I attended last night to a talk named “The 7 secrets of succesful book authors”. A very good presentation that gave not only highlights for book authors but also a general mood and direction for the IT book market.
Things that surpized me :
- IT book market is shrinking : -13% last year
- Programming books is #1 in this market
- Java books market is shrinking even more : -32 % last year
- Average revenue per Java book = $67k
- Average Java book sells less than 2000 copies
Probably not a good timeframe to start authoring 🙁
#1 by gonzo on 30/06/2005 - 11:06
hmmmm, there was an oreilly book sales graph that seemed to imply that java is climbin when compared to other programmnig language books. can’t seem to find the link.
that said, i do have some author friends who have stated that book sales are in a slump. one is actually hard pressed to find a decent physical/real bookstore to peruse in the heart of the south bay.
who was the presenter, by chance? i had heard s/he did a great job.
#2 by Sebastien Stormacq on 30/06/2005 - 11:33
I did not mention that in the blog entry.
What we were been told yesterday is that Java Book absolute market share is shrinking, but relative share with other programming book is slightly increasing
Though times ! We did not get really good answer to the general question : why is the market shrinking ? The only answer we got was “there are so many good free technical content available online” ! This is certainly part of the answer,…
The speaker was Gregory Doench, Executive Editor, Pearson Eductaion (AW and PH)
#3 by gonzo on 30/06/2005 - 11:42
yup. my author friends have a one word answer for the problem: google.
that said, i like havig a good hardback to thoroughly devour in the “real world” and “unplug” for a bit. it will do a body good 🙂