> >On Fri, 14 Jun 1996, TERRY KING wrote:
> >> As you know
> >> Focal Press consider that with the Scopick and the Gum Oil and the
> >>alternative
> >> light book, the market is saturated. Any comments ?
>
> In recent months I have had a lot of offlist discussions about this and
> some people mentioned that they had the feeling that Focal had been
> scraping the bottom of the barrel for a while. Something to do with the
> choice of what they publish and the quality of the research I guess.
As I have written to Terry in email, I think that the problem (which is
not unique to a single publisher) is that publishing is a business
first and what gets published is secondary to the business concerns.
This means that people making decisions about technical titles are
generally not subject matter experts. Personally, I find that sad, but
the fact of the matter is the publishers I've worked with who were most
sensitive to content are also now out of business. Add to that the fact
that publishing isn't the most highly paid profession (and the turnover
that implies), and the quality of a given book is more dependent on the
author than the imprimatur.
Carson Graves
carson@ileaf.com