Products
Rob Brooks-Bilson's Blog
With all the current buzz over Blackstone (the next version of ColdFusio MX), I decided to shoot an email over to my editor at O'Reilly to gauge their interest in having me write the 3rd edition of my book Programming ColdFusion MX.
Well, I heard back from him today, and it looks like they are going to pass on a new edition. I'd like to say that I was crushed by their decision, but honestly, I'm a little relieved. It was hard work turning out two books over the past few years, each as the sole author while maintaining a full-time job, National Guard service, and a marriage (maybe a bit of a social life too). The first edition of my book ended up selling about 9,000 copies after the majority of the returns were in. Given that an author pulls in 10% of what the publisher sells the book to retailers for, this translated to apprx $2 a copy. Do the math and $18k looks like a nice bit of pocket change - until you also realize that the taxes on that come to apprx 40%. Then take the 1500+ hours I put into the first edition and you can see it didn't amount to much more than minimum wage! I'm fine with that, though, as I didn't write the first edition to make money. I wrote it because I used ColdFusion every day, and I loved sharing my enthusiasm for web application development with CF.
When O'Reilly asked me to write the 2nd edition for CF MX, I was a little hesitant because of the amount of time it took to do the first edition (almost 2 years). I relented and managed to squeeze it out after the 6.1 release after investing about 1000 hours (yes, I'm rounding a bit). It was a fairly major rewrite as CFMX was a huge improvement over CF 5. Lots of new features and revisions added about 250 pages to the book, bringing it in at around 1100 pages.
That brings me to today. Programming ColdFusion MX, 2nd. edition is the second best selling ColdFusion MX book (at the register as it goes), behind Ben's CFMX WACK. Given that it's only sold around 5,000 copies or so in the past year, that's pretty sad, and I can see why O'Reilly isn't interested in doing a third edition. It isn't that the book isn't good (it's gotten many positive reviews), and I realize that the market for technical books is saturated and not in the best of shape, I guess I'm just a little sad (not bitter) that the ColdFusion community is losing the backing of O'Reilly given their reputation in the technical community. I always felt that having an O'Reilly book for a particular technology (even if I weren't the author) put some weight behind it.
So, it's on this note that I'd like to thank all of you who have purchased and read my book. I've recieved many kind emails over the years and have enjoyed corresponding with each and every one of you. I'd also like to take this opportunity to urge all ColdFusion developers to support the other authors of ColdFusion books out there. If we really want ColdFusion adoption to continue to spread, there has to be good material available for the developers who want to learn it.
Aura skin for Raymond Camden's BlogCFC inspired by Joe Rinehart & Steven Erat. This blog is running version 5.9.004.
Anyways thanks for writing a great book. And I hope you will be just as good at finding bugs in blackstone even though your not writing another edition.
I'm all for seeing specialized CF books, and even had one under development with O'Reilly, but it was canceled because O'Reilly's market research (and they have some of the best) showed that there just wasn't a big enough market for it.
I think it's definitely a problem that 295,000 CF developers don't buy a great book on the very technology they all claim to love so much...
Or have we all started to rely on online material so much that we no longer need books?
(Just for the record, my most recent book purchases mostly covered the topics of XML and design patterns / UML)
Where is the ColdFusion community right now, and where would it like to be in the future? I do not plan on being left behind, but there isn't much around for CF--so I go over to the Java world and read their books. Want to know about patterns, persistence, enterprise architecture, modeling, frameworks, testing? Good thing I know C++ and Java, because these books aren't written for CF.
That is the problem. There are no texts that offer the same breadth of theory that most CFers can easily digest. If they ever do show up, they need to be to the point and not involve stories of projects with clients, developers and managers plodding through another project. I really like the Reality series of books, but it isn't enough of all that is needed.
OK, that's my rant.
it's sad to hear that story. I bought both books and they really turned into my favourite reading material on ColdFusion. Being an author myself I know how you feel - loads of work and little payback. It's also very sad to see O'Reilly dropping CF because in a way an O'Reilly title lends reputation and credibility to a programming language. I can feel your relief - but your fingers are gonna be itching to start writing again sooner or later... :-)
I'm sorry to hear O'Reilly is dropping your book. I've purchased both editions and they're invaluable. I wonder if an email campaign would cause O'Reilly to reconsider? (That is, if you were willing to say "yes" if they changed their minds!)
