More NXT books coming...

Sorry, no details, but I can tell you that more NXT-related books are coming. For many of us who write these books, however, there are always pluses and minuses.

I was reading through some reviews of the last book, One Kit Wonders, and the latest review caught my attention... and made me realize that when it comes to NXT books, you just can't win :)

Feedback on Idea Book (both in reviews and from emails and blog comments) was supportive, but there seemed to be a larger group of readers who felt that the book was heavy on theory and needed more robots - "less talk, more building" seemed to be the consensus.

So... One Kit Wonders got rid of the theory and focused on just robots and the programs to run them. The latest review was 4-stars and stated "This book shows you how to build and program 10 robots . . . that is pretty much it" - - - 10 robot BIs and PIs and "that is pretty much it."

All these comments beg the question: What does the NXT robot owner want in a book?

Any my response: Whatever it is, it cannot be satisfied with one book. (And according to Malcolm Gladwell in his book "Blink," the consumer really does NOT know what he/she wants most of the time anyway.)

Readers want color -well, color will either raise the price of the book (fewer sales and less incentive by publisher to do more) or reduce the page count (fewer robots, fewer sales, and less incentive by publisher to do more).

Readers want more robots - BIs take up a large portion of pages, reducing the number of pages for text/discussion/training.

Readers want more discussion/training - Screenshots of NXT-G software take up a large portion of pages, reducing the number of pages for robot BIs.

I enjoy writing books on NXT and I think many of the other blog contribs feel the same way... but it's very difficult to gauge what our readers want because NXT users are such a large and diverse group in both skills and interests.

True story: I had someone (an adult) come up to me about 6 months ago at a robotics gathering in Atlanta - this person told me "I didn't like Mayan Adventure because it was too short. You need to write the next one and have maybe 10 or more robots."

I bit my tongue because what I wanted to say was "Mayan took about 6 months to write, went through numerous tech reviews for accuracy, and 10 robots would have taken over a year to get done. Oh, and it was written for kids. You write the next one."

Okay, enough griping... my goal with this post was to share with our readers that more books are in the works, but also to inform that we can't make everyone happy. We'll do our best, though... and hopefully you'll like what we come up with...