing it, it quickly became apparent that this was not going to happen. The final book was around 800 pages (with the front matter/index and everything else). Doubling the size of the book is obviously a large impact on the cost of publishing the book (the first edition of a book that OnWord has no guarantees of how well it will sell). Increasing the number of pages would have been possible, but it would have also raised the price of the book. We did not want the price to go out of the reach of the people it was written for.
We worked with OnWord Press to do two things: increase the number of pages (and they really came through--bumping the page count to over 600 pages), and figure out how to compact the book into the fewer number of pages. We made decisions that I sometimes hate to look at, squeezing text and graphics onto fewer pages wherever we could, and we were still 100 pages over.
Finally the decision came down to putting some of the material on the CD, or trying to cut 100 pages out of the book. Rather than leave that much material out of the book, the editor and I made an (admittedly quick--we wanted this to be available in a timely manner to give information about the new release) decision to put the last chapter and two appendices onto the CD.
I (still) think that this was the best decision for the readers of the book. I do regret that we didn't put the entire text of the book onto the CD (something that occurred to me after we made the CD and went to press), which would have allowed full text search, and reading from the computer (if you are into that).
I am sorry about the licensing/rights issue, and I think that I have a solution to this problem. I have spoken to people at OnWord Press, and they share my concerns. They have guaranteed that we can put the PDF versions of these chapters on their website (www.onwordpress.com) within the next two weeks, where people can download them prior to opening the CD. Yes, this means that people will be able to read those even if they haven't bought the book, but I would like to think that all it will do is become good advertising for the rest of the book ("hey--if you like this, then get the rest of the book").
I am sincerely sorry about the inconvenience that this decision has put on the readers of this book. I hope that this is helpful for you.
Slashdot Mirror
I am one of the authors of the book that started this discussion. UCITA and your rights aside (not to dismiss them, I just don't have any expertise in that area), I thought I should explain the decision behind putting part of the book on the CD. Originally this book was supposed to be under 400 pages, and as we were writing it, it quickly became apparent that this was not going to happen. The final book was around 800 pages (with the front matter/index and everything else). Doubling the size of the book is obviously a large impact on the cost of publishing the book (the first edition of a book that OnWord has no guarantees of how well it will sell). Increasing the number of pages would have been possible, but it would have also raised the price of the book. We did not want the price to go out of the reach of the people it was written for. We worked with OnWord Press to do two things: increase the number of pages (and they really came through--bumping the page count to over 600 pages), and figure out how to compact the book into the fewer number of pages. We made decisions that I sometimes hate to look at, squeezing text and graphics onto fewer pages wherever we could, and we were still 100 pages over. Finally the decision came down to putting some of the material on the CD, or trying to cut 100 pages out of the book. Rather than leave that much material out of the book, the editor and I made an (admittedly quick--we wanted this to be available in a timely manner to give information about the new release) decision to put the last chapter and two appendices onto the CD. I (still) think that this was the best decision for the readers of the book. I do regret that we didn't put the entire text of the book onto the CD (something that occurred to me after we made the CD and went to press), which would have allowed full text search, and reading from the computer (if you are into that). I am sorry about the licensing/rights issue, and I think that I have a solution to this problem. I have spoken to people at OnWord Press, and they share my concerns. They have guaranteed that we can put the PDF versions of these chapters on their website (www.onwordpress.com) within the next two weeks, where people can download them prior to opening the CD. Yes, this means that people will be able to read those even if they haven't bought the book, but I would like to think that all it will do is become good advertising for the rest of the book ("hey--if you like this, then get the rest of the book"). I am sincerely sorry about the inconvenience that this decision has put on the readers of this book. I hope that this is helpful for you.