Re: Publishing the Community Manuals

On 2003-12-19, Joshua D. Drake <jd@commandprompt.com> wrote:
>
>>
> Well there are a couple of things that we can do differently that may
> change that:
>
> 1. We would assign ISBN's allowing any and all bookstores to order them.
> 2. We can put them in distribution through Baker and Taylor
> 3. We can print on demand... in as little as 25 copies which makes it
> very easy
> to handle updates to the docs.

As a former small-press publisher and bookstore employee, I can tell you the benefits of this
in practical terms:

When someone goes into a bookstore and asks for a book on "Postgres",
the clerk will look it up in a database. Because it has an
ISBN, it will turn up. The clerk will say "We don't have that in stock,
but we can order it for it for you".

Many bookstores will only order through major distributors like "Baker
and Taylor", so getting carried by a big distributor is a big deal too.

Print-on-Demand sounds ideal for documentation of constantly changing
software.

    Mark

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