re: The Essential Blender (2007)
An interesting story by Roland Hess about the sales of his book ‘Essential Blender’. His advice: ‘Don’t buy it!’.
I saw today that The Essential Blender, the Foundation’s official getting started book that I was fortunate enough to spearhead and edit a long time ago, is still selling on Amazon. In fact, it was #38 in the 3D Graphics category. I also noticed several reviews from the past year in which the people who got the book just trashed it and Blender.
Now, I’m a free market person. I believe that consumers should take responsibility for their purchases. How anyone could go on Amazon, with its copious publication information, recommendation system and reviews, and buy The Essential Blendertoday is completely beyond me. It was published almost five years ago, which is an eternity in the world of software. Recent reviews indicate clearly that the book is out of date. And yet, people continue to buy it.
Link
Sometimes I bought books of older versions to maintain my Internal Blender Library…
Because there is so little Blender info available, people buy books even if they are out of date…
I think this is not true anymore..2011 saw a lot of new blender books, not to speak about the countless video-tuts & DVD-Courses available today
When i bought that book two years ago it was already out of date, but the information it contained was useful. The obvious answer is to release an updated version!
I bought the book when it was relevant to the version at that time. The approach (theory and practice) was very educating and a update could be interesting now that Blender is in a “stable” (relatively speaking) development stage for new books.
I bought the book when it came out and it was great
sure the software has changed dramatically now but duh
the date on the book and that it is for software its like buying an office 2007 book
if anyone buys this book now then they deserve to be disappointed
I would buy a book for 2.61 if it came out right now
I wish I could get a book for blender that was from beginner to advanced
showing all if not almost all of the features and how to use them
I’d like to have a dvd set of the same book that had video tutorials of most of the features
and electronic version of the book
I know there is stuff out there now but they are broken down to only parts of blender
This is why all books and DVDs need to have the version number in the title or clearly displayed on the cover but like John Grigni said still some useful info if you have a bit of knowledge and can apply it to the new blender.
Bill
That’s why I only buy books on C programming. They never go out of date :)
Does everyone realize that Roland has a couple of Blender books out there for 2.6? Blender Foundations is a great guide to learning it! I only mention this reading some of the comments…there are other books for 2.6 available as well!
I have this book, I bought it a few years ago. It was a little out of date then, but it was still helpful. Almost all of my blender books are out of date (I have 2 books that were written for 2.5 & 2.6). I am going to have to rebuild my blender library. By the time I have that accomplished Blender will have changed again.
My Blender Basics book was published last spring for Blender 2.59 and it’s already out of date :-)
I wonder how many will buy this book because of this article :)
New book please.
I have that book.
Bought it in 2009, I still can’t UV unwrap in a correct way…
Some people have it, some people don’t.
because buying latest book is too mainstream..
The ironic thing is, it’s the first general Blender book you see for sale in blender.org’s book category. I wonder how many people looked in there to see what was “the best” Blender book and then just tried to find it cheaper on Amazon.
I got this book 3 years ago from blender.org I don’t think it is completely out of date or anything the basics are still the same except that the UI has changed but that does not take away from it. it is still helpfull.
atleast that’s my personal opinion.
Maybe some people just prefer the old blender and want to use that instead?
We can learn an important lesson from this: always add the blender version in your title. Other books often mention the version no: “CorelDraw 3 made easy”, “How to cheat in Photoshop CS3”, “3ds max 5 for dummies” etc.
Jonatan — with Blender doing a release every 3 months, publishers are going to be very leery of putting a number in the title. Saying it’s for Blender 2.62 can lose you a lot of sales when the release level is at 2.64, even though 99% of the book would still be perfectly compatible.
It’s quite clear the alternative is a horde of angry customers, so I would say that, leery or not, the publishers are going to have to do it.
Time for “The essential blender 2.5”?
I wouldn’t be here without that book… :)
Time for another plug for the good old “Blender 3D: Noob to Pro” Wikibook:
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D:_Noob_to_Pro
Advantages:
* Free (both Libre and Gratis)
* Many of the pages are clearly marked with the version of Blender they apply to.
* Has links to additional resources on the Web.
* Can be edited by you.
* Did I mention it was Free?
I really liked that book, and it was laid out very clearly and well. I agree that it’s out of date and needs an update. Even though there are several books out there that have current(ish) information, this book was very good at walking you all the way through the modeling/texturing/animation/compositing process and really fills in major blanks for people. An update to the book would be the perfect thing. To be fair though, it also includes a version of blender that DOES work with the book, so it can make sense.
I am glad to see the author of the book take this stand.
Blender is moving very fast and books that old have no relevance to Blender today.
I have the old book, as I have every other Blender book on my bookshelf. It is now very out of date.
I bought it even though it was out of date because at the time there were no resources for the 2.5x version of Blender, and even so, the basics of working in blender haven’t changed that drastically between the two versions. But it’s still a good resource all the same. Just don’t rely on it as your only Blender resource.
Not to mention it was cheap as dirt on Amazon :)
Buying books in 2011 is so 1990.
I just watch Blender tutorial videos and I just can’t stop miring.
I bought it, but at the time, 2.49 was the stable version even though 2.53 was out. Took a bit for Blender Artists to convince me to switch. I hated the black and white pictures in the book, made it hard to see what was going on – so if Mr. Hess does an update – color photos! Otherwise, very useful in getting my feet wet. Still have it in my library.