O’Reilly, the leading computer book publisher, has posted the results of a detailed analysis of the state of the computer book market in 2008. What both surprised and delighted me is the revelation that my book, The Essential Guide to Dreamweaver CS3 with CSS, Ajax, and PHP is listed by O’Reilly as the number 3 best seller in what it calls the Large Programming Languages category.
O’Reilly classifies a programming language as “large” if more than 100,000 copies of books dedicated to that language sell during the year. That’s the total for all titles, not how many copies of each book that sell. According to O’Reilly’s data (gathered from Nielsen BookScan, which tracks roughly 70% of book sales in the USA), books on PHP were the third most popular category, selling a total of more than 173,000 units. The bad news is that 129 titles were competing for the same PHP book market, making the average sales for each title a meagre 1,340. I haven’t seen my sales figures for Q4 2008, but I’m pleased to say that the figures for the first three quarters put my sales well above the average. However, they’re not all that big, which is why I was surprised to find my book at number 3. O’Reilly lists the top 5 as follows:
- Pro C# 2008 and the .NET 3.5 Platform
- Sams Teach Yourself PHP, MySQL and Apache All in One
- The Essential Guide to Dreamweaver CS3 with CSS, Ajax, and PHP
- Head First Design Patterns
- PHP 6 and MySQL 5 for Dynamic Web Sites: Visual QuickPro Guide
It’s interesting to note that three of the top 5 are about PHP, confirming my belief that PHP is a strong language that’s here to stay for a long while.
With so many books competing for a relatively small market, you might wonder why authors like me continue to write. Researching, writing, and editing a book takes many months of hard work—and all for the sake of a couple of dollars royalty on each copy sold. Part of the answer lies in the fact that I like writing. I did it for many years in my career as a radio and TV journalist; it’s what I’m good at. It’s also nice to see my work in print. In TV and radio news, I might have been seen or heard by millions, but once the news bulletin was over, that was it. Although computer books have a relatively short shelf life, they certainly last longer than a news bulletin; and I hope my readers get practical value from them.
The other thing that drives many of us to write is the hope that, one day, we’ll hit the big time. O’Reilly has also analyzed the top three best-selling writers of computer books: David Pogue, Scott Kelby, and Andy Rathbone. Between them, they account for nearly 6 percent of the computer book market. Andy Rathbone, who comes in at number 3, sells more books each year than I have sold since I started writing about PHP and web design five years ago. David Pogue, the biggest seller, clocked up an impressive 190,000 copies last year. I’m sure he’s delighted—and let’s be honest, he deserves success because he’s a good writer—but it pales into insignificance alongside JK Rowling, the creator of Harry Potter.
Anyway, thank you to everyone who bought my book and helped me reach number 3 in the Large Programming Languages category. And thank you to O’Reilly for doing all the number crunching.
David,
Congratulations! You’re an excellent author and have a great approach to PHP. I love reading your PHP books =)
I always recommend your titles to friends diving into PHP.
Congrats! my bookshelves are littered with dozens of books that I’ve started and pitched (usually around page 100) and yours are consistently the ones I read to the end. Your writing is spot-on and your methods really work for me. Its not for everyone, but for those who ‘get it’ its a valuable tool
Keep up the great work!
Thank you very much for this book. It has opened up very many more doors that I was previously unaware of. Dreamweaver was great but through this book I have started to realise how powerful it is. I frequently refer to the Essential Guide as my DW Bible.
Your book is excellent and does a number of things for me. I enjoy your writing style, it encourages me to greater heights, shows me a huge number of things that can be done and enables me to use the techniques for other tasks. I have really enjoyed the book. Thanks again.
Thanks for your online tutorial on linking to specific Spry tabs. Your fix was VERY straightforward and easy and I will definitely look out for your books and publications in the future! Cheers,
First of all, I consider you to be one of most ‘very careful author’, care whenever your code / teaching works or not. I respect that because that shows you respect the person who’s willing to take their money out of the wallet. (Another one I know is Larry Ullman.)
But O’Reilly must be…(what the hell?). Didn’t they know that Julie C Meloni is one of the ‘master of code error?’
No offense David. Your book deserve the place (1st, 2nd, 3rd, it doesn’t matter because your book works) but placing Julie C Meloni on the 2nd place, shows that O’Reilly is up to something (usually business purpose – making money in a way most people didn’t aware that they’re making it.)
