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.
-Peter
[1] <http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/>
--
Peter Seibel ·····@gigamonkeys.com
Lisp is the red pill. -- John Fraser, comp.lang.lisp
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.