The following is an outline of a forthcoming book or user guide for GpsPrune. The book is not available yet because it hasn't been completed. However, the number of user requests for information about GpsPrune indicates that there may be interest in a more detailed manual for the program, with more information than is currently available on this website.
The shape that this book takes depends on you. And on your willingness to part with real money for a book like this. You've seen GpsPrune, you've used it, and hopefully you find it useful. Perhaps you wonder what else it can do, maybe you'd like more detailed examples of how to use it, or hints and tips for using it more effectively. Maybe you would appreciate having a quickly-searchable reference guide which is easy to take with you and use offline. The question is, would you pay for such a thing?
At the moment, this is a summary of ideas and a request for feedback. Below is the outline of the book as it currently stands, although as explained it is not yet complete.
I doubt that a paper version (even a black-and-white print) could be sold at an acceptable cost, so the proposal is for a PDF version to be sold, and available for download for a fee. The PDF would then be DRM-free, so after purchase you could save your own backup copies and access the book from any device you like. Colour screenshots and clickable hyperlinks would then of course be included.
So what would the users of GpsPrune be willing to pay for such a guide? For example, would you pay 5 Euros (GBP 4.40, USD 7) for it? Is there anything specific that you'd like more information about?
The following pdf (4 pages, 88 KB) shows the current outline of the book, including chapter and section headings. This is still a work in progress, and open to discussion depending on feedback.
Current status: the draft user guide has almost all the content in now, and just needs thorough checking, editing, a bit of rewriting and tweaking, and some updated screenshots. It currently stands at 122 pages and 3.1 MB.
If you'd like to see such a user guide being produced, and if you'd be prepared to pay money to purchase it, please get in touch by email and pass on any comments or suggestions you have. Or you can use the sourceforge forums if you prefer. Your feedback would be very useful in shaping what topics get covered.
This hasn't been properly worked out yet. If you have any ideas or suggestions for how to do this cheaply then please send them in!
My original thought was to use an online publisher such as lulu to handle the sales and payments, but apparently they expect a 20% commission for all sales, which sounds fairly excessive for an electronic download. Plus they insist you get a paypal account, who would then also take their cut for processing the payment to me, plus currency conversion charges and other unspecified fees, so lulu doesn't look like it's going to happen. Except maybe for a print version, but then the price will be extremely uncompetitive (ie, I'll be the only one who buys one :).
Other options include using paypal directly, and somehow automate the handling on my side once paypal finishes the payment processing. They'll still take their array of slices for their own profits, but at least lulu wouldn't be taking a cut as well, and apparently plenty of people already have paypal accounts so that should be fairly simple for them.
Another thought was if people could be able to email a gift certificate for Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.de, and then I'd manually process the delivery of the pdf once I'd received the email. It would add some manual work on my side and make it non-instantaneous, but as far as I can work out, there wouldn't be all these processing charges added on. I can't quite believe that valuable gift codes are being sent by unprotected email though, has anyone any experience of using these?
Also, apart from the proposed pdf version, is there any demand for a kindle version? I noticed that Amazon has a kindle direct publishing system where the files are available to buy within amazon. The disadvantage is that it's not pdf, and would require some extra work to prepare, and I've no idea how many people would even want to view this user guide on a kindle or other capable devices. Feedback please! Going this route would allow Amazon to take at least a 30% cut of the sale price (ouch!), followed by the US Tax office taking another 30% of what's left. As far as I can tell, if I wanted to sell this book and receive 5 Euros per copy, the Amazon cut would explode to 65% and I'd have to price it at the equivalent of over 20 Euros per copy! At that price I'm sure I'd sell precisely zero copies.
It would be nice to call this section "Frequently asked questions", but that would be overstating the current level of interest ;) At the moment they're more "Preemptive questions", for clarification.
Why isn't it free? - because writing a book like this takes a lot of time, and my time isn't free. Just because GpsPrune is free, doesn't mean that everything I do is.
Does that mean GpsPrune isn't free any more? - GpsPrune remains free. Free to use, free to modify and distribute, Free as in beer and Free as in Freedom. And GpsPrune remains completely opposed to any sneaky tricks like demo versions, premium versions, trial versions, unlock keys, or bait-and-switch trickery. GpsPrune is free and will remain so.
Does that mean there's no free support any more? - this website remains free to use, as are the youtube videos, and both will continue to be updated. Free support will continue to be given on the sourceforge forums and by email. Nothing changes there.
Does that mean that development of GpsPrune has stopped? - on the contrary. Writing the book has helped find and iron out quite a few niggles that probably wouldn't otherwise have been found. Development of GpsPrune version 14 is ongoing.
Do I have to buy the book? - of course not. You should only buy the book if you have looked at the contents and consider that it's worth the money to you.
Is the book only in English? - Yes, the book is only being written in English. I'm not comfortable enough in other languages to do a decent job of this size.
Is the price fixed? - No, that's still under discussion. When the user guide is released, it will be completely up-to-date describing everything in GpsPrune version 14. As time passes and the guide gets older, it makes sense that its price will steadily drop, but nothing definite has been decided yet.