Hi, Richard.
Excellent reply -- thank you very much.
This information is great. As for your concerns about
accuracy, I am a
professional technical writer specializing in enterprise
software
applications. I would not include a single set of
procedures that I hadn't
proofed myself and that also hadn't had at least one other
person proof as
well (to account for any anomalies in my own system). The
point you raise
about generating more queries due to inaccurate material is
critical, in my
view, but if I do my job properly -- and I will -- the
reverse should be
true (i.e. you guys should see a drop in the number of
queries you receive).
As for the volume of material for review, I'd apportion it
out in whatever
way worked best for my reviewers. It could easily be two or
three hundred
pages altogether, but not everyone would need to review all
of it, nor would
I expect a crazy turnaround (e.g. 48 hours, or even one
week). Ideally I'd
have two or three Audacity developers in on the project,
along with several
experienced users and several professional audio producers,
so no one (I
hope) would feel overburdened. I've already got some of
these people lined
up, but I doubt I could proceed without at least a couple of
members of your
team on-board.
As for rights, I'd almost certainly be taking my own
screenshots, and would
be unlikely to re-use any existing documentation. Anything
I did use, or
even merely excerpt from, I'd be certain to obtain
permission for and/or
cite, as appropriate.
As for currency of the material, again, you raise an
excellent point. Of
course I'd use the beta, but if I get the go-ahead from the
publisher one of
the first things I'd do is have a conversation with one or
more of the
developers so we could compare and contrast the book
schedule and the
Audacity release/upgrade schedule. In any case, there'd
almost certainly be
a Web site to go along with the book, which at least should
mitigate the
fallout from any outdated material, and which you guys
obviously could
link/refer to as you see fit.
Finally, I've been presenting on Audacity to several
conferences, and my
presentation starts at the very basic level (for instance, I
even define
"decibel" and "waveform"). The book
would be intended for beginners, though
to enhance its value I'd need to include some material for
the advanced user
as well (tips and tricks, shortcuts, etc.)
I'm about to query the Audacity-users D-list (I've created a
modest survey
in Survey Monkey to gauge interest further), and will keep
you apprised.
Again, thank you very much for your reply, Richard. Please
don't hesitate
to ask me more questions, or suggest additional resources
for me.
Best regards,
Jerry
-----Original Message-----
From: Richard Ash [mailto:richard audacityteam.org]
Sent: Tuesday, October 31, 2006 7:12 AM
To: Jerry Franklin
Cc: audacity-helplists.sourceforge.net
Subject: Re: [Audacity-help] Book proposal questions
On Mon, 2006-10-30 at 13:19 -0800, Jerry Franklin wrote:
> I'm a technical writer currently researching a book
project for a
well-known
> for-profit publisher. Essentially this book would be a
comprehensive
> Audacity end user manual.
>
> The publisher needs a solid business case for the book
before it will
> proceed. I absolutely believe that Audacity is one of
the key reasons for
> the growth of podcasting (if everyone had to buy Pro
Tools -- or even a
Mac
> -- there's just no way it would have grown so
exponentially). But the
> publisher won't just take my word for it!
>
> So here's what I'd like to know:
>
> - Would you know or be able to estimate the number of
times Audacity has
> been downloaded, and/or the size of the Audacity user
community? If not,
> would you have any idea where I might be able to find
this information?
Audacity was Sourceforge POTM in July 2004
(http://s
ourceforge.net/potm/potm-2004-07.php) and at that point
Dominic (project founder) estimated
"As lower bounds, there are 650+ people on the
audacity-users mailing
list, and 11,500+ on our announcement list. As an upper
bound,
SourceForge.net stats show that Audacity has been downloaded
about 2.4+
million times (but that includes some users downloading
multiple
versions of Audacity). The actual number of users might be
somewhere
closer to 100,000, then, based on those estimates."
For more up to date download stats, you can look at
https://sourceforge.net/project/stats/?grou
p_id=6235&ugn=audacity
> - Is this something the Audacity developer community
could support,
perhaps
> to help promote the book either by word-of-mouth,
through social media
> interaction, or on the sourceforge site? (Obviously
we'd need to explore
> whether/how the Audacity project could reap some sort
of benefit from
doing
> this.)
We could certainly put an annuoncement out, and you would be
welcome to
discuss / publicise it through the audacity forum. It might
also be
possible to list the book in the Audacity Store, which is
publicised on
the audacity website as well.
> - Would any of you be willing and/or able to act as
subject matter
experts
> or content reviewers?
It depends on the volume of material, obviously we would
much prefere
that anythign written is accurate, because we will end up
getting
queries from users who have read it if the steps described
don't work
(currently the user manual for the ION USB turntable (which
we didn't
write) is incorrect, and we get a couple of emails a day
about that).
> - What rights issues should I be address?
The existing audacity documentation is all under CC
licenses, so you
would probably need to get specific permission to reproduce
any of that.
The screenshots are however not copyright, so you are
welcome to take
whatever screenshots you wish to use in the book, and write
content
round them.
> - Do you even think such a book is a good idea? Why
or why not?
A number of people do ask for a printed manual like comes
with
commercial software, which we don't really have, or have the
resources
to create. The biggest risk for you is that by the time you
get the book
out the program has evolved away from what you were writing
about so the
detail dates quickly. For this reason I would recomend you
work with the
beta version, which should become stable in the new year,
rather than
1.2.x which is essentially at end of development.
To be of use to many of the users most likely to want a
printed manual
you would need to be very step by step and start from
basics, without
assuming any knowledge on the user's part. This obviously
increases the
amount of effort involved in writing the book.
Another common problem is audacity hitting problems that are
caused by
configuration and driver issues in the user's computer
(sound card
drivers etc), which can crash audacity or prevent it
recording.
Richard Ash
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