> For example, you've written a FoxPro book. Or several (I don't know). Great. Release it/them for free download.
>
>You're right, you don't know.
>
>She and Ted Roche (and maybe others, I can't recall) wrote the Hacker's Guide to Fox back around 1995/1996. She and Della Martin wrote a book on VFP Office Automation a few years after that. And Tamar wrote at least one "What's new in Fox version (N)" and I vaguely recall she wrote a book on SQL in VFP. There are probably others that I'm missing, but those are the ones I own.

A dozen, all told. <g>


>All three were published by a book publisher (Tamar can correct me, but I believe all were Hentzenwerke). They invested time to produce and edit the book, and there are intellectual property rights. Believe me, the profit margin on books is razor thin.
>
>If you've got a beef, go to the publisher. They still have contracts with online retail channels like Amazon and I would imagine the books are still available on Hentzenwerke's site. I think most of her books are available in digital form for about $29 (last time I looked at the Hentzenwerke site). If they want to release it for free, that's their decision to make. And if they decide to continue to sell for a price, that's also their right.
>
>I wrote a book in 2006 and contributed to another in 2008. I'd potentially face stiff penalties if I decided on my own to release the full text for download on my own.

Correct. I don't have the rights to release my books, even if I were so inclined.

I did some math yesterday and figure I probably put in about 1,500 hours writing the first edition of HackFox, and probably almost that much on the VFP 6 edition.

One of the things that distinguishes books from publishing companies (including HWP) is that there are editors involved, both tech editors and copy editors, so that the books are correct and readable. (I read a SmashWords novel last week that was pretty good, except there were a bunch of things like run-on sentences that a good editor would have fixed.) A book like HackFox involves the efforts, time and/or materials of authors, tech editor, copy editor, layout person, artist for the cover, printer, and publisher. Some of those folks get paid in full along the way, but of course, the authors and the publisher hope to recoup their input through sales. Suffice it to say that while a little bit of royalties for my books continues to trickle in, even if you assign some value for the learning I did through writing, we're talking about pennies per hour. And, as I said elsewhere, the thing I invested was taken away from other things, including my family.

Tamar