Re: Programing Lua in Ebook format

["Zed A. Shaw" <zedshaw@...>]

On Fri, 8 Dec 2006 18:06:57 -0200
roberto@inf.puc-rio.br (Roberto Ierusalimschy) wrote:

> > I would like to buy Programing Lua (Second Edition) in ebook format. Could
> > anyone please let me know if the title is available in softcopy?
> 
> Currently it is not available in ebook format. We we would like to
> offer it, but we could not decide some questions.
> 
> - Should we offer it through "regular" ebook stores (e.g., ebook.com,
> mobipocket)? (It is amazing that the charge almost the same discounts
> as for paper books...) Or should we try to sell it directly?

You might consider a company like http://www.lulu.com/ for the publishing.  They will do e-books or on-demand print books for a fairly small cost.  I've got several friends who are publishing their books through lulu.com and they all said it was very painless.
 
> - Which format should we use? (pdf, html, ?)

PDF for sure.  It's more convenient as a book format.

> - The obvious question: how can we avoid/reduce illegal proliferation
> of copies?

This is s a sticky question, but if you look at the successful online publishers they don't worry about this much.  I've got a book in PDF format that's being sold through Addison-Wesley and there's been no real problems with illegal copies.  The main reason is that the market for people buying the book is mostly fans and people who want to support the author.

Another thing to consider is that the lower barrier to entry and price for an e-book means that more people will buy it more often when compared with the print copy.  I personally buy both a print and a PDF version since I can search the PDF easily (very important when you code).

Most of the DRM that's out there is really horrible and barely works on cross platform systems.  It's easily cracked and the added cost doesn't justify using it.  Instead, it seems that programmers are much more inclined to buy a copy since the majority of them are sensitive to their own software being copied and the smaller price isn't worth the effort.

-- 
Zed A. Shaw, MUDCRAP-CE Master Black Belt Sifu
http://www.zedshaw.com/
http://www.awprofessional.com/title/0321483502 -- The Mongrel Book
http://mongrel.rubyforge.org/
http://www.lingr.com/room/3yXhqKbfPy8 -- Come get help.