[tlhIngan Hol] wishlist for TKD 3ed

[De'vID]

On Fri, Apr 28, 2023 at 11:20 PM Will Martin via tlhIngan-Hol <
tlhingan-hol at lists.kli.org> wrote:

> Are you kidding?
>
> I have a couple TKDs written in languages I don’t speak.
>
> I have The Original one (2nd Edition, but it was the first one I bought)
> that has all my annotations in it. What it DOESN’T have is a front cover,
> since that fell off decades ago. I have one or two in relatively pristine
> condition.
>
> If another edition comes out, I’m buying at least 2, and I’m not all that
> active anymore. I need one to use and write annotations in, and one to keep.
>

I don't doubt that there are people who will buy two or even more copies of
a new edition of TKD. What I'm saying is that one should be aware of
self-selection bias: if you are on this mailing list, the chances are that
you are actually highly *atypical* for the average purchaser of TKD.

I guarantee you that the number of people who care about why the aspect
suffix sometimes appears on the second verb of a sentence-as-object
construction is simply miniscule compared to the number of people who want
to figure out what Worf or L'Rell said in some episode (like the way the
1992 edition lets you figure out the dialogues from Star Trek III, V, and
VI), or who want to have a ready bunch of Klingon phrases for a Klingon in
some game. The publisher is simply not interested that people who care
about how aspect suffixes work will buy more than one copy of the book --
and I say this as someone who cares a great deal about how aspect suffixes
work. What they care about is whether it will appeal to people who follow
the currently running shows or who play ongoing licensed video games.

I'm literally willing to wager on this: whether or not the publisher will
be convinced to print a new edition is on the line. My pitch is going to
be: fans of the current shows, recent movies, and licensed games will buy a
new edition of TKD; they would've bought a copy already, if only it wasn't
so obviously outdated, so you're leaving money on the table by not updating
it. (In fact, we know the publisher is aware that the outdatedness is
hurting sales, because they removed the cover that prominently features
Kruge from Star Trek III and says on the top "Including New Material from
Star Trek TNG and Star Trek VI", and replaced it with a plain red
"timeless" cover.)

If you think this is the wrong pitch and that I should focus on people who
will buy multiple copies instead, prove to me with data that people who buy
multiple copies make up a significant portion of the book's sales. I'm
willing to entertain that this might be true, but I'm not making that claim
to the publisher unless I have facts to back it up.

-- 
De'vID
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