What to call Kamakura, 9 Dan Showdown etc...

[mohsart]

They are clearly parts of a series of books, so what to call that book series?
Go Seigens Jubango Games? (I'll use that until corrected)

/Mats

[Redbeard]

They are clearly parts of a series of books, so what to call that book series?
Go Seigens Jubango Games? (I'll use that until corrected)

/Mats

I call them the Awesome series.

How about the GoGoD Archive Series? Most of those books started as GoGoD articles and Old Fuseki vs New Fuseki even uses "from the GoGoD archives" as part of the title.

[John Fairbairn]

Go Seigens Jubango Games?

If you want to stay in my good books (as it were), don't ever use jubango. Ten-game matches, please (or just matches).

The books mentioned are indeed part of planned match series, but the stuttering book market caused me to slow down.

For the corpus as a whole, "Books from the GoGoD archives" is our own preference. (The phrase was Bill Cobb's.)

[mohsart]

Thanks for the swift reply, John.
The question if the smaller "Books from the GoGoD archives" are indeed parts of the same series was another one I was meaning to ask.
I could see it both ways, I mean they are all from the GoGoD archives but if a player buys The Retirement Game and expects half a kg of Go Seigen I'll bet he'll be disapointed.

Point taken about jubango, may I ask why?

/Mats

[John Fairbairn]

Thanks for the swift reply, John.
The question if the smaller "Books from the GoGoD archives" are indeed parts of the same series was another one I was meaning to ask.
I could see it both ways, I mean they are all from the GoGoD archives but if a player buys The Retirement Game and expects half a kg of Go Seigen I'll bet he'll be disapointed.

Yes, but he will have paid only a fraction of the price of the big books, and surely booksellers mention how many pages a book has and what format it is?

FWIW I myself class Kamakura/9DS/Final Summit as a Go Seigen match series, and the others (including the one to appear soon) as a Famous Games series. But Bill Cobb did not want to get into labelling them in that way and I didn't kick up a fuss about it.

Point taken about jubango, may I ask why?

It's not normally nice to answer a question with a question, but just this once can I say "Could you refer to the actual books - Final Summit page 161 - and the many discussions on the forums? I don't want to repeat it all again.

[Oroth]

I personally like the ring of 'Go Seigen's Goban: The Jubango Kifus'

[mohsart]

surely booksellers mention how many pages a book has and what format it is?

Indeed, at least I do, the example was a bit extreme, if not just plain wrong.
My meaning was more that the "big books" are easier to see as parts of a series; not only by the size but also that they have the common theme of the juba... eheh... of Go Seigens Matches.

FWIW I myself class Kamakura/9DS/Final Summit as a Go Seigen match series, and the others (including the one to appear soon) as a Famous Games series.

I think I'll go with your namings. :-)

Final Summit page 161

Thanks, I see what you mean now. I guess it's like when someone tells me he "won by two moku". Sorry for my ignorance.

/Mats

[emeraldemon]

Any chance you'll tell us what future books (if any) you have planned for this series? Maybe the Hashimoto Utaro matches? (Maybe something about the Hashimoto-Fujisawa games could be thrown in?)

[John Fairbairn]

Any chance you'll tell us what future books (if any) you have planned for this series? Maybe the Hashimoto Utaro matches? (Maybe something about the Hashimoto-Fujisawa games could be thrown in?)

The Hashimoto-Fujisawa match is already available as html on the GoGoD CD. I have no plans to bookify it.

There are currently two books with Slate & Shell awaiting funds to pay for printing: The Insha Game (Shusai-Karigane) and Jowa's Three Brilliancies. These are part of the Famous Games series.

I have a manuscript ready for Gateway To All Marvels (Xuanxuan Qijing) but it is very big and problem books don't sell well, so we have been sitting on this, but after further discussions with Bill Cobb at Santa Barbara, he remains inclined to publish it as a "service to the go community". That was before the end-of-congress sales splurge he was hoping for. I don't know yet if that happened, so this is still up in the air. However, one idea we explored, and I think rather favoured for this book, was to publish a limited subscription edition. This may also be the way forward with other books.

I have done substantial work on two other books in the Go Seigen match series. The Survivors covers the matches with Hashimoto and Iwamoto (the title refers to all surviving the atomic bomb). The other book as yet lacks a title but is on the matches (six and ten games) with Sakata. But I haven't done anything on these for a long while. When the book market stuttered I switched to smaller, i.e. cheaper, books, but as yet I don't know how much difference that has made, although I can say I have slowed even further.

The book market problem is probably mostly to do with the economy, but it is Europe that is mostly affected. iPads and so on probably have had little effect as of now, but may not help the situation in future, and I gather piracy, especially in Russia, is something of a problem (for go books as a whole, not necessarily me).

As I say above, maybe the future for printed books lies in subscriptions. If enough people who really care subscribe, they can get an exclusive, personalised and better produced book (e.g. hardback), which can also be personalised (overtly or covertly) to inhibit piracy.

Judging by e-sales, there is as yet no incentive for authors to switch to e-book format, and in my case (and, I believe, some others) I would not want to do that anyway with the present state of production software. Far too much work required for a niche market.

[tchan001]

Maybe it should be called something like "The Slate and Shell John Fairbairn Commentary Collection"

[daal]

The Hashimoto-Fujisawa match is already available as html on the GoGoD CD.

Of course I found a bunch of other interesting stuff while trying to find this, but...I give up. Where is it?

[John Fairbairn]

Of course I found a bunch of other interesting stuff while trying to find this, but...I give up. Where is it?

On the portal page click on Tournaments and Matches. On that page click Matches at the top (or scroll down). Under Individual Matches, click on the icon next to Hashimoto-Fujisawa.

Maybe it should be called something like "The Slate and Shell John Fairbairn Commentary Collection"

No. This implies the commentaries are by me. they are ultimately by a multitude of pros, though of course they are not translations. And in any case, Mats later explained he was trying to winnow the books according to size, not give a collective title. For that, Tales of an iGrumpy Old Man might be better.

[tchan001]

Tales of an iGrumpy Old Man

"iGrumpy" sounds more iPad than Slate and Shell. lol

[gowan]

From what John Fairbairn says problem books don't sell well. From my own observation on this message board much of the discussion concerns solving go problems. This seems like a contradiction of a sort. It seems that people spend a lot of time working on go problems but they don't buy problem books. Is that because problems are easily available on line for free? I do not find free on line problems to be as useful as those in a book because there is rarely any commentary. I own more than two dozen problem books and I still buy them occasionally (e.g. Cho U's books).

[John Fairbairn]

It seems that people spend a lot of time working on go problems but they don't buy problem books. Is that because problems are easily available on line for free?

If I am quoting Bill Cobb correctly, there are two main factors - competing internet resources and (maybe most important) the fact that problem books are usually aimed at certain grades. This segments an already small market.

I suspect there are other factors, such as people being more willing to sell off problem books once they been through them, or club libraries offering mostly this kind of book for loan. In some cases, quite a few people will already have the Oriental version of the book. Also, problem books tend to be big on diagrams and small on text. Maybe this creates a feeling of resistance to what have to be relatively high prices in a small market.