Lyudmil Tsvetkov wrote:Currently, the option for purchasing 'The Secret of Chess' from my site via Paypal is disabled, and I will update the site in a while.
I must say, that I am more or less happy with Amazon, in general they are doing what they say.
On the other hand, PayPal proved to be simply crooks.
3 months on, I have to ascertain there is not much feedback/interest in my book. I see 3 possible causes for this:
1.) The book is bad
2.) People can't understand it
3.) The book is written in high style/high knowledge style, different from traditional conceptions, and most people prefer low knowledge/routine instead of high knowledge
For myself, I am not entirely clear what the main cause is.
What do you think?
I like your book Lyudmil , anyone just getting into chess programming should buy it, the SF development team probably think they are too far advanced to get anything out of it, but I agree with Ed, any chess programmer should take a look, and should be able get a nugget or two or more. It's little bit over the top for anyone getting into chess - it's more like a school text book, and most people do not like to work that hard to get better at something. The only problem is that the universe of people that want to program chess for fun in the universe is very small. Even the general chess book world is niche market with authors dominated by well known GM's and the like. For me personally , I appreciate the larger print - but then I'm in my 60's. It would a be nice to have epd file of all the diagrams in your book if available.
I'm thinking about buying your other book as well at some point in the future.
Later,
Michael
Thanks Michael.
I appreciate your stance and support at the moment.
We have quarreled a bit in the past, but then you used to make too frequently MB versions 30 elo stronger than current SF dev.
I hope you get something from it for MB, but I guess at this level it is more about inherent redundancies in the code rather than anything else(SF, for example, will never make anything useful out of baclward lagorithms described in the book, for the simple reason that they have very strange definitions of backward pawns).
I understand your concerns about fens, however the diagrams were meant just as illustrations to the specific terms.
A lot of work to do, I will think what I can improve, in the meantime I am happy someone is still enjoying it.
Everything runs fine, just that I got another 1 star customer review.
Again from a person without a verified purchase, that is one, who most probably has not read the book at all.
People are reading my messages on the forums, and on those forums, including my beloved talkchess, I have both foes and friends.
The foes are reading and posting reviews.
I wonder where my friends are?(still looking for Carl Langan, but he is unavailable, either by private message or otherwise)
...oops, sorry, just got too excited, it is unfair, after all, for all the hard work, to get that assessment.
Maybe people are unfamiliar, but everybody on Amazon, having an account, can post reviews, even if the purchase(most probably IP address) can not be verified.
Lyudmil Tsvetkov wrote:Everything runs fine, just that I got another 1 star customer review.
Again from a person without a verified purchase, that is one, who most probably has not read the book at all.
People are reading my messages on the forums, and on those forums, including my beloved talkchess, I have both foes and friends.
The foes are reading and posting reviews.
I wonder where my friends are?(still looking for Carl Langan, but he is unavailable, either by private message or otherwise)
...oops, sorry, just got too excited, it is unfair, after all, for all the hard work, to get that assessment.
Maybe people are unfamiliar, but everybody on Amazon, having an account, can post reviews, even if the purchase(most probably IP address) can not be verified.
Again, where are my friends?
Well hopefully you will see my review in the near future:
Lyudmil Tsvetkov wrote:Everything runs fine, just that I got another 1 star customer review.
Again from a person without a verified purchase, that is one, who most probably has not read the book at all.
People are reading my messages on the forums, and on those forums, including my beloved talkchess, I have both foes and friends.
The foes are reading and posting reviews.
I wonder where my friends are?(still looking for Carl Langan, but he is unavailable, either by private message or otherwise)
...oops, sorry, just got too excited, it is unfair, after all, for all the hard work, to get that assessment.
Maybe people are unfamiliar, but everybody on Amazon, having an account, can post reviews, even if the purchase(most probably IP address) can not be verified.
Again, where are my friends?
Well hopefully you will see my review in the near future:
I can only confirm that.
I am so happy!(I am an impulsive person, you know)
I hope everybody on this forum reads that, Mike is a good person, after all.
well, apart from the foes, some friends showed up too...
I am so happy, the first review for 'The Secret of Chess' has appeared,
and by none other than Australian GM and book reviewer David Smerdon: http://davidsmerdon.com/?p=1970
Lyudmil Tsvetkov wrote:I am so happy, the first review for 'The Secret of Chess' has appeared,
and by none other than Australian GM and book reviewer David Smerdon: http://davidsmerdon.com/?p=1970
David is one of the nicest guys in the Australian chess scene, and I had the pleasure of losing a French defense against him once (it was in an otb blitz tournament, but the result seemed to prove your assertion that the French is indeed lost haha )
I thought his review was pretty fair, and I agree with him that although your focus seems to be on closed (and therefore more "anti-computer") positions of which computers play weaker, there is some useful stuff in there too.
Just get a native English-speaker editor and some good marketing man!
Anyway, I might have a look and review for my site at some point too.
Lyudmil Tsvetkov wrote:I am so happy, the first review for 'The Secret of Chess' has appeared,
and by none other than Australian GM and book reviewer David Smerdon: http://davidsmerdon.com/?p=1970
David is one of the nicest guys in the Australian chess scene, and I had the pleasure of losing a French defense against him once (it was in an otb blitz tournament, but the result seemed to prove your assertion that the French is indeed lost haha )
I thought his review was pretty fair, and I agree with him that although your focus seems to be on closed (and therefore more "anti-computer") positions of which computers play weaker, there is some useful stuff in there too.
Just get a native English-speaker editor and some good marketing man!
Anyway, I might have a look and review for my site at some point too.
David is awesome.
Unfortunately, not many open-minded people like him around.
'...get a native English speaker ditor and a good marketing man'.
That already makes 2 of them.
Thanks for your input, Brendan, one should feel pity for me: I just learned about publishing on Amazon quite recently.
