On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 11:14:47AM -0800, Doug Berry wrote: > The GIMP or any other imaging program is just a means to an end - it is a way > of taking lesser quality images and enhancing them. You can bet that every > photograph published in a book anywhere was gone over and enhanced at some > point, either by the original photographer or some where down the line. > I guess you fail to realize that Nicu and I are both on the art team, and we have Mo helping us out with this. We all know how to use the GIMP pretty fluently.
> >Do you think we use our mobile phones to take photos? Most of the cameras >I > >saw used at the last FUDCon were DSLRs. Isn't this enough? > > Maybe, maybe not. Most digital cameras are set to take lower resolution > photos, simply so you can fit more pictures onto the storage disc. Taking > more pictures is the assumed goal. For example, a digital photo shot at 150 > dpi may come in at 100K. If you beefed it up to say 600 or1000 dpi it might > top out at 100 megs. Most people set there camera resolutions as low as > possible to get more pictures. > > And digital cameras are still relatively expensive and not everybody in the > Fedora World Community may have them. Many dinosaurs like me still use film. > Mo has a DSLR, she'll be at FUDCon Boston. > >I don't remember seeing something about turning a profit. > > I think someone said something about donating any proceeds to charity, or > something like that. > I did mention possibly donating to OLPC or something *if* we turned up a profit, which would be totally unnecessary. > Lulu is okay, but they are pricey. Print-On-Demand is great for authors. It > pays the highest royalties in the business. And the process, where no books > are printed unless there is a paid order, is good too. As compared to large > print runs for a fixed price. But if the books do not sale you have a garage > full of books. > > But what POD publishers do not do, or for which they charge a fortune, is all > the little things that add quality to a book. Like: spell-checking, > grammar-checking, fact-checking, cover art (many force you to use gaudy > one-size-fits-all cover templates), and layout. Layout is the most important > part of the process, and is something that authors should do themselves: > authors or their Book Packagers. > The book sources will be posted to fedora-art-list, fedora-marketing-list, and plenty of other lists for people to check over. I will diligently be checking every page's grammer and speeling, and I'm sure others will be too. > So, as far as a publisher goes, POD is a viable option, but perhaps something > like Cafe Press would be a better choice. Although I have never used them, as > I understand and this may have changed, if we laid out and created the > embedded PDF files containing the book, burn them onto a CD or DVD, send them > to Cafe Press, for a nominal fee ($200.00, I've heard, but it may be more for > a coffee table book) they assign an ISBN, create the bar-code and send the > book to Lightning Source, their printer fulfiller. > > Or we could bypass a publisher altogether and publish it ourselves. Fedora > Publishing Project, and how you might ask would we accomplish that. Well, Red > Hat must already be a digital or even a print publisher, perhaps we could > spin-off a print franchise or something. Red Hat must also have some sort of > relationship with a quality printer, for labels, brochures, advertising, etc. > RED Hat may already have everything we would need. Such as ISBN numbers > (block of ten around $300.00), since published software requires ISBN type > control numbers, bar-codes, and the like. Packaging a DVD is not much > different then packaging a book. > This seems like a very viable option, thanks for brining that up. > We already have the necessary software to layout and create all the elements > of the book. Using Scribus, OO, Abiword, and the GIMP, we could create every > part of the book ourselves. In fact, I think we already have everything we > would need to make the book; it is more like assembling it then it is > creating it from scratch. > Yeah, I realize that :) > Or we could take Fedora Publishing to Lightning Source. They are a division > of Ingrams and they do not charge their publishers a fortune. They make their > money printing and selling books. They charge a reasonable set-up fee, and a > small per book printing charge. Then they take the order, print the book, and > mail it to the customer . Publisher does none of that. > Ooh, nice. > As an example of this, Scribus just had published their latest manual in book > form. I am assuming they did all the layout and the book is coming out almost > as we speak. Is different then out book, a 450 page tome, that costs 26 > pounds. So this is just an example to show it can be done. > Douglas, are you willing to help us with the publishing process? If so, pipe in on fedora-marketing-list, or start making necessary edits to the page on the wiki[1]. I'm not worried at all about having high-enough quality photos or the inability to edit the pages together (I'm already starting to work on mockups, I'll be sending those out soonish) -- what I am worried about is getting this done in a timely matter with the least cost to us and those who want to buy the book. I'm glad you have some experience in this business... I have a lot of experience with POD for shirts, but not books. Maybe we can talk on IRC sometime, ping me in #fedora-marketing (ianweller). Please, I would like to keep this all on fedora-marketing-list. [1]: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Picture_book -- Ian Weller <ianwel...@gmail.com> http://ianweller.org GnuPG fingerprint: E51E 0517 7A92 70A2 4226 B050 87ED 7C97 EFA8 4A36 "Technology is a word that describes something that doesn't work yet." ~ Douglas Adams
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