We'll have some entirely new Scratch books with "harder" projects in the Fall, I hope. Physics simulations, geometry, math and science-oriented projects, not just games.
Some great new authors working on those, and not just Scratch too, but some "real languages".
But sadly, the 2nd edition of Super Scratch will probably just be an update to stay relevant, not an overhaul.
I hope that Edmond, the author of that first edition, will write a second book, but that depends on his time. You can check out some of his other Scratch projects here: http://scratch.mit.edu/users/LEAD/
And all the games should still work in the new 2.0 interface too; it's an overhaul of the development environment, with backwards compatibility. (I'm updating the book now for 2.0, I edited it.)
When I was working a booth at Wondercon, an 11-year-old girl picked up a copy of the Manga Guide to Electricity and told me, "Reading this book was fun!" Made my day. (I edit the series.)
Yes, you're quite right that there is an important distinction to make there.
To clarify one point: Authors typically make their royalties on the wholesale price--that is, the actual cash publishers receive from booksellers like B&N and Amazon. For a printed book, that might be 50-60% of the list price ('sticker price').
The actual retail price, wholesale price, and list price are all related. A higher list price does result in a higher wholesale price, which in turn affects the royalty payment.
Your initial claims here don't follow: Lower prices certainly do have an affect on author's income. Authors receive a royalty based on a wholesale price, which is (normally) directly related to the price you pay as a consumer.
Publishers' and authors' interests are fundamentally aligned. Volume and pricing affect everyone in this equation. It seems like they should be the ones discovering and ultimately setting the right price/volume ratio, not Amazon.
(I have no idea what you're driving at in your last two sentences.)
Specifically, I'm curious why wouldn't you want your representative (your publisher) to have the power to achieve the best possible outcome for you, the author. Disregarding the specifics of this case, why would you trust Amazon to set your books' prices, seeing as how they're trying to subsidize a platform, and they're in the volume business?
Thought experiment: As a developer, would you support a decision from Apple to set a price ceiling of $0.99 for applications in the App Store?
I haven't really seen a convincing argument from Amazon's supporters why they feel Amazon should be able to set prices to goods they don't produce. That is, apart from the fact that these folks would like cheaper books--and that misses the point of what's at stake here. Even if you agree with Amazon on their current pricing model, it seems like an arbitrary and likely momentary alignment of opinion.
If MacMillan's ebook price system doesn't benefit them and their authors, they'll almost certainly adjust it. They're a profit-seeking entity.
As a side note, this whole episode reminds me of Walmart squeezing down the price of pickles by sheer monopsonistic purchasing power.
I've seen at least as many technical authors get distracted by the intricacies of LaTeX or DocBook as those trying to "design" in Word or OpenOffice. Using markup doesn't prevent the problem of diverting authorial attention to design. Every composition tool can be abused.
Word and OpenOffice can be used intelligently, if you avoid the design-as-you-write trap. I've never really seen a diffing tool (for prose, mind you) with the readability of a word processor's 'redline' or trackchanges feature. Anyone have recommendations on that front?
http://opengarages.org/handbook/