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Hello Rob-<br>
<br>
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite>As you know, the Vtk book has gone
out of print. There are however<br>
a number of universities out there (undersigned included) that
teach<br>
a scientific visualization class and use the Vtk book as part of<br>
the material.<br>
<br>
Why has the book gone out of print? Is there a new edition coming?<br>
If so; when? If not; should we bug the publisher until we get them<br>
to print again?</blockquote><br>
Here's the situation regarding the textbook (<i>The Visualization Toolkit
An Object-Oriented Approach to 3D Graphics </i>published by
Prentice-Hall<i>...</i>these comments do not apply to the <i>VTK User's
Guide</i> published by Kitware). Much of this is speculation, so no
promises for the future.<br>
<br>
Prentice-Hall prints many thousand books per run, when they run out, they
choose whether to reprint, cut a new edition, etc. This decision is
completely out of our hands....we are not privy to their decisions and
had no idea that the book was going out of print. (This is why at Kitware
we choose to publish the <i>User's Guide</i> ourselves; we are not at the
mercy of the big publishers and can revise, reprint, etc. the book as
often as we like.) I know there is enormous pressure on the publishers to
make money, and they tend do that best when they come out with a new book
in a hot field. I suspect this may be why they are currently not pursuing
the third edition, or reprinting (at least that we know of)....although
we might think visualization is hot, the publishers do not appear to
share this view :-(<br>
<br>
But not all is lost! We have been in contact with PH and are in
negotiations to obtain rights to the book. If we can do this, we will
have the ability to revise, reprint, and update it as necessary. I
believe that this will be a big plus because we can update the book to
reflect the many changes to the software, improve the exercises (maybe
create an exercise answer book?), and do a lot of things that people like
yourself have suggested. If we get the rights, we will likely start with
an initial run and make few if any changes to the text (just to get it
out there), and then begin a serious overhaul. The price point will be
similar (can't say for sure until we talk to the printer) and we are
considering working with Amazon to stock the book so they can ship it
quickly at a lower cost than we can....at a minimum we will offer it on
our estore like we do with the <i>User's Guide</i>, including offering
volume discounts.<br>
<br>
We very much appreciate your support and persistence in this matter, it
is motivating us to make this happen as soon as we can. I am very sorry
for your inconvenience in this matter, as I said earlier the book going
out of print came as a complete surprise to us as well. Once we hear
something definite about obtaining rights, etc. we will let you know. I
cannot say for sure when this will happen, we are working with corporate
lawyers which is almost always a bottleneck. Once we do get the rights,
things will move very rapidly on our end.<br>
<br>
Sincerely,<br>
Will<br>
<br>
<br>
<x-sigsep><p></x-sigsep>
William J. Schroeder, Ph.D<br>
Kitware, Inc.<br>
469 Clifton Corporate Parkway<br>
Clifton Park, NY 12065<br>
will.schroeder@kitware.com<br>
1-518-371-3971 x102<br>
1-518-371-3971 (fax)<br>
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