Forthcoming eBook on 'How to Screencast' - what do you want to learn about?

[Ian Ozsvald]

Over in ProCasts I'm designing an eBook that teaches screencasting.  I want to write-up all that I've learned over the last 4+ years, mixing knowledge of teaching in ShowMeDo along with tech-support and marketing techniques in ProCasts with all the bits I've learned about various tools and approaches.

I want to be sure I'm writing a book that's useful to a lot of people, to that end I've posted a questionnaire in SurveyMonkey.  I'd be very happy if you could spare a few minutes to complete the survey, the more knowledge I get about everyone's needs, the better chance I have of collating the right information to teach the right topics. 

I'll be selling the eBook and releasing it a chapter at a time (using the 'release early, release often' agile development idea).  By developing the book this way I can be open to input from readers - I'm definitely open to feedback.  I've agreed with Kyran that Club members and Authors get a free copy of the book, we'll integrate it into the site once I've started work on the first chapter.

The survey is here, no registration is required and it'll take less than 10 minutes to complete:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=dFPFD7pcLZLK9bdIgopLXQ_3d_3d

If you want to know when the book is being published but don't want to do the survey, you can join the announce by mailing:
ebook_...@procasts.co.uk

I've posted about the eBook on the ProCasts blog
http://blog.procasts.co.uk/2009/06/win-a-free-copy-of-our-forthcoming-how-to-screencast-ebook/
where I've suggested I'll probably cover the following topics:

• Using screencasts for Sales, Training and Technical Support
• Story-boarding to explain all your benefits and features
• Writing a short, powerful script that really grabs the viewer’s attention
• Techniques for converting your viewer into a user of your software
• The best software packages to use when recording and editing a screencast
• Editing competently so you have a short, polished video
• Using annotations, fades and high-lights to focus the viewer’s attention on the key points
• Improving your audio recording
• Critiques of existing screencasts including ways of improving them
• Check-lists for each step of the process so you can quickly complete each phase confidently

If you could fill-in the survey, I'd really appreciate your input!

Regards,
Ian.