I buy books regularly and have over 50 books on my Amazon wish list.

However I have noticed a change in my book buying habits, after noticing how little I use books like “undocumented dos” and “borland c++ builder unleashed” while books from the same era like “object oriented software construction” and “introduction to computer graphics” still get flicked through now and then.

I never buy product specific books now. Almost all books I buy now have to be about principles and patterns that I can use with a variety of technologies, languages and tools now and in the future.

I would never buy a book called “3d programming for {product x}”. I would buy a book called “fundamentals of 3d programming” and simply refer to the {product x} documentation for details of how that product can implement the fundamentals, and if that product requires me to forget all those standard, portable, technology and tool independent fundamentals, then its not the product for me, I will find a product that maximizes the return on portable knowledge, and minimizes the product specific overhead required.

(Sadly in the windows world, it seems a lot of products seem to bring their own “fundamentals” that can only be used once with that product and then must be forgotten again, once the product is obsolete, otherwise one wouldn’t need a book like “3d programming for windows”.)

I mean 3d programming is old and well understood by now, if WPF really does things so differently from everything else as to require a whole nother book (rather than some simple online api docs to show how existing knowledge can be be directly applied), then its no wonder it hasn’t caught on, which could be another reason why such a book hasn’t sold that well.

So what’s the difference, apart from the date?

I think the trouble is that he picked a subject that doesn’t have a broad enough appeal (3D programming is a specialist area, and this book is a specialism within it), which is over populated with competition (there are really tons of books on 3D, and which I’d imagine that much of the potential readership feels is unnecessary (see comments in this thread).

I’m not unsympathetic but maybe even a name author like Petzold can’t make a living doing quality books with so many things against him. It’s the same problem as an ISV who spend a year writing a fantastic (but highly specialized) program that only a few people would actually pay $50 for.

My Comment was more related to : Z :

“And learning new libraries and implementations should be done just by looking at the actual API documentation, if you are not able to do so you are not fit to be a programmer, endgame”

Clearly that’s not true. If I have to learn 3D Programming, a book is needed to get me on fastTrack. It is about productivity in learning then programming ego. Sorry If I offended anyone!

I think he was referring to the “For dummies” series of books, rather than insulting the readers.

However, I think WPF is merely starting to pickup in years to come, it will be fairly lucrative for him (I hope!). The guy who said above that books are for dummies or not real is highly mistaken! Have you did a 3D programming before? You can’t learn 3D Programming by reading documentation only.(You can but it will take you ages! and when you are done grasping that version is out of date!).

Productivity is required even in learning new things because of the constant changes in the industry.

I read a lot of books, may be not from cover to cover but they get me started for most interesting things. And I hate to read PDFs. It is just not joyful to read on screen as compared to real paper. May be if we have good eReader technology Then publishers could cut out the Distributor chain all-together making it more lucrative for the authors.

This post confirms it for me.

Maybe the author could have tried some new marketing venue such as a blog to promote a book he has available in lulu.com (although we’d have to see how many pages the book consists of). He’d still retain the whole ‘expert’ status and still be able to make a good buck for it.

In my experience, I’ve noted I can gauge how much of an expert someone is in a subject when they run a pretty compelling blog on the matter. As a matter of fact, nowadays I trust many blog authors more than I do many of my personal library’s book authors.

@Gene Tani: Indeed. Some authors are going the open source way, which I find particularly interesting. The challenge seems to be on how to establish a good set of parameters on writing and reviewing the drafts to make a good compelling book.

On a final note, concerning tech publishing, I believe the printed book is a doomed medium. I envision a tech book in the future with more sophisticated e-ink e-book viewers with auto-updating entries. “This book has been updated by it’s author. Do you wish to update?” “Do you wish to send a comment, or typo to the author?” Nice. :)

I wish that there was somewhere in town that carried a better selection of books. I would much rather have a book that I can carry around the house than try to wade through all the crap on the net.