Has anyone else noticed lisp book publisher problems?
In the nice Oslo tech bookstore, the purchasing guy said he had a lot
of demand for lisp, but the publishers weren't delivering. He stocked
ML, Scheme, etc books, but only a lone copy of the MOP book.
He has long backorders, and some of them haven't come in a year.
Pearson was an especially bad publisher; he said Graham's ANSI CL and
On Lisp took the longest. (Disturbing, since they didn't tell him On
Lisp is out of print.)
This conceivably can be an isolated case, but the purchaser seemed
quite competent. Had a lot of books one wouldn't expect from a
mediocre store.
···········@yahoo.com (Tayssir John Gabbour) wrote in message news:<····························@posting.google.com>...
> Has anyone else noticed lisp book publisher problems?
>
> In the nice Oslo tech bookstore, the purchasing guy said he had a lot
> of demand for lisp, but the publishers weren't delivering. He stocked
> ML, Scheme, etc books, but only a lone copy of the MOP book.
In March I was at the MIT Press bookstore. Around 1993 I remember
seeing a lot of Lisp books there: MOP, Keene on CLOS, etc. After all,
Lisp was born there, right? But on this visit, I saw nothing Lispy
but The Little Schemer. The Lisp 1.5 Manual was in the catalog but
not on the shelves.
The same applies to Quantum Books, a computer bookstore in the same
neighborhood. They had the AI textbook by [?] and Norvig, but I don't
remember any Lisp books per se. In 1993 they had books on T, Scheme,
and many standard Lisp books.
···········@yahoo.com (Tayssir John Gabbour) writes:
> Has anyone else noticed lisp book publisher problems?
>
> In the nice Oslo tech bookstore, the purchasing guy said he had a lot
> of demand for lisp, but the publishers weren't delivering. He stocked
> ML, Scheme, etc books, but only a lone copy of the MOP book.
>
> He has long backorders, and some of them haven't come in a year.
> Pearson was an especially bad publisher; he said Graham's ANSI CL and
> On Lisp took the longest. (Disturbing, since they didn't tell him On
> Lisp is out of print.)
>
> This conceivably can be an isolated case, but the purchaser seemed
> quite competent. Had a lot of books one wouldn't expect from a
> mediocre store.
Seems the editors are too "conservatives". (Too slow to react to a
change in the popularity of their books).
I'd advise authors to publish on the web (even with a paypal
account). Who needs the incompetent intermediaries?
--
__Pascal Bourguignon__ http://www.informatimago.com/
There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not
want merely because you think it would be good for him. -- Robert Heinlein