Set up a good business model, and you know you'll get reimbursed for your work.
This is pretty circular reasoning because the definition of a good business model is one that makes a profit. The problem is that I like the old business model and not just as a writer but as a reader. I like that people take a risk on bringing something to market. I like getting a chance to reward the writer who meets my needs. I don't want the government to tax me and then give a grant. I don't want to wait for the wikipedia to generate it. I like rewarding the person who meets society's needs.
Actually, I rarely buy paper bound books because the ebooks are more useful. It used to be the case that I thought it was nice to have a paperbound book, but that time is past for me. So that's why I think the tide is changing.
And there's nothing you or anyone else can do about that except adapt.
Actually, I kind of like the old model. I like being able to plunk down $10 and see a movie that cost $100m to make. I like being able to pay $100 for a textbook from a leading expert who's not just doing it to advertise other services. I'm a content consumer and I like the old model. It's far from perfect, but it's better than watching videos of people's cats riding Roombas on YouTube.
Okay, maybe they're not perfect, but for the record I searched out the guy who complained about the errors on Amazon. Then I asked him to help me correct the errors. All of the errors that I've heard about are right here .
While I think everyone has a right to an opinion, I was very disappointed that the guy couldn't point out something really boneheaded given the tone of his comment.
I continue to offer financial rewards to the first person to report errors in my book. There's a printed offer in the front of each book. I circulate new rewards before I print new versions. I pay them and I haven't had to pay very many.
Sounds like an almost perfect bullshit filter to me.
Actually, I think it's exactly the opposite. People who write for money are very interested in giving their audience something useful. Those who write to share ideas are often-- but far from always-- interested in pontificating. I know there are some truly generous souls out there, but the Internet is full of people who just want to share ideas. You can sample a few websites and tell me what you think.
Oh, I know that someone is buying. Otherwise the price would drop to zero. But my point is that the free copies haven't increased demand. If they did, the price should go up.
1) Just royalty statements that show very few sales.
2) I've watched the price of used copies of Free for All on Amazon. They've stayed more or less at the same price for the last ten years. The free copy has been out there for about 9 years.
For the record, each month I still give away about 3000 or more copies of Free for All from my web site alone. If the free copies were really generating print sales, we would have seen a bump up. They're not printing any more.
The publisher is handling the Kindle pricing for this title. They've set the price at Amazon at $51 for the print on demand and $41 for the Kindle.
That's actually a fair representation of the costs. The printing probably costs about $5 and the shipping/handling about $5.
The real cost is in the time it takes to prepare the book. It's not fair to compare the cost of a data compression book with, say, a romance title. The size of the markets is vastly different. I would be happy to sell my data compression book at the price of a romance novel if I could sell as many copies.
Synthesizing information isn't cheap. It took me a long time to write that book. If society doesn't reward people for their time, they're going to stop doing it. I realize that the Wikipedia is very cool and much better than my books in many ways, but I don't think we're ready for it to be the only source of information.
First, O'Reilly isn't really my publisher, although I did contribute a chapter to the book Beautiful Security.
Second, I don't think that people are out to screw me personally. At least most people that is. But I do believe that humans take the path of least resistance.
Third, I think that students are already under a great deal of financial stress. The temptation to save a few dollars by grabbing a free copy of the textbook is very understandable to me. I just wish people would look at text book authors as the good guys because I think we provide much more information per dollar than the universities. Alas, I don't think I'm going to change people's ideas on that very soon.
Fourth, at some point the search engines and the web sites need to take some responsibility for what they display. I do blog about my book and I do use clean URLs to help the search engines do the right thing.
I think there's just something plain broken about the search engine results.
I do this with my book Free for All . It's a great success if you measure success by the number of people who read my work. But it's contributed zero to my income since I released it in electronic form. No one asks if they can buy printed versions.
There is a slight way to measure the effect. Used versions trade on Amazon and they've stayed at roughly the same price.
BTW, I've read the electronic version on a Palm and it's very easy to read. This may have been a viable strategy during the TRS-80 years, but not during the iPhone years. I wouldn't be surprised if the iPhone has better resolution than some of the sketchy laser printers I've seen.
This is a great challenge and an active area of research for some time. Many researchers would like to build databases that protect the users without creating some huge pile of aggregated personal information.
Encrypting the data at the client is a good solution. I've posted several good case studies from my book, Translucent Databases .
