On 10 Oct 2005 13:38:30 -0700, "Taylor Kingston"
wrote:

Parr is simply waging his usual campaign of innuendo and slander.
Learn to ignore him. Your thinking will be clearer, and your valuable
time will not be wasted.

Shoot, is that all it takes? And here I'd been depending on caffeine
and a Day-Timer.

Phil Innes wrote (Mon, 10 Oct 2005 17:53:14 GMT):

Is chess cafe letting its readers read the book?

_
Certainly. I have been able to read, for example, the
Schiller rule book.

_
Phil Innes wrote (Mon, 10 Oct 2005 17:53:14 GMT):

Mostly people who don't want to see his books sold
cite poor quality of content - as if indeed they were
censors!

_
Or people concerned about the quality of what USCF
sells.

_
Phil Innes wrote (Mon, 10 Oct 2005 17:53:14 GMT):

A market place is where the /customer/ makes the
decision to buy or not.

_
And the seller decides what he or she wishes to sell.

_
Phil Innes wrote (Mon, 10 Oct 2005 17:53:14 GMT):

you are writing like a censor.

_
Or a person concerned about the quality of what USCF
sells.

_
Phil Innes wrote (Mon, 10 Oct 2005 17:53:14 GMT):

Its okay! But why pretend otherwise?

_
USCF choosing not to sell a book is not censorship.

Bingo. New Ideas In Chess is out of print, which is probably why Chess
Cafe doesn't carry it. (Sadly, this is the case with a lot of Dover's
catalogue.) In fact, if memory serves me right, there currently isn't
an Evans title in print.

As far as Keene and Schiller are concerned, I'll note that *both* have
stated that they've written books over a weekend. Even if you're
completely unaware of the content of either's works, that alone should
send you running away from any and every title written by the two. And
you probably should, with the exception of Keene's book on the Modern
(out of print and perhaps out of date) and his book on Aron
Nimzowitsch, a very well-reviewed book which - what do you know! -
chesscafe.com stocks.

Actually, Amazon uses a fairly murky formula. One professor had an exercise in
which he timed the purchases for his class to occur at the same time, briefly
pushing his book to #1 on Amazon, even though it was nothing like the best
selling book. I have seen my own book regularly float between 250000 and 2
million, depending on whether someone had ordered it from Amazon recently and
whether the publisher had given a sales figure update.

In any case, it is impossible to figure sales figures purely from Amazon ranking.

Jerry Spinrad


In article .com, "Louis Blair" writes:
| David Ames wrote (10 Oct 2005 08:08:40 -0700):
| Go to amazon.com and look up any book that they
| have offered for sale. You will find the sales RANK
| listed. NOT the quantity -- in case anyone may
| have been confused on that point.
|
| _
| A good point. Is there any indication anywhere of the
| precise procedure used to determine the rank? Is it
| sales over the past month, sales over the past year,
| sales over all the time for which computer records exist,
| or what? Also, how are sales measured? By book, by
| the amount of money paid by buyers, by the amount
| of profit, or what?
|

Why doesn't Chess Cafe sell Harry Potter? There is even a little chess in it. Is
this censorship?

I like Mike Murray's idea of a click-through to Amazon, but this could be
enhanced by a separate listing of quality chess books which are not sold at
Amazon. You would be surprised at how many books are not sold through Amazon. The
Moravian Publishing books are a good example.

Jerry Spinrad

On Mon, 10 Oct 2005 21:17:40 +0000 (UTC),
(Jeremy Spinrad) wrote:

Actually, Amazon uses a fairly murky formula. One professor had an exercise in
which he timed the purchases for his class to occur at the same time, briefly
pushing his book to #1 on Amazon, even though it was nothing like the best
selling book. I have seen my own book regularly float between 250000 and 2
million, depending on whether someone had ordered it from Amazon recently and
whether the publisher had given a sales figure update.

In any case, it is impossible to figure sales figures purely from Amazon ranking.

Jerry Spinrad

Good information. Any insight on how Barnes and Noble does their
ranking ?

Mike Murray wrote (Mon, 10 Oct 2005 10:53:32 -0700):
Parr claims that insiders are aware of an outright blacklist.
_
I wrote (10 Oct 2005 13:42:06 -0700):
A google search for 2005 Parrthenon rgcp notes containing
the word, "blacklist", comes up empty.

_
Mike Murray wrote (Mon, 10 Oct 2005 13:51:50 -0700):

Search for "boycott" and you'll get some results.

_
Well, I found a 6 Oct 2005 22:25:45 -0700 Larry Parr note
with the title, "THE BOYCOTT WAS (IS) REAL", but I
do not see anything in there about "insiders".
Here are some sample paragraphs:

VVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV
This writer's book with GM Denker "The Bobby Fischer I
Know and Other Stories" is still verboten despite excellent
reviews, and the vast majority of Ray Keene's works are also
off limits. A couple of GM Larry Evans' books published by
Cardoza have returned to the Cafe after a lot of battling.

The boycott was real enough, and just as the
Oxford Companion blacked out the Soviet boycott
against Korchnoi, a similar blackout would have
occurred re the works of certain authors except for
the pressure applied on this and other forums.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Jeremy Spinrad wrote (Mon, 10 Oct 2005 21:17:40 +0000 (UTC)):

Actually, Amazon uses a fairly murky formula. One
professor had an exercise in which he timed the
purchases for his class to occur at the same time,
briefly pushing his book to #1 on Amazon, even
though it was nothing like the best selling book. I
have seen my own book regularly float between
250000 and 2 million, depending on whether
someone had ordered it from Amazon recently and
whether the publisher had given a sales figure update.
_
In any case, it is impossible to figure sales figures
purely from Amazon ranking.

_
And what about the Barnes and Noble numbers? Is
it known precisely what they indicate?

I expect using these numbers is the wrong approach; both B+N and Amazon want to
measure what books are currently "hot". We would prefer some yearly sales figure.
I imagine that someone from the book industry would be able to tell us how to get
this sort of figure.

Jerry Spinrad

In article .com, "Louis Blair" writes:
| Jeremy Spinrad wrote (Mon, 10 Oct 2005 21:17:40 +0000 (UTC)):
|
| Actually, Amazon uses a fairly murky formula. One
| professor had an exercise in which he timed the
| purchases for his class to occur at the same time,
| briefly pushing his book to #1 on Amazon, even
| though it was nothing like the best selling book. I
| have seen my own book regularly float between
| 250000 and 2 million, depending on whether
| someone had ordered it from Amazon recently and
| whether the publisher had given a sales figure update.
| _
| In any case, it is impossible to figure sales figures
| purely from Amazon ranking.
|
| _
| And what about the Barnes and Noble numbers? Is
| it known precisely what they indicate?
|

On 10 Oct 2005 14:33:52 -0700, "Louis Blair"
wrote:

Mike Murray wrote (Mon, 10 Oct 2005 10:53:32 -0700):
Parr claims that insiders are aware of an outright blacklist.
_
I wrote (10 Oct 2005 13:42:06 -0700):
A google search for 2005 Parrthenon rgcp notes containing
the word, "blacklist", comes up empty.

_
Mike Murray wrote (Mon, 10 Oct 2005 13:51:50 -0700):

Search for "boycott" and you'll get some results.

_
Well, I found a 6 Oct 2005 22:25:45 -0700 Larry Parr note
with the title, "THE BOYCOTT WAS (IS) REAL", but I
do not see anything in there about "insiders".

Now, perhaps Lous Blair has some suggestions about how a real boycott
would be implemented by outsiders, without "insiders" knowing about
it....

Clever devils, those outsiders.