Thanks, I imagine, in large part to the great word of mouth c.l.l'ers and the Yaboos of #lisp have given it, _Practical Common Lisp_[1] is selling like hotcakes. At the moment (they change every hour) its Amazon Sales Rank is 2,499 which makes it not only the #1 Lisp best seller but also #12 in the Languages & Tools category (the next level up), and #57 in Programming, and within striking distance of cracking the Top 100 Computer & Internet books. (Over night the rank reached 1,752 but I don't know where that put it in the various top seller lists.) I've heard (from fairly reliable sources) that the folks at O'Reilly only start paying attention to books that have a Amazon sales rank better than 5,000 so we're definitely in the territory to make them sorry about their "We Won't Even Look at a Lisp Book" policy if PCL continues to sell. So thanks for all the help you've given me, both while I was working on the book and in spreading the word. And if you want to keep helping, here are a few ideas, quoted from a squib I just added to the book's website:
Like what you've read? Then help spread the word. Recommend this book to your friends. Write a review on Amazon. Blog about it. Link to this page from your web site. Whatever. Apress took a chance, publishing this book when other publishers thought there was no market for a Lisp book. While it's unlikely that I'll get rich off my royalties, we don't have to sell all that many copies for Apress to turn a profit and show the naysayers that Lisp has legs yet.
Looking on Amazon yesterday, I saw it at #1,099 in Books, and #19 in Computers & Internet. Down to #22 today, but wow, that's pretty impressive.
I haven't ordered a copy yet because I'm waiting for paperback, but maybe I'll get it anyway and just trade someone their paperback when that comes out.
