What Kind of Books do You Want?

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What Kind of Books do You Want?

Posted by Cliff on Wednesday February 6, 2002 @07:44AM from the bending-the-ear-of-a-publisher dept.

ctrimble asks: "I'm the acquisitions editor for a technical publishing company (not the one with the animals, but we have had six of our books reviewed favourably, here on Slashdot) and part of my job is to determine what books my company should publish. This consists, mainly, of me sitting in my apartment eating peanut butter sandwiches, reading Slashdot, and writing perl scripts that generate titles in a Madlibs type fashion: "Hacking Ruby for Midgets" (forthcoming in July). Unfortunately, there's a bit of an impedance mismatch between my methodology and filling the needs of the programming community. Market research is tough to do in tech books since you need to forcast about a year in advance. So, let me pose the question to you -- what kind of books do you want? What spots do you see as needing to be filled? For that matter, do you even want dead-tree books, or are eBooks and/or online documentation sufficient?"

13 of 920 comments (clear)

What book do I need? by PoiBoy · 2002-02-06 07:49 · Score: 5, Funny

Speaking both for myself and many other Slashdot readers, I really need the book An Idiot's Guide to Getting Laid Tonight.
Moderators: That is a joke.

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1. Re:What book do I need? by unformed · 2002-02-06 07:52 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  Moderators: That is a joke.
  
  Right. For you it might just be a joke; What about the rest of us who would actually buy -and- use such a book?
how-to books by mr.ska · 2002-02-06 07:50 · Score: 4, Funny

I'd like a book on how to forecast the needs of the technology sector about a year in advance. ; )

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I want to see: by Chundra · 2002-02-06 07:53 · Score: 5, Funny

1. Teach yourself ANSI Common LISP in 24 hours.
2. The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Linux Kernel Internals.
3. Assembly language for Dummies
4. Giving yourself a Enterprise Java Enema.
How about a book on self study by The+Wookie · 2002-02-06 07:55 · Score: 5, Funny

called Teach Yourself Teaching Yourself In 21 Days In 21 Days
1. Re:How about a book on self study by b_pretender · 2002-02-06 08:01 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  Better make it:
  Teach Yourself Teaching Yourself In 21 Days in 22 Days
  That way I can actually learn something.
Re:books with lots of pron by Chundra · 2002-02-06 07:56 · Score: 5, Funny

I can just imagine what a doubly linked list would look like. I'm afraid. Very, very afraid.
Lisp books needed! by Jon+Howard · 2002-02-06 07:57 · Score: 3, Funny
I'm a Lisp programmer (Allegro CL mostly), so naturally I would like to see more books covering Lisp. I'd specifically like to see the following topics covered:
- Network programming with Lisp for a wider variety of protocols
- Advanced tuning with foreign functions/mixed language programming
- Graphics and OpenGL programming with Lisp
- Sound programming with Lisp
- Game programming with Lisp
- Databases in Lisp
I'd really like to find more practical Lisp examples on bookstore shelves.

Oh, and before I hear "Lisp can't do that", here's a short list of Lisp success stories:
- Animation & Graphics (including Square USA and Naughty Dog Software)
- Artificial Intelligence (including Kurzweil and Microsoft Research)
- BioInformatics (including MDL Information Systems)
- B2B & E-Commerce (including ITA Software [powers Orbitz])
- Data Integ. & Mining (including Cadabra/GoTo Shopping)
- EDA/Semiconductor (including AMD and American Microsystems, Inc.)
- Expert Systems (including Univ. of Chicago Infolab and Signal Insurance)
- Finance (including Price Waterhouse Coopers and Cognition Corporation)
- Intelligent Agents (including Fujitsu Limited)
- Knowledge Mgmt (including Design Power, Inc.)
- Mechanical CAD (including Parametric Technologies Corp.)
- Modeling & Simulation (including Boeing and Johnson Engineering)
- Natural Lang. Proc. (including Sony CSL and Stanford University)
- Optimization (including NASA and Space Telescope Institute)
- Research (including Univ. of Southern California and University of Wyoming Applied AI Lab)
- Risk Analysis (including Arthur D. Little, Inc.)
- Scheduling (including Northwest Airlines and Ascent Technology, Inc.)
- Telecom (including France Telecom R&D and British Telecom Labs)
- Web Authoring (including The Performing Graphics Company and Schema GmbH)
I want hemp books! by jordan_a · 2002-02-06 08:00 · Score: 5, Funny

Personally I'd like to have hemp paper books. Hemp paper is of exceptional quality and a tonne of hemp will make much more paper then a tonne of dead trees.

That and I'd love to see some idiot try to smoke a book.
No no no - Dating with SQL by cryptochrome · 2002-02-06 09:09 · Score: 5, Funny

SELECT first_name,phone_number FROM women WHERE easy='very' AND looks='good'

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1. Re:No no no - Dating with SQL by NoMaster · 2002-02-06 10:06 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  SELECT first_name,phone_number FROM women WHERE easy='very' AND looks='good'
  
  Empty set (0.07 sec)
  
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2. Re:No no no - Dating with SQL by poot_rootbeer · 2002-02-06 10:11 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  Yeah, that's the easy part... the difficult part is getting someone to grant you INSERT privileges!
Spiral Bindings by Dark+Paladin · 2002-02-06 09:55 · Score: 3, Funny

I agree with this 100%. I realize that the price of the book will probably rise an extra 5-10% for this feature, but the ability to lay a book flat as you're typing/eating/making love to your (very) understanding wife is a huge feature in technical books.

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