Marco Tech Blog

September 24, 2005

Delphi Power (e)Book

I'm looking for a reasonable business model for publishing a freely available ebook on Delphi.

posted by marcocantu @ 3:02AM | 9 Comments [0 Pending]

Delphi Power (e)Book 

How about selling advertisments, which will be
included in the e-book at appropriate points (such as
the beginning or end of each chapter)?

Comment by M J Marshall [http://www.kingstairs.com] on September 24, 04:14

Delphi Power (e)Book 

Looking around for code and resources, I often see
people asking donations for their works and that model
seems to be quite a good way to support updating and
releasing new material.

I know your personal site offers "Essential Pascal"
for free and I often suggest it as a quickstart
manual; I didn't well notice the "donate" part, but
maybe the reason is that it can be taken as an offer
for what has been written and published (which is not
a bad idea), but not as a "pushing reason" to write
new chapters or update existing ones.

What I'm trying to tell here is this: in my opinion,
if you have a "roadmap" already planned and even some
ready-to-be-published chapters, interested people sees
something evolving, a work in progress behind the
scenes, so they are aware that the "ebook project" is
alive, really alive, and is only awaiting for some
donation to be finally written and then released.

I think that publishing a page devoted to this project
with a goal, a table of contents and a total amount of
estimated money, maybe with a link to a payment
service as PayPal (to help donating with ease) and
updated information about project status can be
actractive.

Some of the topics listed in your post are very HOT
and it seems that they don't (entirely) belongs to
already published books as MD7 and MBD2005 (btw, I
started reading it and I like it a lot!).

Anyway, I will stay tuned on this ebook project. ;-)

Bye,
  Marco.

Comment by Marco Breveglieri [http://www.abls.it] on September 24, 05:17

Delphi Power (e)Book 

APress is a good ebook publisher.  I've picked up a
couple of their C# ebooks.  They're password protected
Acrobat files which is fine with me.

Whatever you decide for a distribution model, it will
be a very welcome text.

Comment by Jim Roberts on September 24, 10:00

Delphi Power (e)Book 

Hi Marco,

I'm not sure your 'bidding for chapters' model will
work. I think most people decide to buy a book (or
not) when they see the finished product, or in your
case a definitive index (table of contents) and
perhaps some text examples.

The 'password protected Acrobat files' as suggested
by Jim Roberts, might be a better solution. Perhaps
in combination with sponsorship/ads.

And yes, ca. Euro 25,- is a reasonable price for an
excellent Delphi book.

Ruud Schmeitz

Comment by Ruud Schmeitz [http://www.mosasoft.nl] on September 25, 18:42

Delphi Power (e)Book 

I am not certain that 'bidding' business model will
yield the desired effect.  People are usually hesitant
to pre-pay for anything.  What would you do without
enough prepayments? refunds would be a nightmare.  I
think a combination of paying a low fee ($5.00) and
advertising will yield you the best results.  For the
most part, $5.00 is considered an insignificant amount
of money on an individual basis, thus leading to more
purchases of an electronic document.  If you go too
high, people would rather have the printed book.  This
money comes after completion of the book, leading
to..... ADVERTISING.  If you get a few advertisers to
pay for space on some of the pages in the book (don't
go crazy with adds, no one wants to pay for more ads
than content). Also sell ad space on the download
pages.   This will give you cash flow up front to get
things going, then take in the rest when the book
starts selling.  Neither one should find the entire
project, rather find the right mix to ensure you get a
 reasonable amount for the entire project.  You could
even add to the purchasing valume by offering free
book (Mastering paperback's etc..) drawings for each
(e)Book purchased.  This is just my two cents....

Comment by Brad Prendergast [http://www.bpsoftware.com] on September 26, 17:18

Delphi Power (e)Book 

 Hello Marco,
 How about trying a "Journal-Type" Scheme. IEEE for
instance, sells either a subsription for a constant
flow of material, or you can go ahead and buy a
particular article you are interested in. I have
bought your books Mastering Delphi since version 3 (I
confess I still don't have the 2005 :-) ) and really I
just read the chapters on new material, I always skip
the introductory material. I think this could probably
work better for the kind of people who are interested
in either new technologies or advanced topics.

Cheers

Mariano

Comment by Mariano Lizarraga Fernandez [] on September 27, 07:07

Delphi Power (e)Book 

I would be happy to pay $25 for a good ebook.  I don't
care about the intro chapters too much, I want hard core.

I'd love a chapter on ajax.

Sean

Comment by Sean Cross [http://www.intuitex.com] on September 28, 01:32

Delphi Power (e)Book 

Why not modify your idea slightly so that people give
a commitment to paying for a chapter or the entire
ebook when it's done rather than paying in advance?

You can still set your goal for a specific chapter, or
the entire e-book, and once it's done the people who
have committed to paying do so, and get the chapter/book.

This keep's people not comfortable with pre-paying
happy, as well as giving you an idea on what income to
expect.  Of course you still have to ensure people
will pay, but I expect a very high percentage of those
who have committed to pay would do so, especially in
the case of a chapter when it might come out fairly
soon after the commitment to paying was made.

I for one would commit to $20 US here and now to get
the ball rolling as I purchased your Mastering Delphi
2005 book and think it's great.

Cheers



Tim

Comment by Tim Buchalka [http://www.tivodownunder.com] on September 28, 02:42

Delphi Power (e)Book 

 Hi Marco,
I also support the article model due to many reasons,
some of them given above. 

One thing I would like to add. I rememember when I was
a student I couldn't afford to buy a book or software
for 30-40 USD and I never did. I would rather spend
hours trying to find it for free. But once there was a
very SMALL article (maybe 10 pages) I needed for a
SMALL price 3-5 USD. I bought it. 

The morale is, there are many people who would like to
buy (most people would prefer to buy than steal, if
they can afford it. You feel better when you pay for
things you want.) But they can not afford 30-40 USD,
so they choose to spend hours and days trying to find
hacked versions. However if there are parts available
(lets say for 3 USD per chapter) these people would
rather buy interested parts than steal them. Then for
whole book you can  get 27 *3 = 81 USD (you can offer
some discount for whole book). Plus you can always add
more chapters.

And here is another idea. Why not start delphi
epublications store/catalog. Where not only you, but
some other respected authors could put their
publications.(But make sure that only good material is
published there) It would certainly attract more
people and can become a very serious project.

PS. I am not a student anymore and started working, so
I can afford to buy, in fact I bought your MD 2005
(BTW:Excellent book !!!). ;-)))

Comment by Huseyn on October 4, 12:24