Internet Chicago
Internet New York
Internet San Francisco
Publisher:
Hayden Books
Co-author: Cory Low
ISBN:1568300387 / 1568300395 / 1568300409
Price: $12.00
Publication Date: 10-94
101 pages
Status: Obsolete
Purchase From: Amazon
(New York only from the looks of it)
Related Web Pages: Amazon
(Chicago), Amazon
(New York),Amazon
(San Francisco),
The Internet city books, of which there were only three, were far more interesting
than their absymal sales would have indicated. The idea was simple. Take some of
the basic Internet information from Internet Starter Kit for Macintosh, 2nd Edition,
and add to it information that would be of interest to someone who either lived in
a certain city or who might be considering moving to that city. We included (or rather,
Cory Low did, since he did much of the resource location) Web pages, mailing lists,
and newsgroups of local interest, and we also included a section listing local Internet
service providers.
The books were meant to be the Internet equivalent of small travel handbooks and
they suffered from two major problems:
- First, they were too early. There simply weren't enough local resources and Internet
providers, even in Chicago, New York, and San Francisco, to make the books seem compelling.
Subsequently, the concept has been used by companies like America
Online, Microsoft, and Yahoo
in online projects aimed at specific locations.
- The second problem these books faced is that the Macmillan Computer Publishing
sales and marketing folks were totally flummoxed by them. Why would a bookstore in
Austin, Texas want to carry an Internet book about New York? And, they thought, if
you lived in one of the target cities, wouldn't you know how to find these resources
yourself? (Or at least, that's my guess as to their reasoning - I have no particular
insight into the murky minds of sales and marketing people.) In essense, these books
couldn't be sold by the Macmillan sales staff.
I'm actually a little depressed that the Internet city books did so badly because
I firmly believe that the Internet has become a valuable local resource in the last
year or so, and if these books had only come a little later and had full marketing
support, they might have been able to succeed.