First, I'm not really happy about this plan, but I'm not unhappy
enough to prevent anyone from trying it. Either it works and some money
comes out, or there's a huge backlash and we back off. But regardless,
I'd prefer to set up a whole separate web site ("JBoss Group", or
whatever) for all the paid products & services. Links to it are fine, but
I'd really rather not have all the "for profit" content inline.
Anyway, what I mean to get around to saying is, it might not be
unreasonable to sell a wire-bound copy of the documentation. You can get
a high end binding machine from Staples for $300, and the individual
bindings are less than $.50 each (exact price varies depending on how much
you're binding). Anyone can print out 300 pages single sided, but it's
actually surprisingly nice to have a double-sided wire-bound copy where
you can leave the whole thing open to a particular page, etc.
That would actually provide some value for the small fee. On the
other hand, once you add up printing and binding and shipping, the fee
might not be so small. In any case, it's worth a thought.
Aaron
On Fri, 16 Mar 2001, Ken Jenks wrote:
> I've been toying with the same idea myself: writing user documentation for
> jBoss and selling it on a pay-per-download basis. And I've come to the
> conclusion that it's not profitable.
>
> Although you've seen me contribute to jBoss in the past, you may not
> recognize my name. I set up Mind's Eye Fiction, <http://tale.com/>, the
> Web's first and longest surviving pay-per-view Web publisher. I sold out to
> a competitor at the height of the .com craze, but I know pay-per-view
> inside and out. Right now, I'm building e-book selling tools in
> EJB/servlets. (That's one reason I'm here.)
>
> I can tell you that there isn't much revenue to be found in this revenue
> stream. You need thousands of paying customers to support a dozen or so
> authors, and jBoss documentation won't have thousands of paying customers.
> It may have a few hundred. Ever.
>
> There are good reasons why most other Open Source projects do not sell
> their official documentation in a pay-per-view system, including the fact
> that charging for the official documentation will decrease the popularity
> of the the whole project. The fact that the official documentation for most
> Open Source projects is pretty pitiful should make it clear that it's
> usually not profitable to do this.
>
> It would be profitable to publish documentation for jBoss if the user base
> is large enough. (Like Redhat. And Apache could do this, but they don't.)
> But the user base will probably remain small with poor docs or if you
> charge for docs. And the same programmers who are great at writing
> high-tech code rarely have the discipline, skill or patience to write
> high-quality docs. This is a Catch-22 inherent in Open Source.
>
> If jBoss's user base grows large enough, and if jBoss is distinct enough
> from other EJB containers to warrant it, you might be able to convince a
> publishing company to publish a jBoss textbook, and you could earn a few
> thousand dollars. But what you're suggesting (selling jBoss docs on-line)
> involves setting up your own pay-per-view publishing company and making a
> profit from selling e-books. I can tell you from personal experience that
> it can be done -- I built and ran the world's only profitable e-book
> publishing company. But that's a much harder job, with much lower rewards,
> than you guys really want to take on.
>
> Programmers have a love/hate relationship with docs. They love to have
> them, but they hate to write them. They love good docs, but they hate bad
> or mediocre docs. They love getting them, but they really hate paying for them.
>
> Professional software must include professional docs, but the sponsoring
> organization must invest in those docs, and amortize that investment from
> its other revenue streams. Revenue streams from software include (but are
> not limited to) charging for the software (impossible here), charging for
> the docs (IMO not feasible here), charging for support/consulting, charging
> for advertisements, charging for a formal compliance certification
> processes (a distinct possibility here), and charging for automated
> update/notification services (like Redhat's
> <http://www.redhat.com/apps/support/programs.html>).
>
> If you guys want to earn a few thousand from writing a textbook, and if you
> have the numbers that will convince a computer book publisher that there's
> a market for such a book, I have contacts in the book publishing industry
> and a bit of writing experience, and I'd be willing to take on this
> project. But that's a printed book, not a downloadable e-book. Most e-books
> are not profitable. (Yet.)
>
> So don't waste your time on this, folks. Find another revenue stream.
>
> -- Ken Jenks, http://abiblion.com/
>
> Tools for reading.
>
>
