re: The Essential Blender (2007)
Dec 20th, 2011 by admin
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 Blender today 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 Recent reviews indicate clearly that the book is out of date.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.
A simple search on Amazon (or even teh Googles) would have shown them that there are more recent and almost certainly better alternatives (and not just my Blender Foundations). In that sense, maybe the people who are still buying it are a self-selecting low functioning group that are probably doomed to fail at 3D animation anyway. I mean, if you can’t do some basic research on the web before dropping your $25-$40, how well are you really going to be able to handle a full featured 3D animation system?
On the other hand, I think that the Foundation should work with No Starch Press (the publisher) to yank the book. I believe that it is irresponsible to continue to sell a product that is ridiculously out of date. As much love as I have in my heart for that book, it should be in the remainders bin at a discount/left overs type store, selling for $4. Furthermore, by reading the most recent reviews it appears that they are shipping the version of the book that had printing problems. The Foundation never publicly acknowledged it as such (to my knowledge), but one of the printings of the book had serious imaging issues and should never have been shipped. From the reviews, it appears that the publisher is shipping them now. If you ordered one of these books recently and the printing is bad (images unreadable/smudged), I urge you to attempt to return it under the grounds of defective product. As someone who worked in commercial printing for almost a decade, that kind of product should be considered unacceptable. To knowingly sell it as such is… less than upstanding in my opinion.
Of course, this may not even be the Foundation’s call. No Starch Press may have the right to list that book into perpetuity and sell it down to the last shredded cover, fifteen years from now. I certainly hope not, because it pains me to know that when someone buys that book and has a bad experience with it, they now associate myself, the Foundation and Blender with that bad experience.
In any case, maybe this post will show up on someone’s Google search if they are thinking of buying the book and will steer them in the right direction.
Wouldn’t it be better to do a second edition of the book and update it?
I have second and third editions here of very successful books that would otherwise be out of date
It would be a good idea. The original goal of the Foundation though, as Ton indicated it to me, was to “get things started” and basically to help things along until the market could support third party Blender training materials. If you take a look on Amazon, there a bunch of options now, so it seems like this has been fulfilled.
If you take a look at the official training materials that the Foundation and/or Institute has produced since then, they make and sell a lot of training DVDs. No books since then other than the GameKit, which is now only available as a download. The fact is that producing a well put-together book is extremely difficult. Now, I’ve never produced a training DVD, but I have made video tutorials. My gut tells me that making them is an order of magnitude easier than doing a book. Which isn’t to say that it is easy — just that the pool of people who can do a great book is smaller than the pool of people who can do a great training DVD.
Personally, I think that the Foundation is doing the right thing. Financing a book is a much bigger risk, and I’m not sure that the payoffs would be that much better. I just wish that they had some kind of pull with No Starch to get that out-of-date thing off the market.
Beside the large number of emails that I get thanking me for my books, I occasionally get them from people for whom my teaching style just didn’t work. My book failed them. I always encourage them to return the book if possible, and if not, to pass it on. I apologize to them, and try to make sure that none of the marketing materials led them to buy the book under false pretenses. That sort of thing is very important to me, and it pains me greatly to read people’s negative comments about “Essential”, who never should have bought it in the first place.
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I posted a warning on amazon. I doubt it will appear on the front page of the reviews, but every bit will (hopefully) help guide people away from buying outdated information!
Don’t be too hard on those that are still buying it, they are after all people that are completely new to Blender ;o)
Certainly would agree to efforts to pull the book or at least update any associated *product* information so it’s ‘out-of-date’ status is clearly mentioned. Perhaps you can get in touch with Amazon et-al?
I purchased the book 2 years ago from a book store. I knew it was out of date, but it did help me get started in using Blender. Some of its basic principles I still use even in 2.61.
Any opinions on donating older Blender resources to my local library? I’m tempted sometimes, but it can also be a cruel trick to play on noobs.
Unfortunately, I got fooled by the 2.6 in the title so I’ll take my knocks and see If I can get some tips that are relevant. Whats funny is its advertized on this page.
You got the right book, Harv. This little rant is about “The Essential Blender” not “Blender Foundations”. Although was done with 2.56ish, it is still almost entirely relevant. Incidentally, we do incremental revisions every time we do a reprint.
I didn’t purchase The old Essential Blender from Amazon: I bought it from the Blender “Store” – it was the only way I knew to support this incredible program and its developers. Of all the software I use, it’s the one that deserves our support the most: it is *beyond* brilliant!
I got the book from the Blender Foundation when it came out and it was a good source of information, a good, organized, exposition of the many sides of Blender. At that time there were much less cicrulating printed information about all of this.
I even have a free pdf in my disk. Perhaps one should “review” the Amazon site saying that free pdf’s of the book are overabundant…
So now it sits on my shelf, but it is true… I did not open it in the last three years… and (shameful confession!) in a way that I do not know
But PLEASE: MAKE A NEW GREAT BOOK! WHY NOT?