Book "Higher Order Perl", first edition, is sold out

MJD has announced on the HOP mailing list a few hours ago that he got word from his publisher that all copies of the first edition of his book "High Order Perl" have been sold out. IMO that doesn't mean yet that you can no longer find it in the shops for the moment, but ordering it when not in stock will likely already be problematic. And it'll get worse over the next few months. I quote:

People occasionally ask me how the book is doing, or if the publisher has told me anything about the sales. Until last Thursday, I had to tell them I had no idea.
But my editor tells me that the initial print run of 4,000 copies has sold out completely, and the second printing is scheduled for late summer. Whee!
The best part of all this is that a second printing gives me a chance to correct almost all the errors that we found in the first printing.

On a personal note: people on the Chatterbox have noticed a steep increase in price for the book in Europe, Corion for example, got it from German online bookshop for under €37 and now the price on the same site is around €54.50. Ouch. I can only wonder whether there's a connection.

I guess those among us who couldn't get their hands on a copy just yet (like me), will have to show some patience.

Comment on Book "Higher Order Perl", first edition, is sold out

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Re: Book "Higher Order Perl", first edition, is sold out by jonadab (Parson) on Jun 19, 2005 at 11:26 UTC
Yeah. What's probably going on here is, the publisher decided how many copies to print the first time around by thinking along the lines of, "A major Perl book would sell a lot of copies, but this guy Dominus is an unknown author, so let's play its safe." Of course, MJD is not an unknown in the Perl community, but a book publisher would understandably not put a lot of stock in that. (The communities surrounding most programming languages are rather smaller than the Perl community for one thing, and for another, a book publisher thinks more in terms of traditional forms of author fame, such as having written previous books that sold x number of copies, which on the whole is the right way for them to think, incidentally; now and again they underestimate demand, but that can be fixed with a second printing.) "In adjectives, with the addition of inflectional endings, a changeable long vowel (Qamets or Tsere) in an open, propretonic syllable will reduce to Vocal Shewa. This type of change occurs when the open, pretonic syllable of the masculine singular adjective becomes propretonic with the addition of inflectional endings." — Pratico & Van Pelt, BBHG, p68	[reply]
Re: Book "Higher Order Perl", first edition, is sold out by ghenry (Vicar) on Jun 19, 2005 at 11:31 UTC
Yeah, I read that and was surprised that there were not more than 4000 made. I wonder how many of the buyers are on the mailing list? Walking the road to enlightenment... I found a penguin and a camel on the way..... Fancy a yourname@perl.me.uk? Just ask!!!	[reply]
Re^2: Book "Higher Order Perl", first edition, is sold out by merlyn (Sage) on Jun 19, 2005 at 11:57 UTC
For my first edition Camel, O'Reilly printed 10,000 copies, expecting that this would be the inventory for an entire year. They sold out in the first month! I think we hit about 30,000 copies in that first year, but that's a long time ago, so I might be mistaken. On the other hand, 4000 copies would be more copies than some other books that you've definitely heard of had ever sold. So, 4000 is not an unreasonable number for a "fresh out of the gate" author, even if we've all heard of him. -- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker Be sure to read my standard disclaimer if this is a reply.	[reply]
Re: Book "Higher Order Perl", first edition, is sold out by cog (Parson) on Jun 20, 2005 at 10:03 UTC
I guess those among us who couldn't get their hands on a copy just yet (like me), will have to show some patience. OTOH, you'll probably get an edition with lots of errors corrected.	[reply]