[epo-core] Proposal from KD

[Mike Whitaker]

On 31 Oct 2008, at 10:25, Mark Keating wrote:

> Hi all.
>
> I have been asked to put the following proposition to you from KD. I  
> will endeavour to discover the discout/price that we will expect to  
> pay. We can decide to put in a bulk order for fewer books if so  
> required.
>
> Responses on this as soon as possible please.

Mea culpa (and everyone else, by the looks) on not replying.

> ------------------
>
> Hi all,
>
> As you may know, Matt Trout and I have been putting together a
> proposal for a catalyst book.  While the editor (Steve Anglin) at
> apress thinks that the proposal is solid, the publisher is concerned
> about the market size.
>
> Their demands are basically:
>
> *  "Official book" with the support of the core team, logos etc.
>
> *  Involvement (i.e. preface i think) from a prominent member of the
> perl community.  Matt suggests Tim Bunce, I suggest that we approach
> Larry Wall, Randal Schwartz and anyone else as well.
>
> * Better download/adoption statistics (I've done this)
>
> And this is the crunchy bit:
>
> * "4. Commit to a bulk buy of 500 copies of this book at a deep, deep
> discount. Up to 60% and maybe more off of list price, depending on
> quanitity ordered."

So we'd be looking at finding of the order of £5000, given the normal  
cover price of a computing textbook?

Currently, obviously, we don't have that money - the real question is,  
do we think it's a risk we /personally/ could take, given it'd return  
us around £6-7000 back into EP?

> So 500 copies is an opening gambit.  Would epo be interested in
> sponsoring this book?  I guess a pre-order of a decent size would get
> the EPO logo on the cover of the book or some other kind of promotion
> as well.  I would imagine that selling the books at discount at YAPC,
> online or wherever would also pay a return.

It's an interesting concept.

One of the things that occurs to me is that Catalyst is definitely  
part of the extended core. If we get the latter right, could this be  
marketed/tagged as a book in a 'Programming with the EP Core' series?
>
> Is this activity something that EPO would be interested in?


In principle, yes.
--
Mike Whitaker - mike at altrion.org