As a matter of fact, I'm currently (heavily) engaged in the
process of expanding the comp.lang.c FAQ list for publication.
Addison-Wesley approached me (out of the blue, most astonishing!)
last September, asking if I'd be interested, and I immediately
said yes, I was. (They've already published Marshall Cline's
C++ FAQ, cowritten with Greg Lomow.)
I had some serious concerns, of course, but they astonished me
again by not only anticipating them but also by being far more
accommodating than I'd have thought I had any right to expect.
Written into our contract is explicit language asserting my right
not only to continue to distribute the existing FAQ list (this
was a necessity, of course), but also to freely distribute as
much of the new text they're paying for as I want to, either on
Usenet or a Web page.
The contract says that I may not do anything which might damage
sales of the book (and this is the clause that you might think
would discourage continued free, electronic distribution), but
the senior editor on the project (who's a bit of a net nurd
himself) has the opposite take: if anything, *not* continuing to
distribute electronic versions is what might hurt sales of the
book; he views electronic distribution as invaluable free
publicity.
The book will be coming out next fall, and I'll have a more
complete report for this list about the experience once I'm
finished. One thing I'll mention now (some of you may have
figured this out already) is that as the net explodes and the
world takes notice of it, people like FAQ maintainers,
self-appointed and self-effacing though we may be, are
automatically looked to as "movers and shakers;" we may be
afforded more respect and yielded more clout (i.e. in
contract negotiations) than we realize.
Steve Summit
scs@eskimo.com
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