Re: Publishing and PostgreSQL

On Wed, 2005-08-10 at 18:56 -0400, Jonathan Gennick wrote:
> Josh Drake pointed me to a recent thread titled "Thoughts after
> discussions at OSCON". (I'm his editor on PostgreSQL: The Definitive
> Guide) The main thrust of the thread didn't seem to be book
> publishing, but a few comments caught my eye, so I'd like to jump in
> and respond.

Thanks very much for your interesting comments!  It's always nice to
hear about this stuff from someone who does it for a living.

> Self-publishing is not an easy road to take. But, were I not working
> for a publisher I'd be sorely tempted to try it on my next book. But
> I say that having been published a few times, and having learned a bit
> about the industry.

Yup, it's a ton of work (*), and there's the initial outlay of cash for
printing it up that kind of gives one pause for thought.  Hearing that
PostgreSQL gets 775K downloads a year makes me wonder how many book
sales PMD's approx 60K downloads a year will yield, too.  But financial
risks aside, writing a book on a subject has forced me to dive into many
nooks and crannies that I otherwise would have avoided.  Why, I've
actually had to read those compiler books that have been quietly resting
on my shelves for so long!  :-)

This is preaching to the choir, but it'd be great if some more books on
PostgreSQL appeared.  I've got the pink O'Reilly one (Practical
PostgreSQL?) but it's getting pretty long in the tooth...

Yours,

Tom

(*) http://pmdapplied.com/