I am really sorry to read this post. As you know, I have not been overly supportive of lots of the ColdFusion titles out there. No, I don't mind the competition, actually, I welcome it, and have always encouraged (and even helped) other ColdFusion authors. But too many of the titles are just more of the same, the same content for the same target audience and the same skill set. Yours was not, it was needed and welcomed and much appreciated (I have used my copies on many an occasion). And as you know, I publicly recommended it too. In fact, I sometimes recommended it to new ColdFusion users instead of my own when I felt it a better fit. While I understand O'Reilly's decision, I feel really bad, both for you, and for the void that will be left unfilled.
And I fully appreciate your mixed feelings. I am always amused at how people assume that us tech authors could retire on book royalties. I get asked about writing often, and always recommend it. I love writing, and I think that everyone should get the chance to experience doing so if they so desire. But I always caution potential authors to fully understand their motives, and to be sure that financial gain is not one of them. The fact of the matter is that most IT books do not make money, most IT authors never see a penny beyond their initial advances, and most IT books never get revised. Competition, rapidly changing trends and software, short shelf lives, it's tough. It's lots of fun too, but tough. So, yes, I do appreciate what you are feeling.
As you can imagine, I spend quite a bit of time looking at book numbers, title counts, and publishing trends. The IT book industry is in shambles. Publishers have gone out of business, others have had to merge, and all are reducing title count. The primary reason is that people are simply buying less books. Part of this just reality, too many people bought too many books in the .com era (hey, buy a book, launch a site, go public, and retire, all in a week, that was the way back then). And so more publishers created more titles and flooded the market, and now we're dealing with the aftershocks. But that is not the worst part of it. The bigger problem is a dramatic change in consumer spending. Three years ago if a user wanted to learn x he bought the three (or even five) most recommended books on the subject, now he buys just one. Three years ago readers bought books on topics that they were vaguely or peripherally interested in, now they are far more selective. Three years ago if that reader recommended that book to his boss, the boss would have placed an order for multiple copies and given one to each department member, now he tells them to borrow and share. Sales are down, and corporate buying is down terribly. The publishing industry is going through the same slowdown as the rest of the IT industry. There are specific topic areas that are selling well, but those too are flooded, and few books are doing exceptionally well. That's reality.
It is also, surprisingly, not a reflection on ColdFusion sales. Well, not in the way you'd expect. ColdFusion sales are actually up. I am not allowed to disclose quarter by quarter specifics, but the numbers are up, which means people are buying ColdFusion. What has changed quite significantly is the buyer demographic. We sell lots of ColdFusion to existing customers, they need more servers, but they likely won't need more books. We sell lots of ColdFusion to absolute beginners (the area that ColdFusion always served better than any other option), and these users do buy books but they have limited budgets and want entry-level titles. We also sell lots of upgrades, but if a user went from CF5 to CFMX.x and knew CF really well, would he really need a new book? I myself have told some readers not to buy the newer edition of CFWACK, I will not recommend they do so if I don't feel that they'd really benefit enough from it. So, while ColdFusion numbers are good, ColdFusion book numbers are less so.
I'm rambling, sorry. The bottom line is that your contribution to the CF community has been immense, and immensely appreciated. I know you know this, but I'll say it anyway, O'Reilly's decision is not in any way a reflection on the quality of your work.
Oh, and if you get the urge to write again soon, I know an author who would love to have you on his team. :-)
--- Ben
It is a chicken/egg situation. More technical or specialized titles have a lower distribution, and so publishers are not interested in them.
Plus, I also don't think that those books would sell well anyway. Books at that level on PHP and ASP.NET are not selling well either, as users looking for that type of material typically do not obtain it from books.
--- Ben
Here's my theory on the Java books: Java is such a complex technology that a developer often has to buy a whole bunch of books before becoming really productive. By the way, most of the Java books are not very good and very few of them rise to the level of yours. With ColdFusion, people can buy your book or Ben Forta's WACK and will soon be on their way implementing fairly sophisticated Web sites and applications. Thus by necessity, more Java books have to be bought, while the simplicity of ColdFusion will not force developers to reach out for more books on it. So, even if Java and .Net were not to rule the current state of the Internet, ColdFusion would still be second fiddle to them in terms of book sales.
I agree with some of the previous comments about more specialized books on ColdFusion, just like Oracle has a whole series on different topics about what its database product. I wonder if some of the publishers can engineer some sort of public polling to find out what topics would ColdFusion developers be most interested in: CF Administration, including server load balancing, multiple instances, Web services, content management, database driven applications in finance, health care, integration with Flash remoting, rich Internet applications, etc.
That really sucks. I bought several copies of the first edition for my coworkers when it first came out and made sure I had a copy for myself of the second. I found it to be an excellent resource and much easier to reference than others CF books.
thank you though for getting these two editions out.
regards,
larry
Best of luck.
Cheers
- Matt
1. The excellent explanations of the concepts behind ColdFusion features and tags.
2. The practical examples.
3. The direct style and organization -- no fluff or padding with excess screen shots.
In many ways, your book is a model for the way other programming books should be written. I don't know to what extent you cross over into Java or whether you have explored its profitability based on your other commitments, but I -- and I think many other CF programmers -- would be eager to see you write a book teaching Java web techniques for ColdFusion programmers. You could collaborate with Ben Forta and Hal Helms, and I think it would sell very well, especially if it had a companion web site to show/download examples.
This is not to say that CF should be abandoned, but rather that one cannot ignore Java anymore, and before too many CF programmers buy more and more Java books, you can use your excellent writing skills to present us with a perfect transitional book explaining how to do all those CF things (define applications, access data sources -- insert, update, delete, upload files, FTP, validate forms, etc.) in Java servlets and JSPs (the most comparable technologies as I see it).
Best wishes and thank you again for all the help you've given the ColdFusion community.
Leroy
So a "lollapalooza" of tech books might be a good idea.
I know I'd definitely buy Java for CF Developers with CF Application design patterns.
Yup. I've bought three tech books in the last year (including Rob's), and have read about a dozen pages between all three. Not due to any failing within the books themselves... it's just that Google gets me what I want, faster. At this point, I basically use paper books as a last-resort backup for search engines.
I was in a book shop in London about a year back and a guy was standing in front of the ColdFusion section with your book in one hand and one from Sybex (I think) in the other. He appeared to be quite literally weighing the two options. I couldn't resist and advised him to go for yours. He just nodded, put down the Sybex and took yours to the counter. A trivial intervention on my part, but I know I did him a favour.
I'm very sad there won't be another. For me, ColdFusion pretty much *is* your book. I'm going to mail O'Reilly to urge them to reconsider.
Regards, Roger
Roger
I don't know if you've considered this, but Jeff Peters has had several ColdFusion-related volumes published recently by Proton Arts. His last was titled "What's New In Fusebox 4.1" and is a slim, 53-page volume designed (I presume) to supplement a larger volume he published last year which detailed the Fusebox 4.0 framework as a whole.
You mentioned the huge amount of effort that the O'Reilly books required, but that you nevertheless enjoyed writing them. Perhaps you might consider publishing a similar volume to Jeff's, namely one that covers only the new features in ColdFusion 7? Such an undertaking would presumably be significantly more straightforward and less time-consuming than completely overhauling and adding to an existing, comprehensive work such as Programming ColdFusion?
Jeff's books are available from cafepress.com at *very* reasonable prices. Moreover, despite Proton Arts' status as a kind of budget publisher, the quality of their binding, printing, paper, etc. is perfectly acceptable (judging by Jeff's larger Fusebox volume which I bought last year).
Anyway, it's just a thought, but I can guarantee you at least one customer should you be so inclined!
Oh, and another thing, many people on the fusebox.org Mach-II forum have bemoaned the lack of a good Mach-II book (Sean's 'Development Guide' notwithstanding). Were anyone to publish a volume explaining the fundamentals of the framework, how to create the fundamental OO constructs, an overview of relevant design patterns etc, I'm sure it would be regarded as a must-have by all those using the framework (especially at the prices of the Proton Arts books). Again, I could guarantee you at least one customer... ;)
Roger