The Saga of the New Adobe ColdFusion Anthology

by Michael and Judith Dinowitz

You know you've done something right when a book company comes to you and asks to publish your book. This is essentially what happened when Apress asked us to do a ColdFusion anthology. At Max 2008, Michael and I met Steve Anglin, the Assistant Editorial Director at Apress. We introduced him to the journal and he was very enthusiastic about the prospect of publishing an anthology of Fusion Authority articles. What excited him, I think, was a remark that Kevin Lynch made about ColdFusion and the cloud in the press briefing at that conference. Lynch said:

"I use ColdFusion myself. ColdFusion is a great way to build the most efficient back-end applications that reside on the cloud. And when you use Flex together with ColdFusion, it's even better."

I could see that this quote made a big impact on Steve, and it may have convinced him that ColdFusion was a viable technology for Apress to cover. Using this information, he presented the book idea up the chain as a cloud-focused book, and the original concept included a section with several articles on cloud development with ColdFusion. In the editorial process, we found it difficult to get good, knowledgable articles about developing with ColdFusion in the cloud because the process was very new and not clearly defined. The cloud concept was dropped, leaving room for a more diverse set of articles.

At the end of April, after a few months in development, Apress released what was the first ColdFusion 9 book in print. The Adobe ColdFusion Anthology is now available through Amazon and other online vendors, on bookstore shelves, as well as the Apress website. The ebook is only available through Apress, and Fusion Authority readers who use the discount code FUSIONAUTHORITYQYO will get 50% off.

The anthology contains an updated collection of articles originally published in the Fusion Authority Quarterly Update and represents the best of FAQU. It covers many important ColdFusion features, such as Application.cfc, ColdFusion Components, creating presentations and images with ColdFusion, and fine-tuning your server settings and your database and SQL usage. It also covers integration with other technologies such as PDFs, BlazeDS, and Microsoft Exchange. And of course, what ColdFusion book would be complete without covering object-oriented programming, design techniques and some of the major frameworks? If I've whetted your appetite, then please check out the complete table of contents on Amazon.com.

Other Books

Being first implies that there is a second and third, and very soon after the release of the Anthology, the first volume of Ben Forta's ColdFusion 9 Web Application Construction Kit was released. His second volume is already out, with the release of Volume 3 pending. We are expecting John Farrar's ColdFusion 9 Developers Tutorial from Packt Publishing some time within the next month. In addition, a number of Jeff Peters' ColdFusion and Fusebox books have been released through Amazon as well.

Sales Rank and Promotion

With the book out for over a month, we're proud to say our Amazon sales rank in the ColdFusion category of Web Development is usually #2. We were number 1 until the latest version of Ben Forta's WACK books came out (Congratulations, Ben!). Sales rank at Amazon is calculated hourly, so the numbers can change as newer books arrive.

This high sales rank is at least partially due to the efforts of some of our authors and supporters, who have blogged or tweeted about the book or put reviews on Amazon, for which I thank them sincerely.

A final note

I don't yet have numbers on how many copies have sold (I expect I'll get those from the publisher in the next few months). But on the Amazon page, it says that 81% of the people who viewed this title bought it. If the Anthology, and the other major ColdFusion books out there, can do well, it can only help the community and the spread of ColdFusion.

Judith Dinowitz is the Master Editor-in-Chief of the House of Fusion magazines and journals, where she enjoys serving up ColdFusion and Flex goodness on a weekly and quarterly basis.

Michael Dinowitz is a longtime ColdFusion expert (since early 1995) and is well known for his troubleshooting, experimentation, and ability to take complex topics and break them down into simple elements. He is President of House of Fusion, Publisher of Fusion Authority, and a founding member of Team Allaire/Macromedia/Adobe Community Professional.

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