For the newbies (book question)

[Erik Price]

On Tuesday, March 4, 2003, at 09:29  PM, Mark Komarinski wrote:

>> But I don't think it's just the typical home user.  I think everyone
>> would love this.  Martin Fowler himself wrote so in his short-n-sweet
>> "UML Distilled".
>
> 185 pages is a lot more than 5.  But the point is taken.

Right, well I was just saying what I would like.

> Unfortunately,
> the thing going against this is the thought (which I want to prove or
> disprive) that bigger is better, at least in terms of books that take
> up a lot of shelf space being better.

No, really, I hate the thick books.  I'm being completely honest when I 
say that one of the best books I own is "The Python Essential 
Reference".  It's not as small as an O'Reilly pocket reference, but it 
really does fit into the back pocket of my rave-era jeans.

The problem is that publishers think they can't charge $40 for a book 
unless it's giganto.  I disagree, because I'll pay that much for a book 
much thinner if it's really good.  Some of the most-recommended books 
I've read are Kernighan and Ritchie's "The C Programming Language", 
Jeff Friedl's "Mastering Regular Expressions", Josh Bloch's "Effective 
Java", even the micro-sized "The Elements of Java Style" is considered 
one of the best Java books available.  None of these books are 700-page 
monsters, but they are all best of breed.

That's not to say I can't appreciate a book if it's big, because 
"Thinking in Java" (Eckel), "MySQL" (DuBois), "JavaScript: The 
Definitive Guide" (Flanagan) are each around a thousand pages and well 
worth every minute spent reading them.  All I'm saying is that what 
matters is that a book is good.  But thickness of a book /really/ 
doesn't add anything for me.

> Until a book (like UML Distilled)
> gets known within its group of readers as a good book, it won't sell.

No, I think this is true of all books to some extent.  At least in my 
case, I generally blow ~$50 on a book only when I have heard in several 
places that it's good.  From a friend, a LUG, even enough amazon 
five-star reviews will catch my attention.  Once in a while I've picked 
up a book that sounded cool even without knowing if it would be any 
good, but after a few chapters I take it back to the store if it 
wasn't.  Fifty bucks isn't chump change.

[...]

In retrospect, though, I have to say that perhaps from a marketing 
perspective the thicker books /are/ a better idea [for newbies].  
Before I started buying these books, I didn't really think about any of 
them being better than any others -- after all, they're just computer 
books, right?  How "good" can they be?  Why not go for one of the 
biggest so I can get my money's worth and try to learn it all in one 
go...

Erik





-- 
Erik Price

email: erikprice at mac.com
jabber: erikprice at jabber.org