Business logic of aftermarket manuals

[Dan Goldstein]

I've worked for companies whose customers were pleasantly surprised to
receive good documentation at no extra charge.

I've also worked for companies whose customers assumed that good, free
documentation was a quality measure for the product as a whole. For
them, an incomplete manual was as bad as a loose bolt.

In both cases, the good, free documentation was good for sales. You'd
have to balance that against your sales of aftermarket documentation.

Also, remember that this issue (like many issues on TECHWR-L) isn't
limited to software. Someone could write a Dummies book for maintaining
a Ford Mustang, even though Ford already has tech writers for end-user
documentation.

-- Dan Goldstein

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Chris Borokowski
> Sent: Friday, August 17, 2007 10:58 AM
> To: TECHWR-L
> Subject: 
> 
> I've noticed the same thing. The business logic 
> then gets more complicated. If you're selling 
> an aftermarket product, you can't make the 
> manual that comes with the software too 
> competitive.
> 
> I would like to know more of these economic 
> reasons. I'm guessing I know two of them. First, 
> software has become so expensive to develop 
> that support, training and consulting are bigger 
> profit centers.
> 
> Second, so many people pirate the stuff that the 
> company might as well make its ten bucks selling 
> them an instructional book.
>