Re: Any new/updated Cocoa books soon?
Re: Any new/updated Cocoa books soon?
- Subject: Re: Any new/updated Cocoa books soon?
- From: "Erik M. Buck" <email@hidden>
- Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 20:23:15 -0500
The other authors have piped up, so I will too :)
Writing "Cocoa Programming" was a labor of love for me, but it was a
huge labor. I originally agreed to write a 300 page book for SAMs. In
the middle of the project, SAMs decided they wanted a 1000+ page book
and didn't want to prolong the schedule. Scott and Don were generous
and courageous enough to jump on the project and save the day. There
was no way I could write the whole book in any reasonable amount of
time without some help! As it was, Scott and Don had to write at an
inhuman rate to make the deadlines. Don's first contribution was a
complete rewrite of the proposed table of contents. The table of
contents is critical because it is the way a publisher and the authors
agree about the contents of the book. The publisher is financing the
book largely on faith that the authors can and will deliver what they
promised in the TOC. With the change of scope, SAMs wanted a new
outline/TOC immediately if not sooner ~). Considering that it took me
several weeks of researching and planning to develop the contents for a
300 page book, imagine Don's effort to develop the contents for the
1000 page version. I only mention this to convey the context under
which the project started/restarted. Quite simply, if Scott and Don
had not saved the day, there would never have been a book. As Don
already mentioned, in the end we wrote too much and it had to be cut
back to fit within the printer/binders ability to manufacture.
The initial sales of "Cocoa Programming" were very strong, and SAMs did
approach us for corrections to be made for a second printing. However,
after a few months, the sales fell off a cliff. The book went from the
top 20 computer books on Amazon to being something like 6000th in the
same category over a period of about a month. Given the good reviews
and feedback that I received, I can only guess that everyone who wanted
a copy already had a copy by then, and the demand fell off. There were
also odd shortages of the book in various locations. For example, the
Barnes & Noble in Urbana IL had 4 copies on a Thursday evening, zero
copies on the following Sunday, and as far as I know, never got another
copy. Out of curiosity, I tried to special order a copy through that
store, and the store clerk said the publisher had the book listed as
out of print. I brought this to the attention of SAMs, but I don't
know how it was resolved. If these types of problems were common, that
might also explain the rapid drop in sales. Some people contacted me
privately to indicate that they couldn't get the book in northern
Virginia for a while. I actually posted to this forum asking if others
had the same problem.
I think it is a small miracle that books like "Cocoa Programming" get
written at all :( I neglected my family and employees while writing
the book. I had no "spare" time at all. I recall writing on a lap top
at my in-law's house over a Christmas holiday and quite literally
forgetting that it was Christmas day :(
My only regret is that the kind of community I hoped would form around
the book never happened. There has been very little feedback to the
cocoaprogramming.net site or directly via the author's email addresses
printed in the book. I imagined that readers would discuss the
examples in the book and suggest additional topics or at least submit
errata...
Let me conclude with an interesting (for me) anecdote: I once sent
email to a famous computer science professor and industry legend
praising his latest academic paper. He replied that the comments were
extremely welcome especially coming from me. Apparently he really
liked the book :) The real reward for writing a book like "Cocoa
Programming" is that the author(s) can be proud of it, and every now
and again, someone we admire likes it too ;)
I like almost all of the books about Cocoa on the market, but I think
"Cocoa Programming" is unique in its thoroughness, density of
information, and coverage of topics absent from other books. For a few
months while writing the book, I cataloged questions asked in this
forum and tried to match them up with answers in our book. I also
looked for questions that people seemed unable to answer from Apple's
documentation alone. I asked specific questions about what information
people had a hard time finding, and in some cases I asked why people
had a hard time. I tried to present information that was missing, and
I tried to present it in a way that would make it easy to find buried
in a 1000+ page book. Only you can tell us if we succeeded.
From ocoaprogramming.net:
We welcome comments and corrections to this title.
Cocoa Programming has had the benefit of review by three authors, two
technical reviewers, and five editors using an extensive formal review
process. Nevertheless, we are sure that mistakes have been made and
improvements are possible.
Please feel free to send suggestions and corrections to
email@hidden. We will incorporate reader feedback as
much as possible in future editions.
One of the pleasures of developing software with Cocoa has always been
the community surrounding the technology, and one reason we wrote this
book was to contribute to that community. With your help, we can
produce an even better book in the future.
_______________________________________________
cocoa-dev mailing list | email@hidden
Help/Unsubscribe/Archives:
http://www.lists.apple.com/mailman/listinfo/cocoa-dev
Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored.