book kieretsu, was Re: learn.perl.org

On Sat, 5 Oct 2003, Iain Truskett wrote:

> The main reason O'Reilly books are promoted is that there
> are so many of them and so many of them are great books.
>
>     http://books.perl.org/publishers?sort=count
>
> [....]
>
>   * Prentice Hall [....]
>   * Wiley [....]
>   * Addison-Wesley [....]

Actually, the Prentice Hall & Addison-Wesley publi****ng houses are
divisions of Pearson Education, and I seem to remember Pearson trying to
buy Wiley a couple of years ago as well.  Pearson owns other publishers,
too:  Peachpit Press, New Riders, Que, Sams, and more:

    <http://www.pearsoned.com/professional/technical.htm>

....I'd swear they bought Wiley a couple of years ago, but Pearson's site
doesn't seem to mention a connection between the two. Wiley's site doesn't
mention it either: <http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/Section/id-146.html>.

Okay, so Wiley might or might not be part of the mix, but PH & AW
(actually, AWL [Longman]) are definitely part of the same company.


Which suggests that books.perl.org is tracking O'Reilly, Pearson, and
"other". Of those, 47 are ORA books, 32 seem to be from a Pearson company
(maybe more if there were some indies that aren't as indie as I thought),
10 Wiley, Nearly half are O'Reilly & a third (maybe more if they bought
Wiley) are Pearson.

There is, in short, much less diversity than it seems.


Next week's demonstration: media consolidation & cross-owner****p... ;)


-- 
Chris Devers