Hello,


I've been witnessing a recent increase in interest in TDPL, which can be assumed to be a good proxy for interest in the language itself. The trend has been bucking for about 45 days now and is reflected in higher click-through rate on related ads and in a better Amazon sales rank.

Today TDPL's Amazon rank has reached 24,896 (currently at 29,285; updated hourly), which is a 4-months high. (By high I actually mean small because lower rank is better.) Last time a better rank was reached was on October 29, 2010 (18,755).

Amazon dynamically assigns unique sale ranks to all of its books such that 1 is the best seller and 8M is the least sold. Rank below 1,000 indicates a bestseller, below 10,000 means an excellent seller, and below 100,000 means a good seller. (Amazon's ranking system handles these tiers differently.) The sales rank of "good sellers" may fluctuate a lot so it needs smoothing by a moving average (for example TDPL's rank only on Feb 2 was 347,125).

For a rough comparison, here's the current sales rank for two comparable books: Erlang - 129,001, Head First Java - 977. The latter book is the best selling comparable book.


Andrei

Awesome!  I actually just received my copy (ordered through an Amazon reseller) a couple of days ago.  I somehow ended up with one of the limited edition copies...

On 2011-03-01 00:12, Bekenn wrote:
> Awesome! I actually just received my copy (ordered through an Amazon
> reseller) a couple of days ago. I somehow ended up with one of the
> limited edition copies...

The non-limited seems to be the rare one.

-- 
/Jacob Carlborg

On 3/1/11 1:11 AM, Jacob Carlborg wrote:
> On 2011-03-01 00:12, Bekenn wrote:
>> Awesome! I actually just received my copy (ordered through an Amazon
>> reseller) a couple of days ago. I somehow ended up with one of the
>> limited edition copies...
>
> The non-limited seems to be the rare one.
>

Yah, perhaps sales aren't that strong after all :o).

Andrei

On Monday 28 February 2011 23:11:30 Jacob Carlborg wrote:
> On 2011-03-01 00:12, Bekenn wrote:
> > Awesome! I actually just received my copy (ordered through an Amazon reseller) a couple of days ago. I somehow ended up with one of the limited edition copies...
> 
> The non-limited seems to be the rare one.

Well, at first. But there were only about 1000 non-limited ones, weren't there? They have to run out eventually. I've seen both limited and non-limited, so they're both out there, but the longer that the book has been out, the less likely it is to get one of the "limited edition" ones. I would have thought that it had been out long enough that that would be the case, but maybe not. Of course, it wouldn't be all that hard for there to be a number of limited editions in a particular warehouse that just hasn't shipped as many as elsewhere, and if you happen to get one shipped from there you get a limited edition whereas pretty much everywhere else has the normal ones now. Most of the people around here are likely to have the limited ones though (regardless of what is normal in general), simply because we generally picked up the book as soon is it came out.

- Jonathan M Davis

On Tue, 2011-03-01 at 01:47 -0600, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> On 3/1/11 1:11 AM, Jacob Carlborg wrote:
> > On 2011-03-01 00:12, Bekenn wrote:
> >> Awesome! I actually just received my copy (ordered through an Amazon reseller) a couple of days ago. I somehow ended up with one of the limited edition copies...
> >
> > The non-limited seems to be the rare one.
> >
> 
> Yah, perhaps sales aren't that strong after all :o).
> 
> Andrei

Perhaps they reprinted with "the fault" in order to milk the "limited edition" factor?

And remember the "best seller rank" is regionally dependent, i.e. different Amazon servers will deliver different results.

There is also historical hysteresis to their figure:  my "Developing
Java Software" second edition still rates higher than the third edition
even though the publisher reports the third edition has sold the same
number of copies -- which is actually quite a lot thankfully.

-- 
Russel. ============================================================================= Dr Russel Winder      t: +44 20 7585 2200   voip: sip:russel.winder@ekiga.net 41 Buckmaster Road    m: +44 7770 465 077   xmpp: russel@russel.org.uk London SW11 1EN, UK   w: www.russel.org.uk  skype: russel_winder

On Tue, 01 Mar 2011 09:47:52 +0200, Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail@erdani.org> wrote:

> Yah, perhaps sales aren't that strong after all :o).

You mean that, as the author, you don't even get to know how many copies sold? o_O

-- 
Best regards,
 Vladimir                            mailto:vladimir@thecybershadow.net

On 3/1/11 7:28 AM, Vladimir Panteleev wrote:
> On Tue, 01 Mar 2011 09:47:52 +0200, Andrei Alexandrescu
> <SeeWebsiteForEmail@erdani.org> wrote:
>
>> Yah, perhaps sales aren't that strong after all :o).
>
> You mean that, as the author, you don't even get to know how many copies
> sold? o_O

Addison Wesley Longman sends authors a tally every six months.

Andrei

On 3/1/11 2:04 AM, Russel Winder wrote:
> On Tue, 2011-03-01 at 01:47 -0600, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>> On 3/1/11 1:11 AM, Jacob Carlborg wrote:
>>> On 2011-03-01 00:12, Bekenn wrote:
>>>> Awesome! I actually just received my copy (ordered through an Amazon
>>>> reseller) a couple of days ago. I somehow ended up with one of the
>>>> limited edition copies...
>>>
>>> The non-limited seems to be the rare one.
>>>
>>
>> Yah, perhaps sales aren't that strong after all :o).
>>
>> Andrei
>
> Perhaps they reprinted with "the fault" in order to milk the "limited
> edition" factor?

No.

> And remember the "best seller rank" is regionally dependent, i.e.
> different Amazon servers will deliver different results.
>
> There is also historical hysteresis to their figure:  my "Developing
> Java Software" second edition still rates higher than the third edition
> even though the publisher reports the third edition has sold the same
> number of copies -- which is actually quite a lot thankfully.

Forgive my ignorance - I didn't know you have a book portfolio, and so impressive at that. Congratulations!

Yah, there are many variables. Add to those many handling details that influence the process. TDPL has certainly sold more than 1830 copies by now (= the collector's edition count) but booksellers have no obligation to send older prints first, so it all depends on which batch they have handy when shipping. Also I'm sure some smaller booksellers have gotten a batch from the collector's edition that hasn't been sold yet.


Andrei

Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> Yah, there are many variables. Add to those many handling details that influence the process. TDPL has certainly sold more than 1830 copies by now (= the collector's edition count) but booksellers have no obligation to send older prints first, so it all depends on which batch they have handy when shipping. Also I'm sure some smaller booksellers have gotten a batch from the collector's edition that hasn't been sold yet.

It could be like milk. You buy a new carton of milk, and shove it in the refrigerator. When you need some, you grab the carton in front, which is the new one.

So the old milk remains "in stock" for months, years, ...