Desk copy of Steve's eBook on Z9 Setup

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FWIW.......

I have the eBook file open, and my personal spreadsheet with ALL the Z9 settings. And the camera at my side.

I am about 160 pages into the book.....updating camera and/or spreadsheet as necessary.

I now see no reason for me to have a printed copy of the eBook.

Thanks, Steve, for another wonderful user-friendly product !

I plan to totally updated Z9 #1....then save settings and copy them to Z9 #2. Anything that won't update on the new Z9?
 
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Butlerkid said:
FWIW.......

I have the eBook file open, and my personal spreadsheet with ALL the Z9 settings. And the camera at my side.

I am about 160 pages into the book.....updating camera and/or spreadsheet as necessary.

I now see no reason for me to have a printed copy of the eBook.

Thanks, Steve, for another wonderful user-friendly product !

I plan to totally updated Z9 #1....then save settings and copy them to Z9 #2. Anything that won't update on the new Z9?
Click to expand...
All the menu settings should be good to go. :)
 
It reminds me of those TV commercials where the instructor is teaching how to "not turn into our parents." It would be a good segment "nope we're not going to print the e-books."
 
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bleirer said:
It reminds me of those TV commercials where the instructor is teaching how to "not turn into our parents." It would be a good segment "nope we're not going to print the e-books."
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What about those of us who are old enough not to care about if we turn into our parents. That'd be fine with me, as long as I've got a few technical updates!

When I was a teenager, my parents were idiots. When I was in my twenties, they got quite a bit smarter, and by the time I got to my thirties, I'd taught them so much that they were brilliant. ;) (Apologies to Samuel Clemons, a.k.a., Mark Twain.)
 
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Steve said:
The problem is that although I'd get a better price than just doing one at a time, it's still pricy. When I've looked at short run prints before, it was in the neighborhood os $50~$70 per book. Plus, there's shipping. Many people don't realize how expensive it's become to ship things today. It would easily add another $15 to the price to send via UPS and not much cheaper via USPS. On top of that, I need to make some money, so add another $28 for me. Suddenly, it's pushing $100.

And than Nikon issues a firmware update and makes every book in my inventory obsolete - and I get a bunch of e-mails from people who recently purchased the book asking if they can exchange their current book for the updated one.

So, I'm not too interested in that scenario :)
Click to expand...

FWIW, I've already used lulu.com's service for a couple of books a few years back. I just did a quick simulation for a 540-page book in A5 format, which seems to match The Ultimate Nikon Z6iii Setup & Shooting Guide For Wildlife Photography, with paperback bound, standard colour, and the cost is 21.47 €, plus 5.64 € for the shipping to France, for 1 copy. Premium colour bumps the price to 52.31 € + shipping. I can't comment on the quality of either option; I think I chose the simple option when I printed my books, not premium, and it was definitely fine for screenshots, but it won't do any justice to photographs.

So, maybe an option worth considering for people who want to print the PDF books on their own, but there are requirements on the PDF that I'm not sure are met, like unencrypted content and uniform page size (e.g. no cover with a different size, which is frequent). You can easily check that on their website without having to pre-pay or give any credit card info.

It might also be an option for the distribution by you, Steve, but the price increases significantly with that option, and I'm not even sure it includes the shipping. And again, not sure about the quality for that type of book, so some people may be disappointed.
 
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Keep in mind it's not just the price that's the issue - it's also the fact that I've updated that book about a dozen times since publication. I promise you that people who purchased just before an update would have been all over me about getting the updated book for free or returning the one they just purchased. BCG isn't a big company and can't afford to have that kind of scenario in play. Not to mention that if I were keeping a physical inventory on hand, any books I had payed 52.31 € for would be instantly worthless overnight. In some cases you can do print on demand, but then what happens if the printing company messed up, shipments don't arrive, etc.? Plus, keep in mind that I also need to make money in this transaction, so the prices you found online would be plus what I currently make on any given book.
 
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Whiskeyman said:
What about those of us who are old enough not to care about if we turn into our parents. That'd be fine with me, as long as I've got a few technical updates!

When I was a teenager, my parents were idiots. When I was in my twenties, they got quite a bit smarter, and by the time I got to my thirties, I'd taught them so much that they were brilliant. ;) (Apologies to Samuel Clemons, a.k.a., Mark Twain.)
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Too late for me. I became my parents 10 years ago.
 
