From: james@...
Date: 2002-04-14T09:38:20+09:00
Subject: RE: Barnes & Noble putting on the squeeze

> A few weeks ago I was in Borders and they had the Pickaxe, Ruby in a
> Nutshell and The Ruby Way.
>
> Of course for those of us fortunate enough to live close to downtown
> Portland, Oregon there's Powell's Technical Books - I was in there last
> week and they had copies of all of the Ruby books forsale. (the
> above list
> + "Teach Yourself Ruby in 21 days" and "Ruby Developer's Guide".)
>
> It seems more like it would have made more sense for the .NET books
> to have eaten into the Java section...
>
> Unfortuneatly, I'm not sure that
> complaining to a B&N store clerk that they have no Ruby books
> will do any
> good since they are a national chain and decisions like this are
> probably made
> in their corporate headquarters.

Well, the B&N down the block from me has a sizable "southwest" section, but
then, I live in Arizona. I suspect they set aside space for various local
interests.  Now, whether geeks constitute a significant interest group is
another matter.

I noticed the store had rearranged many sections, but wouldn't say they had
less CompSci/progamming books, or that there is less shelf space for Ruby
books.

(And I still prefer B&N to Amazon, particularly until Amazon changes it
stance on trivial patents.  )

But I truly miss the McGraw-Hill bookstore on 6th avenue in New York City!

James