SolidWorks Surfacing Subscription Site Coming

Many people have asked me when I was going to publish an update for the 2008 Surfacing Bible. That book was my favorite of all the books I’ve written, but there are a lot of things that need to be updated. It was relatively compact, printed in color on nice paper, and most importantly was pretty unique in its offering. Unfortunately, the publisher for the book didn’t want to get involved in another edition for it. So I’ve decided to go at it through another route. I’m creating a series of subscription sites that present the information in a more modern way, but essentially contain the same sort of info you can get from an old fashioned paper book. I’m a fan of books, obviously, but I’m also a fan of individuals usurping functions that only large corporations used to be able to achieve.

The subscription site enables me to convey and publish information and try to pay the mortgage at the same time. I mean writing a blog for free is a lot of fun and all, but readers aren’t sending in checks or casseroles or even hot pockets. Another cool thing about the site will be that I can update it without a huge investment. Updating a book cost almost as much as writing the whole thing from scratch. Updating a website costs you an hour, or how ever much time it takes to make the change.

The contents of the site will inevitably be a lot of text (in English, but translatable through your preferred service), images, as well as videos and live download links. I may even have some sort of discussion or comment capability, although, that’s really what this blog has always been for.

Also, all of the material developed for this site is brand new. No examples or text will be reused from the original book. All the examples are new, and all the text is newly written specifically for this work.

Right now the Surfacing Episode, as it’s being called, will be the first subscription online reference available. Eventually I want to have additional Episodes, like plastics design, maybe reverse engineering, Admin, and other advanced topics that are not served by existing documentation. These are not courses, I’m not an educator. These are not books. They are online references available on a subscription basis.

I plan to have different levels of subscription: individual, multi-topic, company, smorgasbord… I’ll be responsive to what people are asking for in this respect.

There are multiple ways of making money off of content. Books is one way, but you have to sell a lot of books to make it worthwhile (one publisher actually proposed that I work for $1.38/hr to write a book for them). You can place advertisements on your site, which I’ve done in the past, but I like to avoid that if I can. Patreon type subscription is another method. eBooks are a good idea, but you have to share your money with Amazon. So I’ve chosen to go this route. This way I can control the content and the delivery, and hopefully be able to deliver more relevant information based on real world experience – stuff that new users still need to know – in a most cost effective manner that still allows me to not live in a box under the bridge.

This is still early days for this venture, so I’m open to discussion on the type of information you’d like to see, both in surfacing (which is nearing completion, but can always be edited), and other online subscription references I could create (or edit/curate) in the future. Also, pricing and subscription levels have not been finalized yet. I’m trying to take projected volume, uniqueness of material, and potential audience into account when figuring out how much to charge. It will probably be approximately the price of a printed book.

So chime in below in the comments. Let me know what you think of the idea, and offer your thoughts about any of the issues raised here. If you’re looking for an approximate release date, since most of the material has been developed in SolidWorks 2020, the new site will likely go live after the official release of the new software.