OT: writing a book, creating a community, etc....

[phiscock-g851W1bGYuGnS0EtXVNi6w at public.gmane.org]

> In real life, authors tend NOT to make millions of dollars, and
> writing isn't a notable "entrepreneurial opportunity."

Textbook writing can be *very* profitable. I have no direct experience of
this myself, alas, but know of three other people who have done well. One
local example, when asked about revenue from the text, said 'Well, it paid
for the house in High Park'. That said, a textbook has to fit very
specific requirements so one has to work very closely with a publisher.

I suspect one's preference for writing tools is closely related to one's
preference for an editor, a matter which may be idiosyncratic and
personal. I've completed one engineering text (Design of Light Aircraft)
and I'm working on a second  (Analog Electronic Circuit Design). In both
cases, the books have many, many equations and diagrams. I'm doing both
using Latex. Latex is essentially a programming language, so I don't
recommend it to non-programmers. But if you understand notions like
'include files', and 'binary search for errors', it's not difficult to use
and the results (in my opinion) are excellent. The final output can easily
be converted to pdf format. That is my preferred route since the quality
is excellent and the document can be printed or downloaded and read on the
web. It may not scale well to non-traditional video displays.

It is claimed that Latex output can be converted to html, and there are
two different processors available. I have no direct experience of either.

I use Open Office for things like our datasheets, letters and other short
documents. I find it quite good for those applications, but I wouldn't
attempt to use it on a technical book project.

My 2 cents worth....

Peter

-- 
Peter Hiscocks
Syscomp Electronic Design Limited, Toronto
http://www.syscompdesign.com
USB Oscilloscope and Waveform Generator
647-839-0325

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