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Yes. That is what I am told as well by other authors. In some
cases, the
managing editors suspended support work (eg, technical editing) without
notification in the middle of a project. Others paid up on
work completed
to
date and apologized. How are authors being treated? Considering how
much
work is needed to do a thorough job, it must be painful to watch a
book
project slide into the sandtrap of current events. dot.bomb was painful
as any
stock bubble is, but also, embarassing. 9/11 is just mammalian
hesitation. It shouldn't have a long term effect on books and might
even
spawn
some new genre. The "XML Homeland Defense for Dummies" should
be a
big seller. :-)
I
would have thought that 9/11 and the subsequent reductions in conference
attendance would have increased the need for books. Perhaps the
slack
is
showing up on these technical lists (who is ready to reply to the fellow
who
just spammed every member of this list plus the list itself with
an
honest
but misapplied request for help....). I note that the traffic to the
XSLT
Mulberry list remains consistent.
If you
can say, are any of you that maintain pay-for-play training sites
seeing
changes in traffic? What about the free-for-play
sites?
Actually, a reduction in the number of "will be doorstops before the
check
to B&N cashes" books may be a good thing in one sense. While
this
is
going on, some technologies will become a bit more solid
at the
edges and that will improve the manuscript content.
len
In a message dated 25/03/02 20:25:31 GMT
Standard Time, clbullar@ingr.com writes:
Anyone noticed that technical book publishing is in something
of a slump right now?
Yes it is. One reason
is that many/most/all technical publishers cancelled at least some books after
the combination of dot.bomb and the events of 11th September. If income was
down (which it was) then the reflex response from an accountant is to cut
outgoings which attempts to balance the books in the short term but cancelling
books is eating seed corn, in a sense.
Those cancellations from Autumn
(Fall) 2001 are now feeding through in the beginning of a reduction of arrival
of new titles.I suspect the knock-on effects could be there for maybe another
6 months or so. Some publishers are still pretty
nervy.
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