From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.1.3 (2006-06-01) on yquem.inria.fr X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=0.0 required=5.0 tests=AWL autolearn=disabled version=3.1.3 Received: from concorde.inria.fr (concorde.inria.fr [192.93.2.39]) by yquem.inria.fr (Postfix) with ESMTP id 54133BC0A for ; Wed, 23 May 2007 01:59:54 +0200 (CEST) Received: from pih-relay04.plus.net (pih-relay04.plus.net [212.159.14.131]) by concorde.inria.fr (8.13.6/8.13.6) with ESMTP id l4MNxrHj023460 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=AES256-SHA bits=256 verify=NO) for ; Wed, 23 May 2007 01:59:54 +0200 Received: from [80.229.56.224] (helo=beast.local) by pih-relay04.plus.net with esmtp (Exim) id 1HqeGf-0000Fq-0Y for caml-list@yquem.inria.fr; Wed, 23 May 2007 00:59:53 +0100 From: Jon Harrop Organization: Flying Frog Consultancy Ltd. To: caml-list@yquem.inria.fr Subject: Book sales Date: Wed, 23 May 2007 00:54:11 +0100 User-Agent: KMail/1.9.6 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Message-Id: <200705230054.11816.jon@ffconsultancy.com> X-Miltered: at concorde with ID 465383F9.004 by Joe's j-chkmail (http://j-chkmail . ensmp . fr)! X-Spam: no; 0.00; o'reilly:01 ocaml:01 ocaml:01 fsharp:01 breakdown:98 radar:98 10.:98 budding:98 frog:98 short:01 archives:02 authors:02 programming:03 oreilly:03 indicates:04 Tim O'Reilly recently published an article about book sales and, in particular, gave a breakdown of units sold per programming language: http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2007/05/state_of_the_co_10.html As the author and publisher of a book on OCaml, this naturally caught my eye. So I spent some time dissecting the results and the conclusions were quite interesting: http://ocamlnews.blogspot.com/2007/05/ocaml-revolution.html Most notably, we are outselling APress in terms of units sold. Also, the OCaml community is desperately short of cheap introductory books. I should also note that the publication of Practical OCaml, rather than reducing our sales due to competition, actually increased our sales substantially. This indicates to me that the OCaml market is sufficiently small that there is no risk of competition and anything done to promote the language improves the situation for others in the community. Consequently, I would like to encourage any budding authors to write books on OCaml and help to promote the language. -- Dr Jon D Harrop, Flying Frog Consultancy Ltd. The F#.NET Journal http://www.ffconsultancy.com/products/fsharp_journal/?e