Hi Ton. I think that the idea of a "Blender Magazine" is great. Blender has reached, IMHO, critical mass and the public at large is constantly clamoring for more content and information. Especially of the "accessible" kind I think that the idea of providing a periodical with high polish is a good one. Having said so, I have to say that I disagree with a few key points in the plan:
- 19 Euro for a magazine is a high price. I'm not sure it will be easy to find buyers. I myself hesitate to buy any magazine that costs $6.00 (USD) or more. This is for established, general-purpose 3D publications. I buy a few book every now and then, and they have to be really worth the money. The asking price for a Blender manazine, should be, IMHO, quite a bit lower than E.19 - The title "Procedings" is a bit obscure. To myself and other people I asked it gave the idea of a report about the meeting minutes, or summaries of public events. It can definitely work against the goal of the publication. Selecting something with a bit more "sex appeal" would help the sales. - Printed format is a risk and it limits the distribution worldwide. If I were in charge of deciding the future of a magazine/publication starting today I would not think of printing it at all. Especially for a technical publication. PDF/ePub with publishing on Apple BookStore and Amazon/Nook would be the only means that I would consider. Selling the printed version and delivering the electronic format for free would be economically akin to suicide. On top of that I find that if I have a choice between printed and ebook, I buy the ebook all the time. I can search it, a feature fundamental for any technical paper, I can have the publication with me all the time, together with all the other books/magazine, and it doesn't require additional physical space. Putting an emphasis on the eBook can also help in providing a format that is more pertinent to Blender, by adding embedded movies that can integrate the explanation of articles centered around the topics of animation and post-processing/compositing. On the plus side, I agree that a magazine which is professionally formatted, with high-quality content and published by the Blender Foundation/Institute would definitely be well received. All said in the spirit of helping and providing what I hope is seen as constructive criticism. All the best. Paolo Ciccone www.preta3d.com www.paolociccone.com On Sun, Oct 24, 2010 at 7:35 AM, Ton Roosendaal <t...@blender.org> wrote: > Hi all, > > This was mailed to the bf-docboard list as well, but it's a good > topic to get feedback on here as well. > > 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, quality 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 (ebook?) 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 > (but readable for users!) 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 or so). > > Start shooting crits! :) > > Thanks, > > -Ton- > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > Ton Roosendaal Blender Foundation t...@blender.org www.blender.org > Blender Institute Entrepotdok 57A 1018AD Amsterdam The Netherlands > > _______________________________________________ > Bf-committers mailing list > Bf-committers@blender.org > http://lists.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/bf-committers > _______________________________________________ Bf-committers mailing list Bf-committers@blender.org http://lists.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/bf-committers