Date: Wed, 9 Sep 1998 11:07:32 -0700 (PDT)
From: Lisa Mann <lisam@oreilly.com>
To: cool@eklektix.com
Subject: UNIX Nutshell Cracks Half-mMillion Mark

For immediate release
For more information contact: Lisa Mann
(707) 829-0515 ext. 230    lisam@oreilly.com

UNIX in a Nutshell Cracks a Half Million Copies in Print

While Windows 98, antitrust actions, and all things Microsoft continue
to dominate headlines, the UNIX operating system keeps quietly and
ubiquitously driving Web hub servers and corporate networks. Despite
prevailing wisdom heralding the demise of UNIX, the venerable operating
system seems to be not only holding but actually gaining ground. It's
in the numbers. UNIX sales climbed a higher-than-expected 20% this past
year.

"UNIX In a Nutshell" -- the first book published in the popular In a
Nutshell series -- marked a milestone last month, surpassing 500,000
copies in print plus six years on the Publishers Weekly computer book
bestseller list. This title has achieved incredible staying power
seldom seen among computer books. "UNIX is not sexy or hot or new, but our
book remains a bestseller,"  observes Tim O'Reilly, founder and
president of O'Reilly & Associates.

"UNIX can be a little bit obscure and inconsistent, and it's also very
terse. Even experienced users are always having  look things up," says
Frank Willison, O'Reilly's editor-in-chief of technical publications.
"This book  lasted this long because our goal is to give users
everything they need to know about UNIX ... and nothing more. For some
people, this is the only book on UNIX they have. It was designed to be
a reference book to keep on one's desk."

Indeed, says the author of the book's second edition, now a contract
technical writer in Silicon Valley, "it's amazing how many times I see
that book on people's shelves here in the Valley." A former O'Reilly
editor and staff writer, Gilley is pleased to report that when people
find out he  it, "the feedback I get is always very positive. I've
heard anything negative."

Meanwhile, other early O'Reilly books, including "Learning the UNIX
Operating System" and "Learning the vi Editor", have also sold hundreds
of thousands of copies, with continued strong sales -- even fourteen
years after their original publication. In an industry filled with
books whose shelf life is counted in months, O'Reilly's UNIX titles are
the envy of every computer book publisher.

The Collaborative UNIX Evolution
While competing operating systems were designed by individual
companies, UNIX evolved in the technical  community. Because its source
code was widely available to universities, thousands of individual
developers contributed features and utilities that solved specific
problems, often in new and unexpected ways. The resulting system is
incredibly powerful, versatile, and robust. This same collaborative,
evolutionary approach to system design also led to the development of
TCP/IP and many of the key Internet technologies. It's no surprise that
O'Reilly's  books on Internet technologies, such as DNS and Bind and
TCP/IP Network Administration, are perennial bestsellers, with hundreds
of thousands of copies in print.

Although open development of UNIX itself was choked off in the
mid-1980's by AT&T's rigid licensing, the ferment collaborative
development moved on to Linux and Berkeley UNIX derivatives such as
FreeBSD. These operating systems continue to be reinvented and built
upon by programmers, administrators, and computer scientists around the
world.  Utilities that began as contributions to UNIX, such as Perl,
have taken on a life of their own and are now central not only to UNIX
administration but to the Web and, increasingly, even to closed systems
such as NT as a way to get around those systems' limitations.

Getting Under the Hood
The open, malleable quality of "open source" technologies is fertile
ground for the kind of books that O'Reilly publishes-- books that give
users the power to "get under the hood"and make changes. "UNIX in a
Nutshell boils down the subject to the kind of information that's
looked up again and again, even by experienced users," Tim O'Reilly
observes.  "When the demand for these compact reference books became
clear to us, we started building on the success of UNIX In a Nutshell,
using the same 'fat-free' format to produce books on other topics."
Many titles in the  Nutshell series -- most notably "Java in a
Nutshell" and "Windows NT in a Nutshell"-- became instant bestsellers,
and they show every sign of having the same kind of staying power.

New titles, such as "Windows 95 in a Nutshell", "Photoshop in a
Nutshell", and even "AOL in a Nutshell", give users of proprietary
operating systems and applications the same kind of deep, practical
information that O'Reilly offered the UNIX world. What further
differentiates the In a Nutshell series is the $19.95 price tag. Most
computer sell for twice as much, yet they have a far shorter shelf
life. "The vast majority of computer books out there are fly-by-night,"
Tim asserts. "They're rushed to market to capture the first wave of
interest in a new product, and they're often incredibly superficial.
Forty dollars for a book you can use for only a few weeks is not a good
value."

Responding to Real Needs
The popular In a Nutshell series fills a need overlooked by  other
publishers who are beholden to the fast-moving computer industry's high
rate of product change. "One of the failures of the rest of the
computer publishing industry is that they tend to respond to the
obvious big trends," Tim observes. "The latest and greatest stuff gets
all attention. But we've always tried to listen to the people who are
in the trenches so that we can provide what they need."

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