Phew--- At least I know that I was reasonably balanced. I guess it depends upon how you feel about the intensity of insult buried inside the use of words like "slacker", "codger" etc. If they're all about the same level, well, I've threaded the needle.
EE has it's own version of web application programming too. And let me tell you that it's not easy to build a well-functioning website. Humans are notoriously strange. At least compiler designers only have to interact with programmers. Web application developers have to anticipate every type of human. It's a harder job if you ask me.
There's a real problem with the sites you mention: they do little work on their own. They rely heavily on old style media for their output. Look at BoingBoing for instance. Most of it is between blockquote tags. And most of that comes from press releases. I love reading BoingBoing, but I don't believe they're something that they're not.
A scratched optical disk is a big deal; a failed hard drive isn't.
Well, everyone's experience is different. Perhaps I'm being affected by watching my hard drive quit booting. It's taken me a day to recover. A scratched DVD can often be polished. If it can't, ebay and half.com are ready with new versions. Netflix is also happy to help out.
Right now hard disk space costs about 10 cents/gig. A full-sized DVD iso costs about 40 -90 cents to store. That's not including the cost of the media server infrastructure. A basic HP model costs $400-600 and it costs more for a Drobo which gives you some of the raid protection you cite. Good compression can make a big difference here, but not that much.
I'm often amazed how much people spend to steal the content that I rent for $20/month from Netflix.
Hmmm. -- DVDs don't get viruses like hard disks. -- DVDs don't get head crashes. -- DVDs don't get written too many times like Flash memory. -- DVDs don't freeze from stiction.
I'm not saying that plastic disks are better, just that in my experience they fail about as often as hard disks. I've cursed both of them in my life.
Slashdot Mirror
Set up a good business model, and you know you'll get reimbursed for your work.
This is pretty circular reasoning because the definition of a good business model is one that makes a profit. The problem is that I like the old business model and not just as a writer but as a reader. I like that people take a risk on bringing something to market. I like getting a chance to reward the writer who meets my needs. I don't want the government to tax me and then give a grant. I don't want to wait for the wikipedia to generate it. I like rewarding the person who meets society's needs.
Actually, I rarely buy paper bound books because the ebooks are more useful. It used to be the case that I thought it was nice to have a paperbound book, but that time is past for me. So that's why I think the tide is changing.
And there's nothing you or anyone else can do about that except adapt.
Actually, I kind of like the old model. I like being able to plunk down $10 and see a movie that cost $100m to make. I like being able to pay $100 for a textbook from a leading expert who's not just doing it to advertise other services. I'm a content consumer and I like the old model. It's far from perfect, but it's better than watching videos of people's cats riding Roombas on YouTube.
Okay, maybe they're not perfect, but for the record I searched out the guy who complained about the errors on Amazon. Then I asked him to help me correct the errors. All of the errors that I've heard about are right here .
While I think everyone has a right to an opinion, I was very disappointed that the guy couldn't point out something really boneheaded given the tone of his comment.
I continue to offer financial rewards to the first person to report errors in my book. There's a printed offer in the front of each book. I circulate new rewards before I print new versions. I pay them and I haven't had to pay very many.
Sounds like an almost perfect bullshit filter to me.
Actually, I think it's exactly the opposite. People who write for money are very interested in giving their audience something useful. Those who write to share ideas are often-- but far from always-- interested in pontificating. I know there are some truly generous souls out there, but the Internet is full of people who just want to share ideas. You can sample a few websites and tell me what you think.
Oh, I know that someone is buying. Otherwise the price would drop to zero. But my point is that the free copies haven't increased demand. If they did, the price should go up.
so google has done the right thing with regards to servicing the query.
Sorry, I disagree. At some point, it just becomes too blatant to be ignored.
Amazon does a much better job selling printed versions. You can find used copies there.
Amazon
I have no problem with doing it for no financial reward if only the builder and the grocer would shelter and feed me with no expectation either.
1) Just royalty statements that show very few sales.
2) I've watched the price of used copies of Free for All on Amazon. They've stayed more or less at the same price for the last ten years. The free copy has been out there for about 9 years.
For the record, each month I still give away about 3000 or more copies of Free for All from my web site alone. If the free copies were really generating print sales, we would have seen a bump up. They're not printing any more.
Best of luck to you! It's quite a good reason to write a text book, but it looks like it may soon be the only reason to do it.
