CompuServe Messages

#Selfish!

    03-Feb-94 23:45:27
Sb: #81139-#Selfish!
Fm: Ed Kellerman 71532,3255
To: John K. Jordan 71174,711
<I wish I had Kellerman's book, the "Guide to Doing Amazing Stuff with Animator Pro."> I was thinking of writing a book, but didn't, because of the following: – Why don't I see Animator books in the bookstores anymore (I still have two books I easily found three years ago). I suspect it's because they are not profitable. – I've uploaded FLCs that are clearly educational, e.g., "Plants Swaying in the Wind, How to," "Color Cycling, How to," and seen them uploaded less than 50 times. This implied (to me) that volume would be small for a new book also. What would you conclude? There are few things I would enjoy more than writing a book. Writing "How to's" is one of my favorite activities. I got hooked after being payed $1000 ('78 $s) for the article "APL and Graphics" (and the Anniversaru cover) for the September 78 issue of Byte. BTW, at that time I used a (monochrome) Tektronix display with 4096×4096 resolution. I've been waiting for color refreshable displays to reach that. Yes, it was not refreshable, you had to clear the screen manually, But the resolution, that was nice. (Is it a sign of age to reminisce about old times?) Back on the subject. I also considered, and discarded, the possibility of producing periodic tutorials that would include documentation and a diskette, possibly downloadable as shareware. But again, I couldn't see enough volume to make it worthwhile. A rough calculation, considering that free tutorials are downloaded 50 times, quickly made me drop the idea. Am I wrong?