The Official Samba-3 HOWTO and Reference Guide (Linux Journal) [LWN.net]

The Official Samba-3 HOWTO and Reference Guide (Linux Journal)

Posted May 19, 2004 16:48 UTC (Wed) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link]

Unencrypted PDF and source for this book, and source DocBook documents, are available at The Bruce Perens Open Source Series site. The source is also checked into the Samba CVS. You will also find 9 other published books covered by Open Source licenses there, with source and PDF uploaded for all of them about 3 months after publication. If you like the Samba Reference, Terpstra's Samba By Example will also be of interest.

Thanks

Bruce

The Official Samba-3 HOWTO and Reference Guide (Linux Journal)

Posted May 19, 2004 21:38 UTC (Wed) by tomsi (subscriber, #2306) [Link]

The Open Source series are coming along nicely, covering a variety of subjects.

It is brave to let us download the whole book as PDF; you might think that it would hamper sales.

I am not so sure, although I find downloading the whole book useful for these reasons:

1. I can look at the parts I am interested, not just a random chapter. Great when deciding which book to buy.
2. I can have an electronic copy on my computer; handy for reference books.
3. I can get the book now, not in the 2-3 days (weeks) delivery takes.
4. The book is out of print.

If I find the book useful, I will still buy it! The rasons for that are:
1. Books are more handy, at least when they aren't to large.
2. It is hopeless to read large amounts on text on any screen.
3. Printing out the book on my laser is not cost effictive...
4. ...nor do I find it practical.
5. Finally, a book doesn't need batteries so I can take it with me when I'm going to the beach;)

The Official Samba-3 HOWTO and Reference Guide (Linux Journal)

Posted May 20, 2004 4:55 UTC (Thu) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link]

I would say that we were brave if it were not for the fact that all of the books have met their goals. But it's just Open Source working. :-)

Two books, the Samba Reference and the QT manual, have had extremely good sales - these were both "official manuals" for the products they document. It may be that Terpstra's Samba by Example does very well too.

I surmise that the most important reason these books sell is that people are comfortable enough reading paper books that they will pay for one.

It's also interesting that there has been no clone mass-publishing. All of the stores and wholesalers have already placed their orders on the first day that someone could copy the book, so there is not much incentive for the cloner.

Bruce

The Official Samba-3 HOWTO and Reference Guide (Linux Journal)

Posted May 26, 2004 22:16 UTC (Wed) by crouchet (guest, #1084) [Link]

The people at Baen have a fee library of SF books on the web. At first they just put up a few old titles -- usually the first book in a series -- to see what would happen. Would it increase the sales of later books in that series? Would the few paltry sales of the free books drop off to nothing?

What happened surprised everyone. Sales of the free books went up. Yes, UP. By giving away their books on the web they were actually able to increase sales on those same books. They also believe it may have increased sales of other books in those series, other books by those authors, helped them introduce new authors and created new customers who did not formerly read Baen books, but they cannot PROVE any of that.

The world is even stranger than we think.