[Catalyst] O'Reilly Radar

[chromatic_catalyst at tempmail.wgz.org]

On Thu, 2005-12-08 at 13:19 -0500, claco at chrislaco.com wrote:

> Whah? I think O'Reilly has, or is slipping off the deep end over the
> last year. I'm not sure if it's a too-big-for-our-britches syndrome, or
> just a loss of touch with the community; the flip flop from publishing
> quality books towards publishing what buzzwords the sheep hear and look for.

I don't think that's fair, unless you know the economics of running a
publishing company.  Don't mistake "has a mailing list with a couple of
dozen posts a day" with "will sell enough copies to make it worth the
investment of time and money and opportunity that everyone involved
could spend on a project with a dozen mailing lists and hundreds of
posts every day."

That said, if you can line up several thousand solid pre-orders of a
Catalyst book, you can improve the chances of getting it published.

Not a book editor and definitely not speaking for O'Reilly,
-- c