Hi Mike,

> On 02 Jul 96  14:36:56 Mike Bilow said to Andrew Grillet <=-

 MB> I was in discussion at one
 MB> point about authoring a book on writing OS/2 device drivers, but I am
 MB> not sure what kind of market there would be for it.  

If you don't know the market, no one does :-)

Essentially, anyone writing device drivers is likely to need all the help he
can get. He is typically on a reasonable salary (highly paid if outside UK)
and will pay reasonable money for the book (Under $50 I hope), because if
there is even ONE section that resolves an issue clearly, it will save the
price of the book. (How many times have you stepped thro code for 1/2 hr, 
only to find the sytem flakes BEFORE it reaches the bug, or AFTER but while
you are invensigating the environment?)

Of course I don't have the slightest idea whether OS/2 will turn out to be
another Betamax, and there will be only 5 device driver writers for OS/2
in the whole galaxy, or whether the Win97+WinNT incompatibility and
instability will be the end of B Gates.

 MB> I would not want
 MB> to write a book on this topic that consisted of, shall we say, lightly
 MB> warmed over IBM technical reference manuals, 

Even 'lightly Warmed' IBM manuals might be useful - slightly mangled ones
are a disaster though. 

 MB> and I would be looking at six months to a year to do it. 

That's a fairly tight timescale. 

I would still say there is a case to be made for an interim 'thoughts of
chairman Bilow' condensation of your Fidonet postings. If not on PDK/DDK
then you could do your own CD! I'm sure you have access to a CD writer,
and after you have figured out the size of the market, you could either
get someone to press them for you, or give up. EIther way, it would be
a good way of researching the market size for your book.  

For a strait CD archive of your postings, I recon $25 would be a fair price,
especially if the JdBP books and compilers stuff were bundled with it. 

Get a 'bingo' card in the DevCon box for people to order, and you're away.

Do you know how many DevCon subscriptions there are active? If this is
not excessivley confidential, it would be nice to know. (IE size of a
DevCon Mailshot).

Andrew


... Pentiums melt in your PC, not in your hand!
--- Blue Wave/Max v2.30 [NR]