[thelist] Breaking away from "Standard" Fonts

[Christian Heilmann]

> Annoying to some people possibly - but a bad business/design decision?
>
> "The number one selling book in the U.S. for 2005 was Harry Potter and the
> Half-Blood Prince. The book sold 7.2 million copies throughout 2005 and its
> first day's sales totaling 4.1 million outsold other books' yearly totals."
>
> If I can expect those kinds of sales numbers from bad business decisions -
> sign me up. ;)

Well, I do think the book's content and track record of it being a
part of a series might have something to do with these figures, not
that they sold it in a special format. If you look at charity shops or
"bargain book stores" you'll hardly find the soft cover versions, but
the massive first edition hardcover ones.

I don't know the figures of O'Reilly's safari online ebook store, but
I do guess they make quite a bundle by swinging both ways -
electronically and ink on dead tree. It is a matter of audience.

I will call my editor now and see if we could rename my book from
"Beginning JavaScript with DOM Scripting and Ajax" to "Harry Potter
and the Order of the DOM" or "Harry Potter and the JavaScript secrets"
to have proper comparison figures. I just hope there is no copyright
problem there. Maybe "Hairy Problems and the order of the DOM"?