[Scribus] Manual - revision

[Christoph Schäfer]

Am Mittwoch, 31. Oktober 2007 19:49:17 schrieb John Jason Jordan:
> On Wed, 31 Oct 2007 09:15:26 +0100
>
> Petr Vanek <petr at scribus.info> dijo:
> > here is a draft how I'd like to see the result form. It is not prefect
> > (it was created when I had breakfast;)) of course but take it as just an
> > opinion.
>
> In case anyone is interested in making available a manual in real book
> form, I happen to own a publishing company. I specialize in short runs.
> I print everything on laser, and bind and trim myself. I use Laserjet
> 8000 printers for the guts (black and white, Postscript), and I have a
> Xerox Phaser 7400 that I use for printing covers. I usually print
> textbooks and the format is US letter, but I also commonly print books
> in half-letter format. I have three book binding machines (paperback),
> a professional guillotine for trimming, and a professional laminating
> machine for the covers. My product looks as professional as anything
> you see in a bookstore.
>
> The advantage of my setup is that by printing on laser and doing it all
> myself I can print in short runs almost as economically as large
> publishing companies do with very long runs on a press. Thus, I can
> print only a few hundred copies of a book at a time at affordable
> prices. If changes are required I can make the changes to the next run,
> so the books will always be the latest thing. I could produce a
> 500-page letter size manual for $15-$20 or so. We could also sell to
> bookstores (Amazon, Powell's, Barnes and Noble, etc.). Bookstores want
> a 40% discount, so we could establish a retail price of $25-$30. We
> could sell on a website for the same price, with the difference being
> donated to Scribus development.
>
> I am in the US, and I can ship anywhere. However, if we want
> translations the number of copies might be a problem. We'd need to sell
> 25 copies a month or so to make it worthwhile. I could see that for the
> English version, but some languages do not have enough speakers.
>
> There are other book publishing options - Lulu, for example. And if the
> volume turns out to be more than I can comfortably handle, perhaps
> other publishers might be a better idea. I don't want to become a big
> business. I just decided I should toss this out to the list for
> everyone's consideration and discussion.

Hi John Jason,

Thank you very much for your generous offer. However, I keep insisting that we 
need an accepted outline first, and next the (text) content. We can think 
about screenshots, layout, publishing etc. later on.

I'd really appreciate if we could all concentrate on the "what" before we move 
on to the "how".

Best regards

Christoph