[scribus] How to personalize a booklet?

[John Culleton]

On Wednesday 08 July 2009 10:33:15 pm jwminer at accessvt.com wrote:
> Ronald wrote:
> > I am confused!
> > I ask something and get the answer BUY THE BOOK.  (BUY !!!!)
> > I ask other things and get this answer.
> >
> > What should I think now?
> >
> > It seems that everything I ask here is just answered with GIVE
> > ME MONEY!
> > In this way this list is not really a supportive mailing list.
>
> I must say I was stunned by a couple of snarkish answers to
> Ronald's situation,  but my grandchildren were here for a few
> days and I didn't have time to post my opinions on this.
>
> To those who all but said that charging for anything produced
> with a free, open-source program like Scribus is against the
> spirit of open source, how do you justify the rather hefty price
> for the new Scribus manual? Is there something wrong about
> charging for it? And what about the books you can buy about Gimp,
> Inkscape, OOo, and Linux itself?
>
> Or what about a member of this list who is charging for a book
> about designing book covers with Scribus? Is this legitimate?

I am he.  I write for money and always have.  I grind out weekly 
columns for two local newspapers. Before that I was employed but a 
major component of my value to my main employer was my ability to 
put one word in front of another in lucid fashion. The e-booklet  
in question is aimed specifically at the person who publishes 
through a particular subsidy publisher, and hasn't a clue about 
Open Source software. My value added beyond the booklet proper is  
a book cover layout calculator, the use of which is free, located 
at:
http://wexfordpress.net/template.html

I charge the minimum allowed by the web site which supports the 
e-booklet. 

I also do typesetting for money and indexing for money, using Open 
Source software. 

It has been accepted for some time that the software is free, the 
advice online is free but an organized compendium of advice and 
examples can be charged for. On my shelf I have several books on 
TeX, on Linux, on Perl, on Tcl/Tk, on HTML, the Scribus Manual of 
course, two very useful books on Gimp and so on.   I paid for and 
downloaded an e-book on ImageMagick.

Interestingly enough two of the books on TeX are now free for 
download on the web, but I paid money for a used copy of one 
because I find a bound copy easier to use than a ring binder. 

Open Source applies to the software. The organized advice can  IMO 
legitimately cost money.  I have lots of precedent on my bookshelf. 

BTW the Scribus Manual is superbly put together and of course costs 
significant bucks to print and mail.  I imagine hundreds or 
thousands of man hours went into its creation. My only complaint 
thus far was the delay, not the cost.  I could have printed and 
distributed it a lot faster.  
-- 
John Culleton