@ardmad. Thanks for your kind words about my books. However, I must point out that O’Reilly was simply reporting the sales results of computer-related books, as recorded by Nielsen BookScan. I have never seen any of Julie C Meloni’s books (which are published by Sams, and in no way related to O’Reilly), so I can’t comment on their quality.
However, as a general principle, I think there is a serious problem regarding computer book publishing. Too many books are competing for a relatively small number of sales. As a result, the royalties an author earns from a book are too small for most people to survive by doing nothing else but write. That leads to chapters being rushed. Mistakes should be picked up during the editorial process, but most editors are not technical experts.
If fewer books were produced, and more attention paid to quality control, everyone would benefit. The readers would get good quality books, the authors would get a better return for the time and effort spent on writing a book, and the publishers of good books would also make a profit. Unfortunately, publishers seem hell bent on flooding the market with as many titles as possible, in the hope that a handful will be profitable enough.
Hi David,
I’m frustrated by not being able to access the source code for this book. When I try to open the zip file of source code, my computer says it’s empty. When I try to open it instead of saving it, I get an error message saying it’s an invalid request.
Since you don’t put the source code in your book, I’m reliant on getting this information and the image files from you. Can you please fix this problem!
Thank you!
Steve
I have just done a test download from http://foundationphp.com/sourcecode/essential_guide_DWCS3.zip. There’s nothing wrong with the ZIP file. I suggest trying a different browser.
Thanks very much for taking the time to reply. It opened in Safari, not in IE. All the best.
Hey David, I am using your tutorials on insert, update, and delete pages and I am finding them very helpful. Thanks. I am doing a 2 page insert form. The first page houses the insert form for things like name, address, city, state, etc . . . The second page houses the insert image upload form, and the accept and decline terms and conditions checkboxes along with the submit button, and then all that info is passed through the database(phpmyadmin) to the finish(result) page.
So far, the insert form does successfully transfer information typed from the insert form page1 to the database and then the user is taken to the insert image upload form.
Now here is the problem. The image upload form does not take files to the database. I am having a hard time making a connection between the database and the image upload form.
This is where your skilled expertise comes in. Is there any wizard in dreamweaver that has an image upload form? I guess that would take some of the guess work out of the coding dilema I am currently wrecking my brains over. Any tips would be greatly appreciated.
Thank,
Bobby
No, Dreamweaver doesn’t have any built-in ability to upload images. Uploads are controlled by the PHP $_FILES superglobal. You can find out about PHP file uploads in the PHP manual at http://docs.php.net/manual/en/features.file-upload.php. If you’re willing to spend a bit of cash, you’ll find that my new book, “Adobe Dreamweaver CS5 with PHP:Training from the Source” covers file uploads in great detail using the Zend Framework.
It’s generally a bad idea to store images in a database. You should normally upload them to your file system, and store the details of the images in the database.
Hey David,
Thanks for the response. Since I’m using CS3, can the stuff in the book “Adobe Dreamweaver CS5 with CSS. . .” work with the CS3 Dreamweaver program? And will it show how to let users upload their images dynamically? Also, I agree with you, the image files themselves are not being saved in the database, just the detils. How would I make the image upload form and the regular form work together? I guess I am asking how to make a multi page form that has an upload form in it also?
You can use the PHP in my CS5 book with Dreamweaver CS3, but you won’t get the benefit of the vastly improved code hints that CS5 offers. My CS5 book devotes only one chapter to server behaviors. Most of the rest of the book is devoted to showing how Dreamweaver CS5 has become an advanced development environment for PHP. Roughly half the book uses the Zend Framework, which makes image uploads and other commonly requested functionality very easy. You don’t need any specific software to use the Zend Framework, but Dreamweaver CS5 makes it easy to use because Site Specific Code Hints automatically generate code hints for third-party code libraries such as the Zend Framework. With CS5, you get hints for the long class names used by Zend Framework. With CS3, you would need to type them in laboriously by hand.
My book, “PHP Solutions”, explains in detail how to upload images. However, a new edition of the book is due out later this year with greatly improved code. There’s nothing wrong with the code in the current edition. So, if you’re in a hurry, the first edition of PHP Solutions is fine. Otherwise, look at the CS5 book or wait for the new edition of PHP Solutions.