Matz's book ??
Markus Jais
according to amazon.com "The Ruby Programming Language" is published on
March, 15.
but amazon also says it does not ship yet.
Is this information wrong???
at http://www.awl.com/cseng I could not find the book yet.
markus
Yukihiro Matsumoto
In message "Matz's book ??"
on 02/03/29, Markus Jais <in...@mjais.de> writes:
|according to amazon.com "The Ruby Programming Language" is published on
|March, 15.
|but amazon also says it does not ship yet.
|Is this information wrong???
I've heard it's canceled for various reasons. I'm sad.
matz.
Tobias Reif
> I've heard it's canceled for various reasons. I'm sad.
"The Ruby Programming Language" is a very important book project.
I hope you'll find a new publisher, who shares this view.
Tobi
Yukihiro Matsumoto
In message "Re: Matz's book ??"
on 02/03/29, Yukihiro Matsumoto <ma...@ruby-lang.org> writes:
|I've heard it's canceled for various reasons. I'm sad.
Please feel nothing against Addison Wesley. They did their best.
If this is somebody's fault, it must be me.
matz.
Stefan Schmiedl
how far has the work proceeded? is the book "nearly finished" or
still "out in the rough". between the various ruby book authors,
we have contacts to several publishers. i don't know how good the
contacts are, when trying to publish a new ruby book, but there
should be no harm in trying.
regards,
s.
--
Stefan Schmiedl
Approximity GmbH http://www.approximity.com
Research & Development mailto:ste...@approximity.com
Loreleystr. 5, 94315 Straubing, Germany
Tel. (0 94 21) 74 01 06, Fax (0 94 21) 74 01 21
shhhh ... I can't hear my code!
book-land
Matz, have you tried O'reilley?
Chris
Michael McDaniel
I agree that it is important; I hope a new publisher can be found so I can
buy the book!
~Michael
Euan Mee
> On Sat, 30 Mar 2002, Michael McDaniel wrote:
> > > "The Ruby Programming Language" is a very important book
> > > project. I hope you'll find a new publisher, who shares this view.
>
> some very nice Perl books.) I traded emails with one of their
> editors asking about it. She mentioned that they were'nt sure
> what the market for w ruby book would be -- this looks like a
> great time for a grass-roots campaign.
IMO:
I suspect that pointing out the recent Award nomination (was it the Jolts?)
for Ruby might be a useful indicator for editors.
Other useful facts to present would be:
* total downloads of Ruby implementations.
* monthly downloads of Ruby implementations in time-series, to show growth
trends, per month, and cumulatively
* total number of Ruby-list subscribers
* total number of Ruby-list subscribers at each month/quarter end, to show
growth trends
* No. of 'hits' returned from a Google search on 'Ruby Programming Language',
and monthly updates, to show trends.
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.
Do any of the folk on ths list have any of these numbers?
Can the people who have access to these numbers start collecting the time-
series now?
Cheers,
Euan
xlu...@users.sourceforge.net
'I would live all my life in nonchalance and insouciance,
Were it not for making a living, which is rather a nouciance'
- Ogden Nash
Pat Eyler
Has anyone approached Manning about a ruby book? (The've done some very
nice Perl books.) I traded emails with one of their editors asking about
it. She mentioned that they were'nt sure what the market for w ruby book
would be -- this looks like a great time for a grass-roots campaign.
-pate
>
Dave Thomas
> 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.
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.
If Matz is still interested in the project, I'd be happy to work with
him and Addison Wesley to see if the project can be restarted.
Dave
Phil Tomson
Dave Thomas <Da...@PragmaticProgrammer.com> wrote:
>"Euan Mee" <lu...@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
Tobias Reif
[lots of stuff that can be used while trying to convince publishers of
the explosion of Ruby's poularity]
Perhaps you could maintain a little Wiki page listing all those stats(,
charts,) and facts?
One could point editors and the likes to it.
Tobi