Commodore Book

[Harrison]

That is quite a cool idea, to all write a book together. I would definitely be in on doing the design and layout of the pages. It would be a lot of work to produce, and the volume of content would make it pretty big with demo, game and hardware included. Would be really cool though. An encyclopaedia of the Amiga.

The thing is, as we do more and more work on the main site we will slowly be building up all of the information we would need for such a book. So it is one of those projects that would take shape once the areas of the site become complete. Maybe a book to consider at the end of the year?

[Puni/Void]

I'm very interested in the idea of writing a book about the various aspects of the Amiga. I would like to help out every way I can, especially with the parts concerning the Amiga Demo Scene. Would of course like to help out with information about other areas as well. I guess Teho and I could do a translation of all the stuff to Norwegian, so that such a book could be published in Norway along with the UK.

There are of course obstacles; If such a project such be initialized, would we go for a professional publisher to help us or should we do it alone? There are plenty of people that actually publish books themselves. If we have a bit of money, we could manage that I presume. But then we would have to do a bit of marketing of course, but the main site and other Amiga webpages would help us with that.

It is truly a good idea, StuKeith. Cheers! Let's do this guys! (Before some other site gets the same idea )

[Demon Cleaner]

I also like the idea, unfortunately I have no idea on how doing this, I mean for publishing, and what it would cost. But the idea is truly great, I will have to refresh my english though.

Translations would be no problem, I can translate into french and german (and luxembourgish ) , but I don't see the point in doing this. Anyway, first there has to be something done, then after there will be fine-tuning.

[Harrison]

Having members who speak so many common languages, it would be great to be able to do translations. French, German, English and Norwegian versions would be great.

I know quite a bit about the printing process and how to layout pages ready for being sent to the printers, as well as pantone colour selections and other related things, so that's not a problem. If we did seriously all consider trying to do a book then I could find out some more realistic costings for publishing a book.

Of course there is an alternative. We could create a book, but publish it in PDF format and charge for it to be downloaded. If that proved popular then it could go into physical print. You can also protect PDFs via copyright, as well as verification keys to confirm the person viewing the PDF is the legal owner.

But, equally I don't think we should even consider a book until the site content is more complete. Otherwise we will end up with a split between the projects which would be hard to manage.

Although having a topic we can all post ideas for the book in would still be a great place to make initial plans and ideas.

[Demon Cleaner]

But, equally I don't think we should even consider a book until the site content is more complete. Otherwise we will end up with a split between the projects which would be hard to manage.

That was my first thought. I think we should concentrate on completing most of the main site, then look for other things.

[Demon Cleaner]

The guys at Golden Years are already releasing their second book. The idea is as follows:

IMPORTANT! Before you click on the link, please be aware that this is a PRE-ORDER. The idea being that - in a very similar way to the ZX Spectrum book - we will use the pre-orders to fund the printing. The book itself will not be ready for several months, and in fact may not ever get printed if not enough pre-orders are received!
However, in the event that not enough preorders are received to cover the bulk of the printing costs, anyone who did support us with a pre-order will have their money refunded (MINUS PAYPAL FEES!) and be sent an electronic copy of the book as a thanks for their support!
Note that this system worked very well for the ZX Spectrum book, which was printed in December of 2006.

ALSO IMPORTANT! There will be a limited number of copies of the book printed. First come, first served!

Is a good idea IMO, if it worked fine with the previous one.

[Cortona]

I read 'On The Edge' earlier this year, then picked it up again recently to just dip into it, but ended up reading the whole book again! It really is worth reading if you ever had a Commodore computer or got interested more recently via emulation.

Perversely, I discovered it from a (very positive) review on an Apple blog, which just goes to show that not all Apple fanatics are history re-writing vacuous wannabies.

Even more perversly, if you relished the lurid business shennanigans exposed in 'On The Edge', you might well enjoy 'iCon'* - a similar book on Steve Jobs. It's been a couple of years since I read it but I think there are a few similarities between the way Jobs and Tramiel did business.

* 'iCon, The Second Biggest Comeback in Business History', to give it it's full title. (It's something like that anyway!) See what they did with iCon? Now that's clever...

[StuKeith]

Just finished reading the book! AMAZING!!! I read the whole 596 (Or so) pages in under a week!

I did have a couple of issues though.

1)I somethings found it hard to know who was talking, or who was being talked about.

2)Repeting. Sometimes things were said a few times throughout the book.

Other than that it was great. I was astonished to read how 1 person brought down 2 companies with little help from others. and how after JT left it all went pair shapped!

I also found it Ironic that commodore invented such good ideas, chucked them aside, and they went on to make money they missed out on.

(C= started up AOL! ("QLink"))

[Submeg]

So crazy....but if you have everything done on the site...theres this option called Ctrl + A, Ctrl + C.....Ctrl + V....

[AlexJ]

Chances are the prose will be terrible with a copy/paste method. It'll just be facts and figures + reviews with no flowing through each section.