On Wednesday, April 17, 2002, at 02:10  PM, Bruce Cohen wrote:
> At 9:38 AM +0200 4/17/02, Cees de Groot wrote:
>> But that's why you want to aim at a publisher like O'Reilly, who 
>> really tries
>> to push your book. Not one like the others who pay you, put a single 
>> copy on
>> lots of store shelves, and then forget they ever published the thing. 
>> Are
>> there other publishers like that?
>
> Not that I know of.  The experience of authors I know (my own doesn't 
> go beyond a couple of phone conversations with publishers) is with 
> Prentice-Hall and Addison-Wesley, both of whom appear to think their 
> job is done when the first box of books is packed (shipping the box 
> doesn't seem to be in the job description).   I wonder about Springer, 
> because they publish a rather eclectic collection of titles, from very 
> abstract and abstruse to nuts and bolts, but I don't know of anyone who 
> has any experience with them.
>

I've been pleased with my interactions with Prentice-Hall.  They're 
there pushing the Squeak books whenever I've seen them at OOPSLA and 
SIGCSE.  Alan Apt (our publisher contact for both books) *REALLY* knows 
his stuff -- I get a lot of insight into how the CS book market works 
whenever I chat with him.  There are, of course, hiccups from working 
with an enormous company with all kinds of agendas (e.g., Prentice-
Hall's Quality Control department gave us all kinds of grief on the CD 
for the second book because their standards required "No bad web 
links!"  Well, we included a copy of the entire Squeak Swiki on the 
CD -- have any idea how many links have gone bad over the last few years 
of use?!?)

Thanks for the vote of confidence, Alan!  However, I'm in the same boat 
as Randal -- maybe those of us who are still employed need to complain 
more about being overburdened so that The Powers That Be start hiring 
back those of us who aren't! :-)   I'd love to see an O'Reilly Squeak 
book, and I might even be willing to organize/write it, but in the short 
run, I've got too much on my plate.

Mark