Subject: Re: "On Lisp" by Paul Graham From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.net> Date: Sat, 10 Nov 2001 15:23:29 GMT Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Message-ID: <3214394607432982@naggum.net> * Bob Bane <bane@removeme.gst.com> | Something like this sounds ideal for On Lisp and the like. The third printing of On Lisp was performed by a 600 dpi industrial laser printer, of a kind that was intended used for on demand publishing. I have forgotten the details, but the person I talked to at Prentice Hall was quite excited about it (but probably more so that anyone cared enough to call and ask :). For unpredictable demand and small runs, it was a good idea and significantly cheaper than offset, but the quality is not quite so good (offset is somewhere between 1500 and 1200 dpi) and you can actually feel the ink on the page. I have no idea why they have not continued along this line of production. In any case, if there is demand for this book, anyone is free to make a call to the publisher and ask how many guaranteed sales they need to do a new printing. There should be some business potential in this. Somebody could make a deal with some big sales channel like Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble and facilitate pre-ordering and make that guarantee stick. Has this been tried? If so, why did it fail? /// -- Norway is now run by a priest from the fundamentalist Christian People's Party, the fifth largest party representing one eighth of the electorate. -- Carrying a Swiss Army pocket knife in Oslo, Norway, is a criminal offense.