[Radiance-general] "Rendering with Radiance" (non-)availability

[Greg Ward]

This is one of those recurring conversations, and I know it must seem  
incredible that we haven't managed to sort this out in all the time  
we've had to spend on it.  The fact is, all of us have day jobs, and  
no one knows how publishing works (other than the publishers).   
Creating a new printing of a book, even a reprinting, somehow requires  
small, meaningless (to us) changes in the ISBN and/or Library of  
Congress number, which we don't know how to do.  Rob Shakespeare has  
lined up a new printer, but they need to secure the rights from the  
old printer, and none of us are sure what's going on with that, either.

I'll use this as a reminder to get on it again, and if we can't  
resolve it by Summer, I think we'll just release the PDF to the world  
and solve it that way.  It's my least favorite solution, but at least  
it is a solution.

Best,
-Greg

> From: Rob Guglielmetti <rpg at rumblestrip.org>
> Date: March 7, 2010 7:04:37 AM PST
>
> Hi Lars,
>
> This has been a problem for a while, as you know. A grand for a used  
> copy on Amazon now, eh? WOW. Last time I checked, people were asking  
> ~$300 for a copy, but that was years ago. I feel old, because I  
> bought my copy of RwR by plucking a freshly-published copy off the  
> shelf at my local bookstore a few blocks from work, but this was in  
> nineteen ninety-(cough)! =8-)
>
> Seriously, the issue in the past is that Greg and Charles Ehrlich's  
> supreme efforts were thwarted by what seemed to be a lousy print-on- 
> demand publisher they secured a few years ago. I know they were  
> going to look into other publishers and I think that hard copy was  
> the way they wanted to work it. I do not know if they are close to  
> finding a new publisher.
>
> On Mar 7, 2010, at 1:24 AM, Lars O. Grobe wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> I just wanted to draw your attention to the fact that the main  
>> reference for Radiance is not available. The cheapest price for  
>> "Rendering with Radiance" at amazon.com as of today is 1000$ for a  
>> used copy. Booksurge gives 0 results on a search. I wonder whether  
>> making the book available as a paid pdf would not be better then  
>> not having it at all. This is a big problem for application of the  
>> software, as anyone using it gets pointed to this book as a  
>> reference, but no one could buy it. I have been trying to buy a  
>> copy for an institute here for one year without any success.  
>> Besides preventing potential users from starting with Radiance,  
>> this increases the amount of beginners questions, that had been  
>> answered in the book.
>>
>> Cheers
>>
>> Lars.