Frequently
Asked Questions
1. Can I
redistribute copies of an eBook purchased for
student instructional use? YES! Under the
terms of the Creative Commons license I have
issued for my materials, instructors who purchase
a copy of an eBook can redistribute it (make
copies) to their students without incurring a
licensing fee for instructional use.
2. Can I
print copies of individual lessons found on this
site, or redistribute copies of a paperback
edition purchased for student instructional
use? YES! Just like the eBook editions,
the terms of the Creative Commons license I have
issued for my paperback guides and individual
lessons found on this site allow instructors to
redistribute it (make photocopies) to their
students without incurring a licensing fee for
instructional use.
3. If I can
make photocopies copies of lessons found within
the documentation section and paperback books
made available on this site, why should I
purchase additional copies or require students to
obtain their own copy? There are several
answers and several ways in looking at the issue.
First, the learning materials are written and
released under the generous Creative Commons
licensing terms because of my experience as an
instructor and my commitment for learning to be
accessible to everyone. Therefore, if a student
can’t afford to purchase learning
materials, or has to choose between buying a book
or buying a meal for themselves or their family,
I would much rather the student have free access
to the materials.
However, students and instructors should also
consider the costs of reproducing the materials.
The distribution costs of an eBook via school
file server may be negligible if students and
instructors can effectively learn by using an
electronic guide. The photocopying of a 200+ page
book becomes another matter, if you factor in
photocopy costs per page, purchasing of a ring
binder to store the pages, and the time and
effort it takes to assemble the documentation
into a ring binder. In such a case, it may be
more cost effective to buy a professionally
published, bound paperback copy. Moreover, the
purchasing of any official author-published eBook
or paperback copy ensures revenue to continue
producing and making available open licensed
learning materials for the future.
4. Why are
eBooks no longer available for free? There
are several reasons why eBooks are no longer made
available for free from this site. First, a
number of users who were looking to use a
specific lesson (for example, creating a resume)
were having to download an entire eBook just to
have access to that one lesson. Not only was this
inefficient from a server bandwidth /
distribution issue, but made it cumbersome from
the users perspective as well. With the redesign
of this site, users who need only one or two
electronic lessons can now access those materials
much easier and in less time via the HTML-based
pages.
Also, the tools and overhead used to create the
eBook and paperback editions isn’t cheap,
including the software applications used for
pre-press work, obtaining unique ISBN numbers for
distribution purposes necessary for school
bookstores to make adopted textbooks available,
distribution fees accessed by educational book
distributors, distributor catalog listings to
notify bookstores of new editions, maintaining
up-to-date hardware to create documentation for
new software editions and more. Therefore, the
revenues from the sale of these fuller-featured,
interactive editions are used to offset these and
other related costs.
5. What are
the differences in the lessons found in the eBook
and paperback editions versus the free,
HTML-based online versions? The goal of
releasing new material via HTML-based pages is
two-fold. One, it will make it much easier and
faster to release new lessons for users without
having to perform all of the pre-press work (page
layouts, illustration editing and formatting,
table of contents, indexing and incorporating the
lessons into larger works). Many of these lessons
are expected over time to work their way into
larger, more highly edited eBook and Paperback
editions, but gives users earlier access to these
materials.
Second, releasing new materials via HTML-based
pages will also make it easier for users who only
need access to a limited amount of material to do
so. However, the free, HTML-based lessons should
be looked upon as “
open beta” versions
- meaning that the instructions may not be
100% perfect from a technical standpoint nor
will they necessarily be highly polished
from a formatting and spelling / grammar
perspective. However, users who find
technical, spelling or grammatical errors
are encouraged to file a report via the
site’s
Feedback form.
Users and instructors who seek comprehensive
guides covering a wide variety of topics that
have been thoroughly reviewed, edited and
polished would benefit more from the purchase of
an
eBook or paperback
edition.
6. I am an
instructor and wish to receive an evaluation copy
of your book. Do you still make complimentary
copies of your books available for
evaluation? As of October 2009, I have
(unfortunately) been unable to continue offering
complimentary evaluation copies of my books to
instructors and administrators. Due to increased
printing costs, in addition to individuals
reproducing copies of my book and selling them
online through CreateSpace (see FAQ #7 below)
and, thereby, reducing the amount of revenue I
receive that had previously been utilized to
provide this service, it became financially
unfeasible to do so.
To view a representation of the content available
within any of my eBook or Paperback editions,
visit the product page for the title of interest
located under the
Books link at the top site
menu and click the associated content link
to see the lesson in HTML format.
7. I have
noticed at various online book retailers that
there are two editions of your book being sold.
Do you publish both editions and, if so, what are
the differences in each? Shortly after I
released “A Conceptual Guide to
OpenOffice.org 3”, someone downloaded a
copy of the eBook edition from the OpenOffice.org
Documentation Site, uploaded it to CreateSpace
(which is a print-on-demand company owned by
Amazon), placed a new cover on the book with my
name on it, and began selling reproduced
paperback copies. That particular edition, which
is now considered out-of-date, is still being
sold. I do not have any affiliation with the
person publishing this work or with CreateSpace,
nor do I receive any proceeds from the sale of
this reproduced version.
The second edition,
“A
Conceptual Guide to OpenOffice.org: Second
Edition”, with the assigned ISBN
number 978-0-9778991-7-3, is the edition
that is published by myself and is
considered to be the most current,
up-to-date edition. Its book cover is unique
from the older, reproduced version and also
has a larger number of pages (282 pages for
the reproduced edition vs. 364 pages for the
Second Edition I publish). Proceeds from the
sale of the edition I publish is used for
the development of future learning
materials, as well as the release of these
learning materials under open licenses in
cooperation with other open source projects
such as the
OpenOffice.org Documentation
Project.