@MNb Well, the points I made should probably have come with the proviso 'in theory'.  In practice the results can be somewhat different! 

Well, my (vaguely educated!) guess would be that coverage of a 'minor' line in the Najdorf would still be rather useful.  Virtually all of those lines have a reasonable body of theory around them; and have been receiving 2700 attention of late.  For instance, there has been some rather serious developments in the line 6 h3, such as 6...e6 7 g4 b5 8 Bg2 Bb7 9 0-0 b4 10 Nd5!   

Therefore a .pdf of supposedly lines might still be considered a bit too much of a give-away.

@Gorath

The .pdf samples are rarely of some really 'meaty' mainline material.  They are usually an example of the quantity/quality of the analysis; which leaves you wondering just how good the material is on the lines you really want to see.  The result is then that you are more tempted to buy the book.

I agree. I like Ftacnik's style in this excerpt, but it seems illogical to promote a book about the Najdorf with a chapter about the Grand Prix.

Here's a quick update as promised a while back. I left the office a few hours ago, at which point the book was just about ready to go for printing, with just a few trivial final changes waiting to be made. Barring any extraordinary circumstances, it should now be with the printer. It will take roughly three weeks for the book to be printed and delivered to our warehouse, and another few days to reach the various retailers around Europe.

I noticed a couple of issues that cropped up in the discussion, so here is my take on them.

Firstly, I saw there was some talk about lines with ...e6 instead of ...e5 (for instance after 6.Be2) not being a 'real' Najdorf. When producing a repertoire book you can never please everyone, so I do not see much point in debating this issue at length. However I will just point out that Ftacnik is a serious expert on the Scheveningen set-up (he has been playing it for close to 30 years at GM level), and frankly I think we would have been crazy to throw almost three decades of accumulated knowledge away and force him to recommend a line in which he has very little experience. So come on people, let's appreciate what the author has to contribute and take the opportunity to broaden our chess knowledge by learning about something different. 

Secondly, about this idea of postponing the book in order to wait for Khalifman's next volume. Forgive me for saying so, but this would indeed have been a "no brain" step for us to take. Yes, it would have been nice to see what Khalifman has in store after 6.Be3 e6 7.f3. Okay, with that being said, let's think of the drawbacks:
1) We would p!ss off all the customers who have pre-ordered (and paid for) the book and have patiently been waiting for it. 
(By the way I don't know if this site has some kind of auto-censoring facility for words like "the p-word", hence the slight adjustment. And by the way if you find that offensive then please accept my sincerest apologies...and p.off...no just kidding! Anyway back to the subject at hand...)
2) We would p!ss off all the other customers who are waiting to buy the book.
3) We would p!ss off the chess retailers around Europe and across the world, who know they will do great business with a GM Repertoire book.
4) We would have to spend time and resources monitoring developments taking place in all the variations featuring in the other 18 chapters.
5) Finally, QC would lose a significant amount of revenue by delaying. 

Not a brilliant plan, is it? So instead we publish ASAP and promise a free update on our website to counter any problem lines arising in Khalifman's book. (And incidentally, how many publishers would even offer to do that?) 

Having dealt with those two subjects, let me just say I'm happy to see that the great majority of comments here have been positive and supportive, so I hope the book lives up to what are undoubtedly high expectations.

Cheers,
Andrew

To suggest that the Starting Out books from Everyman are not time dependent is silly. Also, to suggest that their authors are on time is unrealistic. Clearly the reason why they have to have these long delays is because they have to create a buffer for when the authors are not on time.

However, this does not relate to the main problem, which is that if you force an author to be on time (at times it can be done), you have to accept a much lower quality outcome way too often. 

It also does not relate to the problem that we don't announce a fixed date, but a projected date. We are clear on our site that we are not making full promises and that we will not compromise on quality. 

About the Khalifman book - actually there are some logistics related to waiting another month; we also publish other books. To be able to offer lower postage rates to the chess dealers, we publish our books in twos. Also, we try to keep 3-6 weeks between publication dates. With 24 new books or so coming out in 2010, waiting 6 weeks because of 1 possible line is a lot. (not to speak of the extra work in updating the rest of the book as well). It is much better to have an update if needed on our website.

F22 wrote on 06/29/10 at 09:36:54:


I find it very puzzling why there are so many complaints about delays. QC is apparently doing all they can to produce the books and deliver them quickly. The authors need time to do the best of the content. 

I'm very happy about the QC books I have. Excellent contents and nice layouts. I also like that the QC staff take their time to do their blog and answer questions here. Keep up the good work!