[Bf-docboard] Blender Proceedings

[Ton Roosendaal]

Hi,

Thanks for the feedback.

Please don't think the name 'proceedings' means I intend to publish  
docs that's not interesting for people involved with Blender. Even  
coder documentation should be sufficiently readable and interesting  
for users or people who want to build tutorials with the topic.

The target is to increase and improve our free documentation, and when  
it means we need more free tutorials, we can do that too. I just don't  
want to be a competitor for other Blender books out there, or for  
Blender Art Magazine (pdf).

The texts in a proceeding should be fit for wiki.blender.org too.

We can do ebook-ready distributions too. Howver, my experience is that  
a download-only product hardly will give revenues. People like  
physical products. Our training dvd series gives us good revenues, and  
so is the Open Movie and game dvd sets.

Another benefit of printed material is that - above 500 copies - a  
copy will only cost about 1 euro each, which makes it a nice extra to  
hand out on events, send to schools, etc.

-Ton-

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

On 21 Oct, 2010, at 17:32, Ton Roosendaal wrote:

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