4 ms·

> Because this is clearly a slice, and most likely provided by one of the parties to the suit, I decided to limit my data to the frontlist sales for the top 10

> Because this is clearly a slice, and most likely provided by one of the parties to the suit, I decided to limit my data to the frontlist sales for the top 10 publishers by unit volume in the U.S. Trade market. My ISBN list is a little smaller than the one quoted in the DOJ, but the principals will be the same. > The data below includes frontlist titles from Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins, Scholastic, Disney, Macmillan, Abrams, Sourcebooks, and John Wiley. The figures below only include books published by these publishers themselves, not pubishers they distribute.

AlbertCory 4y ago
When you limit your data to those published by (fairly) large publishers, you've already skewed the data irreparably. Most of them won't even look at a book unless an agent brings it to them, and most agents won't represent most would-be authors. On the other hand, some technical books don't require agents, and O'Reilly has to be a very large publisher in terms of books sold. Some other categories don't, either -- I know someone who publishes "cozy mysteries" through a real publisher (not a giant one), and she doesn't have an agent.
- iLoveOncall 4y ago
  > On the other hand, some technical books don't require agents, and O'Reilly has to be a very large publisher in terms of books sold. I think you are drastically over-estimating the share of developers that read software development related books. Out of the 150+ software engineers I worked with on a daily basis throughout my career so far, I can guarantee you not even 5% have ever read programming books (and I work at a FAANG, not your average mom and pop shop). It's a niche market.
  - dsr_ 4y ago
    Also, the distribution is skewed. Between my wife and my own collection, we have owned at least 120 O'Reilly books.
    - _0ffh 4y ago
      It used to be that Addison-Wesley was the unrivaled king of CS publishing. If you saw the AW logo on the cover, you knew it was gonna be a rock solid book. Sadly, at some point they seem to have slacked off on their standards a bit, and now it looks like they play second fiddle to O'Reilly. (I don't know if at present there's much of an advantage in quality either way.)
  - AlbertCory 4y ago
    well, you have a different 150 than I do, I'm afraid, and I was also at a FAANG. A really high percentage of people I know have O'Reilly books on their shelves.
    - gjs278 4y ago
  - _0ffh 4y ago
    Is this the moment in the conversation where someone steps in to commend Fred Brooks and David Parnas?
  - TigeriusKirk 4y ago
    Really? I can't think of any dev I've worked with who didn't at least have some reference books handy. Though to be fair, it's been 10 years or so since I've worked in-person with people on a daily basis, so maybe my impression is just way out of date. I still buy the occasional programming book, but nothing like I used to now that we have all the online resources.
    - gjs278 4y ago
    - AlbertCory 4y ago
      I think O'Reilly has really tried to adapt to the online revolution. I don't know how well it's worked.
      - TigeriusKirk 4y ago
        Thinking over my last few programming book purchases, they're really more or less textbooks. I get them for the structure they provide to in-depth learning, which usually doesn't work so well with online materials.
    - iLoveOncall 4y ago
      > some reference books handy Looking at a random list [1] of O'Reilly books, I can see 3 categories: - The ones for beginners, like "Learning Python" or "JavaScript: The Definitive Guide", - The ones that will be outdated even before reaching the shelves of a library, such as "Kubernetes in Action" or "Hands-On Machine Learning with Scikit-Learn, Keras, and TensorFlow", - The ones that are more about concepts such as "Clean Code". I can't see any of those being used as a reference book. The Internet and official documentations is the reference book. [1] https://www.toptechskills.com/top-tech-books/ https://www.toptechskills.com/top-tech-books/
      - sarchertech 4y ago
        At least half the people at my current job buy technical books because we get a monthly book allowance. Whether they finish reading them is another story. In my experience this is pretty common. Almost everywhere I’ve worked has had some kind of training budget, and most places have had fairly well attended book clubs.

AlbertCory 4y ago

When you limit your data to those published by (fairly) large publishers, you've already skewed the data irreparably. Most of them won't even look at a book unless an agent brings it to them, and most agents won't represent most would-be authors. On the other hand, some technical books don't require agents, and O'Reilly has to be a very large publisher in terms of books sold. Some other categories don't, either -- I know someone who publishes "cozy mysteries" through a real publisher (not a giant one), and she doesn't have an agent.

iLoveOncall 4y ago
> On the other hand, some technical books don't require agents, and O'Reilly has to be a very large publisher in terms of books sold. I think you are drastically over-estimating the share of developers that read software development related books. Out of the 150+ software engineers I worked with on a daily basis throughout my career so far, I can guarantee you not even 5% have ever read programming books (and I work at a FAANG, not your average mom and pop shop). It's a niche market.
- dsr_ 4y ago
  Also, the distribution is skewed. Between my wife and my own collection, we have owned at least 120 O'Reilly books.
  - _0ffh 4y ago
    It used to be that Addison-Wesley was the unrivaled king of CS publishing. If you saw the AW logo on the cover, you knew it was gonna be a rock solid book. Sadly, at some point they seem to have slacked off on their standards a bit, and now it looks like they play second fiddle to O'Reilly. (I don't know if at present there's much of an advantage in quality either way.)
- AlbertCory 4y ago
  well, you have a different 150 than I do, I'm afraid, and I was also at a FAANG. A really high percentage of people I know have O'Reilly books on their shelves.
  - gjs278 4y ago
- _0ffh 4y ago
  Is this the moment in the conversation where someone steps in to commend Fred Brooks and David Parnas?
- TigeriusKirk 4y ago
  Really? I can't think of any dev I've worked with who didn't at least have some reference books handy. Though to be fair, it's been 10 years or so since I've worked in-person with people on a daily basis, so maybe my impression is just way out of date. I still buy the occasional programming book, but nothing like I used to now that we have all the online resources.
  - gjs278 4y ago
  - AlbertCory 4y ago
    I think O'Reilly has really tried to adapt to the online revolution. I don't know how well it's worked.
    - TigeriusKirk 4y ago
      Thinking over my last few programming book purchases, they're really more or less textbooks. I get them for the structure they provide to in-depth learning, which usually doesn't work so well with online materials.
  - iLoveOncall 4y ago
    > some reference books handy Looking at a random list [1] of O'Reilly books, I can see 3 categories: - The ones for beginners, like "Learning Python" or "JavaScript: The Definitive Guide", - The ones that will be outdated even before reaching the shelves of a library, such as "Kubernetes in Action" or "Hands-On Machine Learning with Scikit-Learn, Keras, and TensorFlow", - The ones that are more about concepts such as "Clean Code". I can't see any of those being used as a reference book. The Internet and official documentations is the reference book. [1] https://www.toptechskills.com/top-tech-books/ https://www.toptechskills.com/top-tech-books/
    - sarchertech 4y ago
      At least half the people at my current job buy technical books because we get a monthly book allowance. Whether they finish reading them is another story. In my experience this is pretty common. Almost everywhere I’ve worked has had some kind of training budget, and most places have had fairly well attended book clubs.