How Big is Flex? Judging by Book Sales, I’d Say Pretty Big

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Programming Flex 2 There are so few metrics to go by when judging how popular a language is, but I think this is a good sign for Flex. Chafic Kazoun and Joey Lott’s book, Programming Flex 2, is currently 21 on the Amazon.com Computer Book List. I’ve heard it’s gotten as high as 15. This is a ranking, updated hourly, of the most popular books on the site.

Part of this may be due to the fact that Adobe has been helping folks out when they add Flex 2 to their wishlists, but that doesn’t necessarily skew the data; people are still interested in Flex books. I think this is a really good sign.

[tags]Flex, Programming Flex 2, Chafic Kazoun, Joey Lott, Amazon[/tags]

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  • http://thecourtsofchaos.com Robin Harrison

    Given the 22% increase in ActionScript book saleslast quarter it will be interesting to see what the O’Reilly stats have to say for this year as Flex and Apollo pick up steam, and long pending books are finally released.

  • http://blog.digitalbackcountry.com Ryan Stewart

    Hey Robin, you’re right. It looks like they’ve started the series (http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2007/05/state_of_the_co_6.html) but the programming language data isn’t there yet. I’m salivating at the thought of it being available soon :)

  • http://www.flex.org dmendels

    Hi Ryan,

    “Part of this may be due to the fact that Adobe has been helping folks out when they add Flex 2 to their wishlists”

    This was a super fun idea, but not material when it comes to making a best seller. Mike randomly picked a few handfulls of people. Just a fun gesture. Maybe we’ll do it again. But we aren’t buying hundreds or thousands of books and skewing these numbers :)

    You are right–Flex is hot. Many of the first generation of great books are just out or just coming out. Growth of downloads is exponential.

    As far as I can see (and it is too early, so as far as I can guess) all of the growth in interest in RIA and even the new offerings from Microsoft (and today, Sun?) are just increasing the size of the pie, not taking away from Flex at all. Good times for developers, and designers. It is a time of explosive innovation. The next step comes soon!

    -David
    Adobe

  • http://www.iambright.com Rey Bango

    Man, maybe someone at Adobe will show me some love especially after I just purchased 2 Flex books:

    http://www.reybango.com/index.cfm/2007/5/7/My-FLEX-Journey-Continues-Books-on-the-Way

    Hey David, be sure to have some fun right here my man:
    http://www.amazon.com/gp/registry/wishlist/4YVHGFXBZPWT/

    Told ya I was going to do it Ryan. ;)

  • http://subvert.ca/ Geof Harries

    I’ve always just stuck with the free LIvedocs from Adobe. Is there a benefit, besides the usual “open a chapter and read it on your couch”, to buying a book? Every topic and lesons seems to be here as far as I can tell.

  • http://www.jeffryhouser.com Jeffry Houser

    Speaking as an Author…

    I don’t think these Amazon.com numbers have any relation to sales, just the number of page views.

    For quite some time my Beginner’s CF book was the number 1 result if you searched for ColdFusion. Yet I don’t think sales ever topped 7K total (5K after returns). 20K was the break even point at the time.

    I’m not going to look up the ‘real’ sales numbers since it’ll just depress me.