From: Pete Natali
Reply To: pjnatali@worldnet.att.net
Sent: Thursday, October 30, 1997 11:08 AM
To: Duncan, Ray
Subject: Comment on
"Not on the Shelves:
A Review of Non-Existent Books"
Folks:
Great column! I hope that Gregory Wilson will continue to update it as his mood moves him.
One request: please note in the text which articles have been added or revised each time such a change occurs.
Best wishes.
Pete Natali
San Mateo CA
Dear Pete:
Your wish is our command! Gregory has recently augmented
"Not on the Shelves"
with four additional virtual reviews. They are marked under the "Contents" heading with a
icon.
-- Ray Duncan
From: Suzanne Rotondo
Sent: Tuesday, October 7, 1997 11:35 AM
To: Duncan, Ray
Subject: Sybex books
Hi,
I'm an Editor at Sybex books and I am curious about why our books seem to be routinely overlooked for review on your site? Oddly enough, this applies to both reviews of some of our wildly popular books, as well as even mentioning that our books have arrived as potential candidates for review. Is there someplace we should be sending copies of our key books that we may have missed?
I would appreciate any indication of where the problem may be.
Thanks very much in advance,
Suzanne Rotondo
Acquisitions & Developmental Editor
Sybex
Dear Suzanne:
We list all books that are received by us in the "books received" section. If your books are not listed there, they didn't get to us.
As for the issue of which books get reviewed, it is the decision of the individual reviewer to pick the books they find most interesting and worthy out of the huge number of books that come in over the transom. I write a lot of the reviews myself and I don't make those decisions based on the publisher or a book's "wild popularity," but on the quality of the writing, production values, timeliness, uniqueness, etc. For the most part I avoid product-specific books since those have such a short useful life.
-- Ray Duncan