buying a book you will sponsor the pano idea ...

as I think that color does not make a profit with the panobook one may think about sharing loss instead of profit ...

First one fact : the lucky people who will be accepted could buy the panobook at printing cost. In French law, standard uses is that the author gets free version of the book. This kind of uses is usually done when there is only some authors from 1 to 5 for example. Each author of the book then gets some free version and the number depends on the editor.
There is one exception to this rule : when there is a lot of authors like for a dictionary. The law tells that the author should have an advantage, but not necessarily a full free version. Our way to do sell it at printing cost.

This also raised the question of "Why the panobook ?"

Our goal is double :

to promote your photographer talent

Last year, the first panobook didn't really reflect this part. It will change this year :
* We use a jury. So the quality should raise automatically.
* 150 images over 200 pages. Last year, it was 365 over the same number of page. So every image will have enough space to express itself.
* Layout will change : commentary are located with the image to allow 2 lectures of the photo : first the photo, then the details with the support of the text
of the commentary
* We'll ask for the number of image for the panorama : it will be put near the photo too. This will also change the look people will have on panoramas : "What ? 12 images in this panorama ?!?!? "
* Last but not least. At the end of the book, 1 or 2 pages with all photographers names and website ( if the author agrees to print it, of course ). Because last year, we were asked many time, how to get these images. "He, your album book is great, where can I get this poster ?". With these information, you could be contacted directly to sell your panorama.
Reminder : photos rights are only given for the panobook and promotion of the panobook.

to promote panorama and panorama technics to the mass

For the moment, it's only a few photo geek that used panorama technics that but not casual photographer.
By showing what can be done with such technics is the best promotion we could do for the panorama market.
So it should promote us too ( and hopefully our sales ) but not only us : every actor in this market will get
some benefit of it. Yes, perhaps a PtGui or Stitcher future user could be a guy that somewhere read the
panobook. And yes, this panorama contest will probably open to user of other panorama software also. Not this
year, but perhaps next year. 
Let's make this crystal clear : if this project was only to make the second point, we would have stop it.
It's too expensive and takes a lot of time to manage just for promotion. With half the price and half the time,
any ad will do better. It's first for the community, for you.

Future direction :

Our final dream would to be able to build something like the "wildlife photographer of the year" : http://www.nhm.ac.uk/visit-us/whats-on/ … ions/wpy/.
Most of you surely knows this contest. It's famous. We definitively don't fight in the same league, I totally agree, but if we only achieve to create a book that everyone will enjoy to get each year, and if it really shows what we can do with panorama, then it's a success for everyone.