List of Amiga Reference Books

[Harrison]

We need to create an as near to complete list of all published Amiga related books as we can.

This list needs to be broken down and grouped by publisher, and then by publication series. In addition where we can find out information about each book the entries need to include:

• Name of Book
• Author
• Month and Year of Publication
• Number of Pages
• ISBN number (Wiki automatically links ISBN numbers to popular book sites such as Amazon)

This way it will make the job of contacting each author to try and obtain permission to host their publications much easier.

The easiest solution to build this list is to utilise the classicamiga Wiki to create a page listing all known Amiga book publications. We can easily update and amend this list as we find and add more books.

You can find the Amiga Reference Books list on the Wiki by going to:

http://wiki.classicamiga.com/Amiga_Reference_Books

I've already begun adding quite an extensive list of known Amiga books. I started off by basing the list from one already existing on the Amiga History Guide site. I've then begun adding to and updating this list to include the additional information listed above.

If you know of some Amiga related books please add them to the wiki Amiga reference book list, or if you don't have Wiki editing permission please post your list of books in this thread and one of the Wiki editors will add your book to the list for you.

Working on the List

In addition, if anyone would like to help me expand the existing list now on the Wiki that would be great. The work needing to be completed on this list is the requirement to research each book listed and verify it exists/existed.

I've been doing this by first looking up each title and publisher on Amazon and other online book stores. Once some titles are found they are referenced against the book titles already in the book list and any additional information is added to the list entry and the Wiki page updated.

Also looking up each publisher is a good idea to see if there are additional Amiga books published by them that are currently not on our list. If this is so they can then be added to the list.

So far I've completed the list of Bruce Smith Books and am half way through the books published by Abacus.

Page structure and layout

If you add some new books to the list please follow the existing page layout and structure. Just copy and existing entry and edit it for the new one to ensure it keeps the existing look. There is also a copy of a typical list entries code shown at the bottom of the list's page.

[Buleste]

Added Complete Amiga C by Cliff Ramshaw to the Future Publishing area of the Wiki.

[Buleste]

Not sure how you would add cover scans onto the Wiki page so I'll post them here and you can add that to the wiki.

CAC_Front.jpg

CAC_Rear.jpg

[Harrison]

There is an upload link in the toolbox (bottom left menu) where you can upload images to the Wiki. Once images are uploaded you link to them when editing a page by using the code:

[[Image:name_of_image.jpg|Caption]]

Quite easy.

Or to make a text link to an image you would use the url

http://wiki.classicamiga.com/Image:Name_Of_Image.jpg

[Buleste]

Tried the [[Image:name_of_image.jpg]] bit after i uploaded the image but the scan is too big and screws up the page layout. Can you do your magic please?

[AlexJ]

[[Image:name_of_image.jpg|250px|Caption]] should sort the size problem out

[Harrison]

Brilliant work mate. This will give a great start to begin a real official bookshelf/reference library on classicamiga. I will try to get something started this week on the official pages for this. :-)

A question I now have. I know some of these books are unofficially on other sites for download. We have been granted exclusive rights to host them, so I think we will need to protect this permission by either asking other sites to remove the books, or for them to redirect to our sites instead. I will chat with Zetr0 to ask him about this, as he knows his stuff regarding legal and copyright issues and laws.

[MadAngus]

Brilliant work mate. This will give a great start to begin a real official bookshelf/reference library on classicamiga. I will try to get something started this week on the official pages for this. :-)

Cheers, in your own time Harrison, I've still got to design the pages for Ultimate Amiga and I'm in no rush to do that .
I've done some more reconsidering on this project and decided I am not going to totally rely on people scanning books, I'm going to purchase all of them myself for several reasons. If you look at the my project management page for "The Great Amiga Author Hunt" you will see I have got a few things I want to do with the books. Basically I need the books scanned at the highest possible resolution, something as silly as 2600dpi and scanned at 20 pages/minute, esspecially as there are nearly 200 books.

A question I now have. I know some of these books are unofficially on other sites for download. We have been granted exclusive rights to host them, so I think we will need to protect this permission by either asking other sites to remove the books, or for them to redirect to our sites instead. I will chat with Zetr0 to ask him about this, as he knows his stuff regarding legal and copyright issues and laws.

This is a dilemma i was worrying about, as these other sites have provided the community a great service and in some way need to be respected. Considering this, a redirect to our sites is the best solution . That way they can list the books but for download, users go to an authorised site.

This is how I see it working:

Ultimate Amiga will be members only access, i.e. must sign in to download/read the books. Ultimate Amiga will provide two services, the download of books and the online reading of books. dbODF is the project I am working on to provide the online reading service.

Classic Amiga will provide the public facing side for downloads, no registration or logging in. Although I think there will need to be some sort of captcha/question system in place to stop leechers and unauthorised usage from non Amiga related sites and advertisement based / commercial sites. Basically protect your bandwith. Your thoughts on this?

CombinedWorks, I'll decide what services will be provided at a future date. I need to get the site up and running first and that will take a while.

And don't forget to pm your choice of books.

[Harrison]

Bandwidth isn't too much of an issue as the servers are on unlimited bandwidth with a dedicated 100Mbit line. But I agree that a system does need to be in place to stop off site file linking, or sites leaching content directly. I will have a think on the best way to do that... I don't want it to be too intrusive for users, just stop the off site connections directly to the files.

[MadAngus]

Progress Update: Good and Bad News

The Good News
Jason Holborn author of 'Ultimate AMOS'
Just got a reply from Jason (Now Jason Brown, bardophotographic), and he has given permission for Amiga related sites to distribute his book, pending confirmation from future publishing on the copyright status of the book.

Restrictions on distribution: xAMOS and UltimateAmiga must remain non commercial, if this changes a license fee will be required. Also the book may not be distributed with any kind of commercial software or on commercial sites, a license fee will be required for any form of commercial distribution.

I'll contact Future Publishing to confirm the copyright Status and to request permission to distribute if the copyright remains with them.

The Bad News
Current status of other books in the search.

Stephen Hill author of 'Amiga Games Maker's Manual'
Status: I'm Going to give this one last attempt and then I'm closing the book on this one.
Conclusion: Unlikely

Dicon Peeke author of 'Writing role playing games for Amos'
Status: No Response
Conclusion: Permission Denied

Anne Tucker and Len Tucker authors of 'AMOS in Action: A Practical Guide to Mastering AMOS on the Amiga'
Status: Untraceable
Conclusion: Permission Denied

Peter J Hickman author of the "All About AMOS" Newsletters.
Status: Untraceable
Conclusion: Permission Denied


Changing this, got to much work todo to chase this book any further.
Stephen Hill author of 'Amiga Games Maker's Manual'
Status: No Response
Conclusion: Permission Denied