[Bf-education] Need feedback on publisher strategy

[Ton Roosendaal]

Hi,

Recently I've been contacted by Elsevier and Wiley (again) about deals  
they want to make to get official endorsements for their book.

I am still trying to get feedback on what fair deals we can make with  
our Blender brand and official endorsements. To prevent arbitrary  
ruling we should have a standard offering for every publisher, for at  
least the next few years. Here's a proposal:

1) First goal is to get Blender authors professionally involved, and  
stimulate having good Blender books published. For that we can set up a  
quality check.

- The publisher or author finds three people in the Blender artist  
community, acknowledged by the Blender Foundation and not being the  
author(s), who will endorse the book. They've each had a preview copy  
of the book for review.

2) A second goal can be to make the books available with a discount to  
the official blender.org shop. This discount should allow a substantial  
amount - minimum 50% - of sales to go to Blender support.

- The publisher offers us 60% discount on the official retail price.  
(50% discount of the retail price is a standard retail offering, note  
that Amazon gives 35-40% discount to its clients already).
- We can purchase books in small batches (but minimum 100 copies), and  
have right of return.
- If publisher wants, can agree on minimum eshop sales price of 80% of  
retail price.

3) If the above can be achieved, we can provide the publisher with:

- The right to put the Blender logo (small, as secondary item) on the  
cover.
- The right to publish the statement "Official Blender Foundation  
Approved" (on cover, etc).
- My cooperation on joint press releases or other PR (which can be done  
via email).

Note: Unless the book was co-produced or written by myself, I won't  
write forewords anymore!

What do you think, fair?

-Ton-

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Ton Roosendaal  Blender Foundation ton at blender.org  
http://www.blender.org