i was reluctant to post the following since it's definitely going to sound self-serving but it's an idea i've been thinking about for a while. how many people would be willing to spend, say, 5 dollars for a decently-written online booklet that introduces someone to the field of kernel programming? as some of you know, i've already written a bunch of columns on the topic, here: http://www.crashcourse.ca/wiki/index.php/Kernel_newbie_columns all the feedback i've ever had on those columns has been positive, and it's always nice to be appreciated, but i've never made a penny off of any of that, it's been all volunteer work and donating it to the general public. and given that i want to keep doing that, i really have to finally figure out how to make it pay at least a little to make it worth it. if i was seriously ambitious, i might try something like what bob stayton did with his docbook xsl guide: http://www.sagehill.net/. that's a full book, and you can buy the e-version from his web site. that's a particularly efficient way to sell since there's no middleman and it's all pretty much pure profit. (ironically, you can also read the book online, and if you check the acknowledgements, my name's there as well. i do get around. :-) i don't have the material for a full book, but i've been told more than once that i should figure out how to get *some* kind of compensation for what i could put together and make available. one possibility is to collate what i've got now, add some more material, turn it into a single downloadable document and charge maybe $5 for it. in short, it would always be a *sale*. but if i do that, the only people reading it would have had to pay for it, so the other option is to keep all this online and simply add a paypal button and people would be free to donate whatever they wanted for my efforts. hard to say how well that would work since it's kind of counting on human nature and most people won't pay for anything when they don't have to. so i'm open to suggestions if anyone has any. again, i realize this is self-serving but given how much writing i've done over the last little while, it would be terrific if i could turn all that time into some money coming back, which would let me write even more. suggestions? do people agree that a decent booklet targeted at beginning kernel programmers would be worth perhaps $5? just curious. rday p.s. as i think about it, i'm not sure selling a single downloadable document would work very well since i would be constantly adding new material and i wouldn't want to keep treating updates as a new sale or something, that's just inconvenient. the easiest approach is certainly the paypal donation button, at which point i would just have to put my faith in my fellow man. and woman. -- ======================================================================== Robert P. J. Day Waterloo, Ontario, CANADA Linux Consulting, Training and Kernel Pedantry. Web page: http://crashcourse.ca Twitter: http://twitter.com/rpjday ======================================================================== -- To unsubscribe from this list: send an email with "unsubscribe kernelnewbies" to ecartis@xxxxxxxxxxxx Please read the FAQ at http://kernelnewbies.org/FAQ
