[Ambassadors] Re: About Fedora coffee table book....

[Doug Berry]

>Nicu Buculei wrote:
>Why do you make the assumption that we don't know to use GIMP? And we are >talking here about imported photos, not about newly created images.

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.

>Yes, we don't have the perfect conditions, but knowing the goal is print >we can work a bit more on the photos.

Exactly. The point may have gotten lost somewhere, but ultimately, it should be the picture taker who test prints and enhances their own photos before they submit them. 

>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.  

>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.

>We have over 600 photos made at the Brno FUDCon and a lot more of them >were left out: http://www.flickr.com/groups/fudconbrno/pool/ (and we have >not planned for a book)

I'm sure we could probably come up with thousands of photos, worldwide. And if they are all high-res digital quality then that would make to job so much easier. But it is probably best to assume that most will not make the cut for one reason or another. 

>How I can run trough a scanner my photos, they are already in a digital >format...

Are submissions for the book only open to persons who have digital cameras?
I would think that would rule out a lot of people from participating, right there.

>Scribus *is* part of Fedora, however, not part of the default install.
>I for one would be interested in reading a bit about how Scribus can be >used to create such a book with it.

Scribus is great, I have used it for so much and it keeps getting better and better. On the Scribus website, www.scribus.net, they list several books that were developed using Scribus. One new one is a Chinese language text book on the morphology of the leaf-beetle.

>How about using something like lulu.com as a publisher? For example >http://www.lulu.com/en/products/photo_books/?cid=en_product_portal

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.

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.  

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.

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.

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.

-- w Douglas Berry --
slasherzee at fedoraproject.org