[vtk-developers] Vtk book out of print; what now?

[Will Schroeder]

Hello Rob-

>As you know, the Vtk book has gone out of print. There are however
>a number of universities out there (undersigned included) that teach
>a scientific visualization class and use the Vtk book as part of
>the material.
>
>Why has the book gone out of print? Is there a new edition coming?
>If so; when? If not; should we bug the publisher until we get them
>to print again?

Here's the situation regarding the textbook (The Visualization Toolkit An 
Object-Oriented Approach to 3D Graphics published by Prentice-Hall...these 
comments do not apply to the VTK User's Guide published by Kitware). Much 
of this is speculation, so no promises for the future.

Prentice-Hall prints many thousand books per run, when they run out, they 
choose whether to reprint, cut a new edition, etc. This decision is 
completely out of our hands....we are not privy to their decisions and had 
no idea that the book was going out of print. (This is why at Kitware we 
choose to publish the User's Guide ourselves; we are not at the mercy of 
the big publishers and can revise, reprint, etc. the book as often as we 
like.) I know there is enormous pressure on the publishers to make money, 
and they tend do that best when they come out with a new book in a hot 
field. I suspect this may be why they are currently not pursuing the third 
edition, or reprinting (at least that we know of)....although we might 
think visualization is hot, the publishers do not appear to share this view :-(

But not all is lost! We have been in contact with PH and are in 
negotiations to obtain rights to the book. If we can do this, we will have 
the ability to revise, reprint, and update it as necessary. I believe that 
this will be a big plus because we can update the book to reflect the many 
changes to the software, improve the exercises (maybe create an exercise 
answer book?), and do a lot of things that people like yourself have 
suggested. If we get the rights, we will likely start with an initial run 
and make few if any changes to the text (just to get it out there), and 
then begin a serious overhaul. The price point will be similar (can't say 
for sure until we talk to the printer) and we are considering working with 
Amazon to stock the book so they can ship it quickly at a lower cost than 
we can....at a minimum we will offer it on our estore like we do with the 
User's Guide, including offering volume discounts.

We very much appreciate your support and persistence in this matter, it is 
motivating us to make this happen as soon as we can. I am very sorry for 
your inconvenience in this matter, as I said earlier the book going out of 
print came as a complete surprise to us as well. Once we hear something 
definite about obtaining rights, etc. we will let you know. I cannot say 
for sure when this will happen, we are working with corporate lawyers which 
is almost always a bottleneck. Once we do get the rights, things will move 
very rapidly on our end.

Sincerely,
Will



William J. Schroeder, Ph.D
Kitware, Inc.
469 Clifton Corporate Parkway
Clifton Park, NY 12065
will.schroeder at kitware.com
1-518-371-3971 x102
1-518-371-3971 (fax)
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