From: ptkwt@...1.aracnet.com (Phil Tomson)
Date: 2002-03-31T04:27:18+09:00
Subject: Re: Matz's book ??

In article <m2it7exdsz.fsf@zip.local.thomases.com>,
Dave Thomas  <Dave@PragmaticProgrammer.com> wrote:
>"Euan Mee" <lucid@users.sourceforge.net> writes:
>
>> The key thing to show to the publishers is that Ruby is not
>> insignificant now, that it's significance is growing, and will be
>> significant in the timescale that it takes to get to book
>> publication time.
>
>The reality of the situation is that although Ruby is popular, and its
>popularity is growing, the market for Ruby _books_ is not great. Have
>a look at the Amazon sales ranks for the books that are out there now:
>after the initial flurry they're probably selling a couple of copies
>of each a day.
>

Ruby now has 5 (including the '21 day' book that has just been released) 
English language books.  Four of those books have been released since 
November (about a five month period).  It's not surprising that the Ruby 
community is having a hard time 'digesting' all those books that came out 
at once.  In general, I suspect that most people would start out with the 
pickaxe book and then purchase one or two of the others after they've had 
time to learn the language.

>I don't know the whole story, but remember that Addison Wesley
>entered into an agreement to publish Matz's book when the market was
>considerably smaller even than it is now. They _knew_ the size of the
>market when they entered into the arrangement (as they had the PickAxe
>sakes to base it on), so I'm guessing it's unlikely that market size
>lead to the cancellation of the book. I also know from conversations
>with them that they were very keen to get this book out. So it would
>be reasonable to assume that there's more to this story than might
>meet the eye.

I suspect that the recession has had some impact on technical books sales. 
It does seem reasonable that if a publisher was trying to cut costs that 
they would not work on as many new books- perhaps that is what has 
happened in this case.  Certainly AW has to have noticed the recent release 
of four Ruby books and perhaps that has also convinced them to postpone 
the project for a while.  

Go out and buy a Ruby book today!

Phil