NYCPHP Meetup

[Adam Maccabee Trachtenberg]

On Tue, 14 Oct 2003, Chris Shiflett wrote:

> It still doesn't explain
> this:
> 
> http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/top25.html
> 
> I see a couple of Perl books on there, and sometimes there are as many as four.
> However, I have only seen a PHP book make their top 25 once, and it was
> Rasmus's. Of course, if buyers had any sense, it would be PHP Cookbook. :-)
> 
> But, I'm happy to hear that PHP is a growing book market. That means good
> things to come for people like us.

This logic assumes computer book sales are divided equally among
titles and publishing houses. That is false.

In *many* topics (all but the biggies, like Java and JS) *one* book
sells the lion's share of all the copies. In Perl, it's Larry's book,
so Programming Perl is really high on the O'Reilly Top 25. In PHP,
it's Luke and Laura's book. So, Programming PHP and PHP Cookbook are
lower down on the O'Reilly book list.

But, I believe Luke and Laura far outsell Larry over all and if you
sum the total number of Perl and PHP books, PHP wins.

-adam

PS: This doesn't account for all those years when Programming Perl was
selling like gang busters and there were no PHP books. This is just
w/r/t recent sales, like 2001 - 2003.

-- 
adam at trachtenberg.com
author of o'reilly's php cookbook
avoid the holiday rush, buy your copy today!