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Re: I wonder if there is much interest in vacuum tube oscilloscopes such as the 500 series


 

That's the beauty of print on demand. If people buy the book you make
money, though less than with a conventional print run because the cost
per copy is a bit higher. If nobody buys the book you're out next to
no cash, though you did uselessly spend time preparing your book for a
PoD release. If your primary goal is to get your book out into the
world at a reasonable price for readers, it's a good option. That's
especially true for a reissue of an older book because the time spent
writing it is already gone; you're not up against the prospect of
spending a lot of time writing something and then not getting paid for
it.

The two big players in low cost PoD publishing are Lulu.com and
Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing. (KDP also does ebook publishing, as
you might guess from the name. Amazon's former fully owned company,
CreateSpace, was merged into KDP a couple of years ago.) Both will let
you create books with zero up-front cost, though they also offer
optional services that cost money. (A third company, iUniverse,
started that way but later pivoted into being a more traditional
vanity press, aside from doing its business online.) The zero cost
option ONLY gets you printing; you're on your own for editing,
designing a cover, preparing your book for publication, promotion, and
getting bookstores and event dealers to carry your book. You can sell
your book at their base publishing cost, in which case you make
nothing on sales, or you can set a higher price and receive a portion
of the difference between the base cost and the selling price.

One complication with reprinting old books is that the author may not
own the rights. If the book was published by a conventional publisher,
that company or its successor may own some or all of the future
publication rights. If the company is defunct it can get complicated
to untangle who actually owns the rights to the book now; they could
belong to some person or company that bought pieces of the former
publisher's intellectual property, or they may have never been bought
by anybody and be in legal limbo.

On Fri, Mar 29, 2019 at 3:56 PM Dennis Tillman W7PF <dennis@...> wrote:

Hi Dave,
Stan brings up the issue of the outrageous prices used book sellers are asking for 2nd hand copies of his book whenever someone makes the mistake of asking if he has any copies left. He is stuck in a catch 22 situation. He would love to reprint it to get even with the used book stores but it took him over 10 years to sell the first printing. The last time I asked him about it he was resigned to the situation and not interested in doing anything about it.

The sad reality today is that it doesn't pay to print a book these days when someone is virtually certain to rip it off and scan it overnight. I sympathize since I often thought about writing a book on the 7000 Series.

Dennis Tillman W7PF

-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of
Dave Seiter
Sent: Friday, March 29, 2019 9:42 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [TekScopes] I wonder if there is much interest in vacuum
tube oscilloscopes such as the 500 series

Thanks, Dennis-
That was my understanding as well, which was why I was surprised
regarding the misconception that he was publishing his book again.
-Dave
On Friday, March 29, 2019, 7:45:48 AM PDT, Dennis Tillman W7PF
<dennis@...> wrote:

Hi Dave,
Stan is old. Stan has survived 2 or 3 bouts with cancer, a stroke, and
the recent loss of Pat, his spouse. So he doesn't have the energy he
used to. He does come to swapmeets where he sets up a table like he
always did. I visited him a few times last summer and fall. He is
getting frail but we went into his ham shack and puttered around for a
while looking for some things Pete Lancashire wanted.

Dennis Tillman W7PF

-----Original Message-----
From: Dave Seiter
Sent: Friday, March 29, 2019 1:33 AM

I haven't heard about Stan in a long time; he used to post quite a
lot. I think he had a few webcams, but they went dark long ago.
-Dave



--
Dennis Tillman W7PF
TekScopes Moderator





--
Dennis Tillman W7PF
TekScopes Moderator


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