Monday, November 2, 2009

interesting intro, about like old HP products

We called this a "rolling start" in the old days. The book was "available" from Stanford U Press on October 9 supposedly, told to us as October 19, shipped from Amazon that day to pre-orders, receiving it on Oct. 20. Orders to Amazon have consistently filled within five or six days, sometimes much sooner. Barnes/Noble dropped the price to $18.90 for members on Oct. 24; yesterday and today, they canceled all of those orders, saying that they "cannot obtain books despite strong efforts" which means they are losing money on each, and don't want to fill them, I think. Their new price = $28.00, $25.20 for members. Amazon today filled morning orders by evening time, at $20.47, down from $23.10 last week. And Borders stocked the book today in some stores. Kepler's and Stanford bookstore have had it for two weeks.

And today, Stanford publicists sent out a press release about it, to about forty correspondents with various books, magazines, and newspapers, along with the promise of a book "sometime". HP used to introduce products this way, somewhat leisurely and dependent on who was where. Ah, well...

We've stayed pretty consistently in the top 12,000 or so for Amazon for a couple weeks, with three categories usually earning a Top Five for new releases -- "High Tech" (8th overall, 4th in new releases), Manager's Guide to Computing (13th overall, 3rd in new releases), and Company Profiles (42nd overall, 9th new releases) at 11,139 tonight at 9:06pm. All things considered, pretty good for "unknowns" with an "old, tired company"

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