Quote:

---

To Auriga, on "Sky Vistas":

Thanks for your comments about "Sky Vistas" on July 29. Yes, Tony's review did have a limited negative impact upon sales of the book. However, two things about the book blunted that impact. First was the academic reputation of the publisher, Springer-Verlag of Vienna: literally hundreds of academic libraries worldwide bought the book. Second, as a "speciality" book, its sales are more dependent on the word-of-mouth judgement of specialists like yourself than of a single review.
I myself pay little attention to the judgements of reviews (although I confess I've written 2 or 3 reviews for "Astronomy"!). I look to them strictly for information about what's in a book and how it approaches its subject, not on whether the reviewer found the book "good" or "bad." But I enjoy a well-written review for its own sake--Even if I know the book and think the reviewer completely wrong about it, I really enjoy good writing.
Though there is an article in the September "Astronomy" by Gerald Rhemann and me, I don't often write for the magazines anymore, and the main reason goes back to something a couple of the correspondents mentioned earlier in this discussion: that for more than a decade the magazines have been de-emphasizing observing articles. The whole emphasis of my writing, beginning in "Binocular Astronomy" but even more so in "Sky Vistas" is describing what can be seen in certain types of instruments and explaining the astronomical reasons why each object appears the way it does or is located where it is.

Craig Crossen

---

Post Extras