ThinkingRock Forum

Being 'sucked in' again into using ThinkingRock (what the hell whas I thinking when I left...), I decided to go ahead with a plan I had for quite some time now: write a book on ThinkingRock.

Having been very active in the (not so distant) past here on the forum with feature suggestions (I launched the whole 'tabbed action screens' idea and several other things) and helping other users with getting the best of TR, I have accumulated many procedures, techniques and ideas on using ThinkingRock. Enough indeed to fill a book (I think).

I'm currently in the brainstorming phase of this project, gathering ideas on content and organisation of the book. I plan to start writing late-summer and finish the book somewhere arounf the end of this year. If anyone here has any suggestions whatsoever regarding this book-project I'll be glad to see them here and incorporate. Of course anyone who's specific suggestion is included will be mentioned in the book.

So far the book will contain information on:

- Installation specifics for different platforms (read: illustrated guides)

- How to setup TR on a USB-stick including combination with portable environments and having JRE on the stick

- Power scenarios for using contexts, topics and criteria

- How to set up a maintainable review scenario

- Doing 'serious/professional' project management with TR

- Tips for setting up 'reminders' in TR.

- Handling 'business workflow' with TR

- .... and of course how to maximize GTD-effectivity with TR, in relation to the original GTD book.

What it will not be or contain is a full fledged rehashing of the GTD-basics. My book will reference DA's book where appropriate.

Great idea. Claire and I will be glad to help with any details you need and reviewing.

Claire could translate it to French as some point.

_________________
ThinkingRock Developer

Great to hear that you like the idea. And I'll take you and Claire up on that offer


Translation to french would be nice At the moment I'm struggling with the decision on the initial language. English is prefered as that would reach most TR-users, and I like to write in English (although I'm Durch). But GTD is quite an emerging market here in the Netherlands so maybe I'll write it in Dutch first. Or maybe doing two language versions side-by-side is an option but I don't know yet if I can handle that in regard of the time I have to do it.

Just a little update on this project:

I found Lulu.com (stumbled onto it) and it seems a perfect service to get the book produced and delivered. Any thoughts and/or suggestions on this are much appreciated.

The decision on the language is clear: the first version will be written in English.

I'm planning to sell this book (through Lulu.com for example). I didn't make this clear in my initial post in this topic so it's fair to make this clear now. It's also clear to me that a share of any profits of this book should go towards Claire and Jeremy as sponsoring for their efforts I'm sure we will get to an agreement on that

I hope to finalize the outline of the book in the next few weeks, so if anyone has any suggestions or remarks, please post them here.

My wife used lulu.com for diffusing a self-edited novel. Their quality is quite good and their system is efficient. The only problem comes from the delivery costs that can get quite heavy if the buyer is out of US.

I think that such a book would be very useful.
Maybe a chapter on data exchange and synchronizing (with Outlook, Mozilla tools, pocketpc and palm) can be interesting.

Murat

Thanks for the info, I will look into that.



I think data-exchange is one of the most sought-after functionalities. Currently there is not that much available around TR, but Jeremy is working on something in this direction (I'm somewhat 'involved' in that development ). With a little luck and a lot of work we might get this ready before the book is finalised.

It would seem that TR is still relatively new and will probably be going through many changes (like the report generator). Therefore, it might be a little early to create a book that will be out of date fairly quickly. Wouldn't it be better to push this information into the TR Wiki? I know you won't generate a lot of revenue from the Wiki, but I really wonder if you'll generate that much from a book at this time anyway.

_________________
David

Is it not easier to do an e-book? Chapters can then be added as 'major' functionality is released.

_________________
Claire
ThinkingRock Analyst and Tester

With Lulu.com I can do both. The big thing with using Lulu.com is that the hardcopy book is printed on demand. I can revise it anytime and the subsequent copies being sold will be the new revision. I still have to think about the implications that comes with this, and how I'm going to handle revisions of the book. Publishing a book is a lot more work then just writing it

About TR being in active development, this is the case with most software and books related to software 'can' fall behind pretty soon. However, my book will focus mainly on 'doing GTD with TR'. The base functionality of TR is pretty much stable in design and my book will focus on getting the most out of TR in regard to that. So even when new functionality will be added to TR my book will still be valid.

The other reason why I want to do a hardcopy book is that it will bring more people to TR. I will publish the book officially with a ISBN so that means it will also be listed on sites like Amazon. People searching Amazon (for example) for GTD-related books might stumble upon it.

Writing a book is very different from writing on a wiki. The book will have somewhere between 150 and 250 pages (I think) and doing something like that in a wiki takes a lot of time. Writing a book based on a developed outline has more 'flow' (for lack of a better word).



GTD is a hot item and many people are looking into it. Many of them start searching for usefull tools to build their system. I'm pretty confident I will sell a few copies

Great idea to write such a book, and it's also the right time !
I would definitely order it

_________________
Andrey

Ah great, the first order is already in

Does anyone have an idea of the price-point for such a book? I was thinking in the 15-20 dollar range for paperback format (depending on production cost which is in turn depending on amount of pages).

I think a book is an excellent idea depending on how detailed and useful it actually is but I think an ebook or PDF would be easier and cheaper to produce and actually make you more money- - I would probably pay $9.95 for access to a PDF book but would perhaps not actually order a physical book to be mailed or whatever for $20

With Lulu.com there is no difference in production between a e-book or a hardcopy book. You upload a PDF version that can be sold as an e-book and used for producing the hardcopy version.

So I see no reason NOT to make both options available

Sounds good, but if I am downloading the PDF and printing off 150 pages on my own printer, I would not likely pay more than $9.95. Certainly not $20 - no offense, you asked for opinions. I'd also suggest when you market this your marketing material contains fairly detailed explanations as to what can be expected and while I think you mention referring people to GTD, I think you also have to sell any new audience on the merits of GTD - IMHO only

Chris