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Steve said:
Keep in mind it's not just the price that's the issue - it's also the fact that I've updated that book about a dozen times since publication. I promise you that people who purchased just before an update would have been all over me about getting the updated book for free or returning the one they just purchased. BCG isn't a big company and can't afford to have that kind of scenario in play. Not to mention that if I were keeping a physical inventory on hand, any books I had payed 52.31 € for would be instantly worthless overnight. In some cases you can do print on demand, but then what happens if the printing company messed up, shipments don't arrive, etc.? Plus, keep in mind that I also need to make money in this transaction, so the prices you found online would be plus what I currently make on any given book.
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The update argument is a good point (so are the others); I think you mentioned that in the past, and I fully agree. I know someone who printed a book (I think it must have been a few hundred copies, no more) and had to spend a lot of time to check the quality of the print, etc. The question of the updates came, too. It takes an awful lot of time.

I sometimes print books because reading them on a screen is difficult for me, so my main motivation for posting the link was in case others had the same issue. I clarified my post somewhat. :)
 
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Steve said:
The problem is that although I'd get a better price than just doing one at a time, it's still pricy. When I've looked at short run prints before, it was in the neighborhood os $50~$70 per book. Plus, there's shipping. Many people don't realize how expensive it's become to ship things today. It would easily add another $15 to the price to send via UPS and not much cheaper via USPS. On top of that, I need to make some money, so add another $28 for me. Suddenly, it's pushing $100.

And than Nikon issues a firmware update and makes every book in my inventory obsolete - and I get a bunch of e-mails from people who recently purchased the book asking if they can exchange their current book for the updated one.

So, I'm not too interested in that scenario :)
Click to expand...
agree. wise choice. Though you might set up something with a printing service service such as kinko/fedex or UPS or ... to produce a single copy of the book on demand
 
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One option for those want a hard copy but who also want to be able to insert Steve’s later firmware updates is to take the printed copy and have it “drilled” for three-hole binders.

Or seven-hole, eight-hole, whatever you want.

Print shops have a special machine that does this. Do NOT try this with a hand drill lol. What a mess that would make.

Then, obviously, you can insert the firmware updates and remove obsolete bits at will. Since the updates probably aren’t super long, you can use a hand punch to make holes in those pages.
 
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carbon said:
One option for those want a hard copy but who also want to be able to insert Steve’s later firmware updates is to take the printed copy and have it “drilled” for three-hole binders.

Or seven-hole, eight-hole, whatever you want.

Print shops have a special machine that does this. Do NOT try this with a hand drill lol. What a mess that would make.

Then, obviously, you can insert the firmware updates and remove obsolete bits at will. Since the updates probably aren’t super long, you can use a hand punch to make holes in those pages.
Click to expand...
Also, I believe you can buy blank paper with holes already punched through.
 
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It's *very* hard for me to write in a book. It's like profanation. :D
I do annotate some of them with a pencil, so I can rub my scribblings out if I want.

I'm not concerned about updates, as they're not going to invalidate the content for me. I'm a developer, and most books I've read were technically outdated as soon as they were published; it didn't make them any less useful or relevant. Same for old me, who never got back to university despite the never-ending evolution of technology. I'm used to catching up with updates, but it's only my own preference. I'd even say that I'd rather have a "diff", so a small note saying what has changed, than a new whole book where I need to find out what has changed.
 
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Unscript said:
It's *very* hard for me to write in a book. It's like profanation. :D
I do annotate some of them with a pencil, so I can rub my scribblings out if I want.

I'm not concerned about updates, as they're not going to invalidate the content for me. I'm a developer, and most books I've read were technically outdated as soon as they were published; it didn't make them any less useful or relevant. Same for old me, who never got back to university despite the never-ending evolution of technology. I'm used to catching up with updates, but it's only my own preference.
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I’m a retired academic. I went through grad arguing with authors by scribbling notes in their work - journals or books. That habit never changed. I do understand your point. It does seem a bit heretical to write in books.

Some PDFs I’ve seen allow comments in the files. I haven’t checked the PDFs from BCG.
 
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Eagleeye299 said:
I picked up my printed copy from Office Depot yesterday. I hope to start reading it tonight. I to just prefer a hard copy rather than an E version
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I'd love to do that with my Z9 set-up book ao I can make notes in the margins. How did you present it to OD for printing? We don't have any ODs here any more, but we do have Staples. Also, this thread has gotten me to thinking that I had some camera manuals printed & spiral bound. Think it was a company over in the UK. Cost was VERY reasonable.
 
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Steve said:
The problem is that although I'd get a better price than just doing one at a time, it's still pricy. When I've looked at short run prints before, it was in the neighborhood os $50~$70 per book. Plus, there's shipping. Many people don't realize how expensive it's become to ship things today. It would easily add another $15 to the price to send via UPS and not much cheaper via USPS. On top of that, I need to make some money, so add another $28 for me. Suddenly, it's pushing $100.

And than Nikon issues a firmware update and makes every book in my inventory obsolete - and I get a bunch of e-mails from people who recently purchased the book asking if they can exchange their current book for the updated one.

So, I'm not too interested in that scenario :)
Click to expand...
Yes, could turn into a rabbit hole.
 
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