--- Erhalten von  DIR.U109619 031 389 78 68                  22-09-04 13.47

Hi Stephane,

Thank you for being so open and trust our community to find a solution.

(Small-land people: Muy rapidito les cuento de que se trata. Stephane tiene un
libro para enseniar a programar. Posiblemente lo podamos tener libre)

We all know how enthusiatic you are about Smalltalk, therefore I assume that your
main motivation is not money but Smalltalk itself. Nevertheless it is reasonable
that you get some money after all the time you invested.

Here is my proposal:

1- Make available the most current book version. I mean the books "source text"
(latex, word, or whatever)

2- Let people make the corrections until we have a readable english version (lets
it call "Bot-version1")

3- Put "Bot-version1" under a print on demand system. You will earn some (little)
money.

4- Make synergy between your book and the education projects (squeak-land, small-
land). This means that your book should be very visible in the first page of
these portals. The idea is that the teachers who first come to these portals
should say something like: "hey, this is serious... they even have a couple books
which I can read in the classroom..."

5- The sex appeal of the education portal (web site) is very important. I would
suggest that it is done by professional web-designers. Your students
(Adrian/Lukas) should be able to build a nice SmallWiki behind. You can even pay
something with some of the money you earn in step 3.

6- Encourage people to take the "source text" of your book and make new books out
of them. I can imagine a spanish version, a german version, and (of course) a
*french* version.

7- The offsprings of your book could also be put under a print on demand system.
You are in charge of doing that, but if somebody does he will give you an
arbitrary share.

We could call this an "Open Text Project", dont we?

I am quite ignorant about the status of the squeak-land, small-land projects. I
know that there is already another book called "Powerful Ideas". My idea about
the synergy might be not very new, and maybe the site is already with a
professional looking style. If this is so, ignore this message and dont be
offended...

I stop here because I should continue with my daily work...

Cheers,
Francisco


***************************************************************************

From: ducasse at iam.unibe.ch
To: squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org, gsug at gsug.org,
 esug-list at lists.esug.org, vwnc at cs.uiuc.edu
Cc: ducasse at iam.unibe.ch
Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2004 09:47:28 +0200
Subject: [Esug-list] Need your help for my books on Squeak

Hi all,

Some context:
I was under contract with Morgan Kaufman Publisher for publishing two
books on teaching novices how to program with Squeak. I went over two
complete reviews, rewrote big parts of the books, changed my
environment to following the ideas of my editor.....over the last 3 or
4 years. Note that Alan Kay agreed to write a small foreword for the
books. I spent a lot of my vacation and nights on these book. Since
June this year (now we are mid september) I was waiting to get english
corrections for the first book,  and I had no schedule since more than
6 months so I asked my editor if this would not be smarter that we
break the contract. He replied laconically that yes this was possible,
I got several emails exchange with him but apparently the situation
cannot be solved (I think that he is taking advantage of his position
since I invested much more than him, in his last email he implied that
I was not asking useful or sincere questions when I ask why he did not
give me a schedule) so my contract is now broken because this is not
possible to work with such a kind of people.  The funny thing is that
two years ago this person told me that I could have my own series with
MKP.  Time passes apparently and things change.
So I let you deduce if this is wise to get book published by MKP and if
this is wise to buy them. I have made my own
argumented opinion on that topic.

Some facts about these books:
          - Using a logo like robot, the first book presents basic principles of
programming: variables, loops, procedural         abstraction, parameters,
conditional, small problems, the second one introduces another
environment
          in which we have to program a robot to find his way into mazes, follow
sign...Then it introduces object-       oriented programming.

          - My audience is really parents or teachers that want to have fun with
their kids or students.

          - The contents of the books has been tested in classrooms over the
last 3 or 4 years here in Switzerland. I use      Squeak but I build a
dedicated environment for kids. My book is not about etoy programming
but about how       students can learn basic principles of programming using
this environment in a problem-oriented way.

          - These books got around two full reviewing circles ( I was waiting
for the english review to get the first one       done).

          - Note that these books fit perfectly in the market since it arrives
after the Etoy book published by the    Kim Rose (www.squeakland.org) and
before the book of Mark Guzdial.  Note that for example a japanese
          book on etoy sold last year 5000 copies only in japan. The people
behind squeakland told me that:  "We    guesstimate about 1500-2500
downloads per month on average and about 8000 unique visitors a month."
so        there is a big interest in the teacher community for squeak.
Squeakland accepted to advertise my book on their           site too.

          - Extremely early drafts can be found at:
http://kilana.unibe.ch:9090/botinc/

Now I would like to know:
          - whether you have any contact with other editor in other publishing
companies.
          - whether you have ideas how to publish this book (may be with a print
on demand system).
          - whether you would be interested to prove read my english if I just
put the pdf on the web.



Stef

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