The publisher is handling the Kindle pricing for this title. They've set the price at Amazon at $51 for the print on demand and $41 for the Kindle.
That's actually a fair representation of the costs. The printing probably costs about $5 and the shipping/handling about $5.
The real cost is in the time it takes to prepare the book. It's not fair to compare the cost of a data compression book with, say, a romance title. The size of the markets is vastly different. I would be happy to sell my data compression book at the price of a romance novel if I could sell as many copies.
Synthesizing information isn't cheap. It took me a long time to write that book. If society doesn't reward people for their time, they're going to stop doing it. I realize that the Wikipedia is very cool and much better than my books in many ways, but I don't think we're ready for it to be the only source of information.
First, O'Reilly isn't really my publisher, although I did contribute a chapter to the book Beautiful Security.
Second, I don't think that people are out to screw me personally. At least most people that is. But I do believe that humans take the path of least resistance.
Third, I think that students are already under a great deal of financial stress. The temptation to save a few dollars by grabbing a free copy of the textbook is very understandable to me. I just wish people would look at text book authors as the good guys because I think we provide much more information per dollar than the universities. Alas, I don't think I'm going to change people's ideas on that very soon.
Fourth, at some point the search engines and the web sites need to take some responsibility for what they display. I do blog about my book and I do use clean URLs to help the search engines do the right thing.
I think there's just something plain broken about the search engine results.
I do this with my book Free for All . It's a great success if you measure success by the number of people who read my work. But it's contributed zero to my income since I released it in electronic form. No one asks if they can buy printed versions.
There is a slight way to measure the effect. Used versions trade on Amazon and they've stayed at roughly the same price.
BTW, I've read the electronic version on a Palm and it's very easy to read. This may have been a viable strategy during the TRS-80 years, but not during the iPhone years. I wouldn't be surprised if the iPhone has better resolution than some of the sketchy laser printers I've seen.
This is a great challenge and an active area of research for some time. Many researchers would like to build databases that protect the users without creating some huge pile of aggregated personal information.
Encrypting the data at the client is a good solution. I've posted several good case studies from my book, Translucent Databases .
Here's what I wrote for a library and here's a case study of helping an online store.
Let me know if you have questions or suggestions.
Ha. RTFA where F=fantastic or fantabulous,
It's perfectly fine to say how it reads to you. If I could be all things to all people, oh, the things I could accomplish.
Phew--- At least I know that I was reasonably balanced. I guess it depends upon how you feel about the intensity of insult buried inside the use of words like "slacker", "codger" etc. If they're all about the same level, well, I've threaded the needle.
To each his own. Compilers also need to be child proofed because each programmer creates their own unexpected idioms.
EE has it's own version of web application programming too. And let me tell you that it's not easy to build a well-functioning website. Humans are notoriously strange. At least compiler designers only have to interact with programmers. Web application developers have to anticipate every type of human. It's a harder job if you ask me.
There's a real problem with the sites you mention: they do little work on their own. They rely heavily on old style media for their output. Look at BoingBoing for instance. Most of it is between blockquote tags. And most of that comes from press releases. I love reading BoingBoing, but I don't believe they're something that they're not.
Actually I do. And believe me my hard disks are just as vulnerable to their games.
Well, everyone's experience is different. Perhaps I'm being affected by watching my hard drive quit booting. It's taken me a day to recover. A scratched DVD can often be polished. If it can't, ebay and half.com are ready with new versions. Netflix is also happy to help out.
Right now hard disk space costs about 10 cents/gig. A full-sized DVD iso costs about 40 -90 cents to store. That's not including the cost of the media server infrastructure. A basic HP model costs $400-600 and it costs more for a Drobo which gives you some of the raid protection you cite. Good compression can make a big difference here, but not that much.
I'm often amazed how much people spend to steal the content that I rent for $20/month from Netflix.
Hmmm.
-- DVDs don't get viruses like hard disks.
-- DVDs don't get head crashes.
-- DVDs don't get written too many times like Flash memory.
-- DVDs don't freeze from stiction.
I'm not saying that plastic disks are better, just that in my experience they fail about as often as hard disks. I've cursed both of them in my life.
For more information, you can find the Table of Contents, FAQ and a few other case studies at my site.
The Third edition of the book just came out. I think Amazon just got their copies from the printer.