Re: Publishing and PostgreSQL

> On Wed, 2005-08-10 at 20:32, Jonathan Gennick wrote:
>> Wednesday, August 10, 2005, 7:28:38 PM, Simon Riggs (simon(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com) wrote:
>> SR> On Wed, 2005-08-10 at 18:56 -0400, Jonathan Gennick wrote:
>> >> BTW, according to Bookscan PostgreSQL accounts for only $47k
>> >> of revenue so far this year, less actually than Lisp
>>
>> SR> Hi Jonathan,
>>
>> SR> Good to have you post and very interesting too.
>>
>> SR> You had me until that statement above, cos that just sounds too much
>> SR> like a self fulfilling prophecy.... especially since, as we know, the
>> SR> current books are all out of date.
>>
>> I don't doubt that the out-of-date books hurt sales. That's very
>> likely true. Whenever you look at those Bookscan numbers you have
>> to give a bit of thought pub dates. But the numbers above are the
>> numbers that Bookscan reports.
>
> Actually I think there is more to it. Apress released a book on LISP
> and a book on PostgreSQL both in April of this year, and to date
> (according to oriellys numbers) about 2.5 to 1. Now there could be a
> variety of factors that are involved with this, but one thing I
> noticed is that the LISP book has more reviews available on it than
> any of the postgresql books. Perhaps one thing that is needed is
> people from within the community being a little more active raising
> awareness of postgresql to people outside the community, for example
> in amazon reviews or slashdot book review articles.

I'd associate another factor as being significant...

The Matthew/Stones book is a "subsequent edition," a re-issuance of
what they had previously published at Wrox, and therefore mostly Not
New. "Not news." There are people that already have the earlier
edition that wouldn't bother buying the new one.

Peter Siebel's book had never been released before, and therefore
nobody already had it. 100% "fresh" sales.

But I'd not dispute that there is some value to doing some
promotion...
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