Article:		A Computer Book Author's Manifesto
Subject:		Pay attention to fads
Date:		2004-12-17 13:35:10
From:		davidleetodd
Like the fashion industry, the software industry is driven by fads: "Hemlines will be shorter this year!"; "Service-oriented architectures will be hot this year!". Software fads are largely propagated by industry analyst firms like Gartner and Forrester. Authors and publishers would do well to see what these folks are promoting, because you can bet that the software vendors will be following in a few months. It seems that book publishers focus on what developers wanted five years ago, rather on what the developers' bosses want today. There are hundreds of books on Java, but only a handful on Service Oriented Architectures. Yet SOA is what the bosses are ordering their developers to work in, and what the developers would buy books about if they could.

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• Pay attention to fads
  2004-12-29 05:51:53  jwenting [Reply | View]
  
  
  writing to cover the latest fad is the last thing a self respecting author and publishing house should do as a core business.
  
  Wrox tried that and it cost them their heads. Due to the extremely short timelines involved the quality of books went down, people lost their trust in the brand and stopped even buying the solid books Wrox also put out, and the entire house came tumbling down.
  
  With fads lasting a few months at most the time is too short to write a book about them which hits the market up to date on the product when it is released and then gain enough sales to turn a profit before the fad ends.
  Wrox countered that with their "beta books", books covering beta (or even alpha) versions of products and technologies in the hope those could then be updated to become the final book covering the final release version.
  This approach has several problems:
  Many such techs change considerably during that stage, causing largescale rewrites.
  Customers feel cheated when their book about the beta product bears no resemblence to the final product.
  And many customers probably expect some sort of upgrade path from the beta book to the (maybe never to be released) final version, something not offered.
  
  Your comparison to fashion is valid in so far as magazines indeed can (and already do) pick up every latest fad and blow it way out of proportion as the best thing since sliced bread.
  I doubt fashion books do the same. I'd venture that most will talk about more fundamental things like the best way to stitch a seam so it doesn't come loose rather than whether a skirt should be up to just below or just above the knee.