I was away yesterday evening and missed all this rumors about O'Reilly. A few observations.
Book market: it's really hard these days to know what to publish. We expect fewer sales overall with each book, but there are still topics that can be profitable. Admittedly, we aren't doing much in the way of new Perl books (latest one, I think: Mastering Perl, July 2007) but we've continued to update Perl books that sell well--notably David Blank-Edelman's. (David: thanks for the book and for your praise of OScon.) What language book was hot this year? Haskell! Will it continue to thrive? I can't believe it, not to be mean. But book have to follow the buzz. Let me put it this way: publishers can win by betting on the best race-horse, but nobody seems to win by betting on the faithful donkey that pulls the load each day. Also, the market is looking much better with the popularity of books on the Kindle and (another trend I have trouble believing) the iPhone. O'Reilly in Boston: yeah, come on by the digs we got two years ago in Fresh Pond. I can still see a building out my window with a Genuity sign. So we outlasted them. And we have events here too. Some of you know that, because I've seen you at some of the half-dozen Ignites. On May 2 we're hosting an unconference for user groups; I'll send details when our user group coordinator finalizes them. But bigger conferences just don't seem to draw enough people in Boston. Even Portland, as you can see, doesn't bring the crowds anymore. Or at least the conference group was afraid it wouldn't, which is why they moved OSCon to Santa Clara (sad). One more apology: I haven't been getting to any user group meetings for a while because of travel, some family health problems, and other stuff. Andy _______________________________________________ Boston-pm mailing list [email protected] http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/boston-pm
