[Bf-docboard] Blender Proceedings

[Ton Roosendaal]

Hi docboard,

This is on my agenda for a long time, but there's been too many other  
things!
Luckily I am getting more free time now. :)

Here's an idea I have to get public funding via our community to  
increase the quantity and quality of documentation projects.

"Blender Proceedings"

- Magazine style and size, full color
- 80 pages, 130 grs paper, 200 grs cover
- Regular issues, like 4 x per year
- Contents available in wiki.blender.org compatible formatting and  
license
- Printed versions being sold online, pdf freely downloadable

Topics for a Proceedings issue can depend on anything we consider  
worth investing time in. Especially it can become a means for our  
active documenters (and new writers) to spend considerable time on a  
documentation project while getting a fee paid for it. I also consider  
to invite developers to participate in this, to get good technical docs.

In many cases a Proceedings can be filled by multiple authors, they  
then just share the fees. An editor (and reviewer) should be found as  
well, who can get a mentoring fee.

The name "Proceedings" has been picked to not present this as manual  
or tutorials, but to always strive for reflecting current development,  
or important missing docs for Blender. Issues can also be a report on  
activities such as the Sintel Open Movie project, or the full report  
on all presentations at the Blender Conference.
To make issues somewhat attractive, artwork or galleries can be  
included as well.

Bizzplan:

- printing costs 4000 euro (1000 copies)
- writer fixed fee: 3000 euro
- mentor fixed fee: 500 euro
- DTP design: 2400 euro

With a sales price of 19 euro, it will need to sell a little over 500  
to get return of costs. My estimate is we can sell maybe a 1000,  
provided it's well designed and attractive. Profits then goes to  
financing the next issue. The better it works, the more docs.

After doing a first issue, we can also evaluate it, and offer a  
subscription model to pre-finance it all (4 issues for 60 euro).

Start shooting crits! :)

Thanks,

-Ton-

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Ton Roosendaal  Blender Foundation   ton at blender.org    www.blender.org
Blender Institute   Entrepotdok 57A  1018AD Amsterdam   The Netherlands