There are at least two new King's Gambit books on the horizon before my own book hopefully will be available some time in late spring 2012.
First in the row is John Shaw for Quality Chess with simply 'The King's Gambit':
The book is scheduled for October 2011. However, it has now been delayed so many times (and even changed author) that I take the announced publishing date with a grain of salt.
I have more confidence in the content. Quality Chess have sometimes delivered products with surprising gaps in the material but their analysis has always been excellent.
Next out is Timothy Taylor for Everyman Chess with 'Attacking Chess: The King's Gambit'. Judging from the Everyman site it hasn't yet got a cover design. The book is scheduled for January 2012 (in EU) and as far as I know Taylor has generally kept his deadlines. His analysis tend to be lighter and somewhat less trustworthy QC's but often thought provoking. I look forward to seeing his effort.
How will the existence of these two influence the sales potential for a third book? I must admit that I don't know. One point in my favour is the fact that I probably will be able to list these competing books in my bibliography. Reviews and publishing order will certainly influence the sales numbers. My gut feeling is that those who already love the King's Gambit will open their pockets and buy all new material but maybe the financial uncertainity even will influence this part of the economy?
Another factor is the position and reputation of the chess publishing companies. How easy will it be to convince London Chess Center, Niggemann, New in Chess or Chess4Less to promote a book from a new publishing company. I am eager to find out!
First in the row is John Shaw for Quality Chess with simply 'The King's Gambit':
I have more confidence in the content. Quality Chess have sometimes delivered products with surprising gaps in the material but their analysis has always been excellent.
Next out is Timothy Taylor for Everyman Chess with 'Attacking Chess: The King's Gambit'. Judging from the Everyman site it hasn't yet got a cover design. The book is scheduled for January 2012 (in EU) and as far as I know Taylor has generally kept his deadlines. His analysis tend to be lighter and somewhat less trustworthy QC's but often thought provoking. I look forward to seeing his effort.
How will the existence of these two influence the sales potential for a third book? I must admit that I don't know. One point in my favour is the fact that I probably will be able to list these competing books in my bibliography. Reviews and publishing order will certainly influence the sales numbers. My gut feeling is that those who already love the King's Gambit will open their pockets and buy all new material but maybe the financial uncertainity even will influence this part of the economy?
Another factor is the position and reputation of the chess publishing companies. How easy will it be to convince London Chess Center, Niggemann, New in Chess or Chess4Less to promote a book from a new publishing company. I am eager to find out!
7 comments:
Hi, did you notice the article on the Kings Gambit from Abby Marshall on ChessCafe?
Yes I did.
The presentation is OK, but too many unannotated game fragments for my taste. However, for me the big question is whether there are new ideas or valuable analysis. I have not had the time to look deeply into it, but I suspect there is little new.
Hi Sverre
Welcome back.
I've just finished helping Chess Stars with the English text of their new black repertoire book based on the Petroff. The author GM Sakaev includes a chapter on playing Black against the King's Gambit which I expect will be of interest to you.
Hi Phil,
That's interesting. I am compiling a King's Gambit bibliography and the easiest part seems to be the dedicated KG books. Much harder to identify, and in some ways more interesting, are the repertoire books offering advice for Black. In recent books 2...Bc5 has been a popular recommendation - possibly due to space considerations.
I see the Petroff book is expected to be available on September 10th (http://www.chess-stars.com/). Do you have more reliable information?
Sorry Sverre, I have no info about the availability of the new Sakev repertoire book. All I did for them was try to remove the worst excesses produced by their process of translation from Russian to English by a Bulgarian.
I was slightly surprised by Sakaev's choices - as you say, black rep. books tend to choose less critical lines than 3 Nf3 g5 or 3 Bc4 d5 4 Bxd5 (4 exd5 Qh4+ 5 Kf1 Bd6) Nf6 5 Nc3 Nxd5 6 Nxd5 g5.
brinkka2011 says: Hi, I love your weblog. Is there some thing I can do to obtain updates like a subscription or some thing? Im sorry Im not acquainted with RSS?
brinkka2011,
Every day I receive at least a few comments that I am not sure whether are spam or not. They generally start with a few nice words about the blog and then a few general remarks that are not directly related to chess or the specific content of my blog. In contrast to more obvious spam posts, they do NOT contain links or references to other web sites.
Your question is a lot like these comments and is well outside my field of expertice. However, I will try to answer as I would like to make this blog as accessible as possible for those genuinely interested in chess.
At the very bottom of my blog, you will find a link with the "Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)". I believe this will help you get a notification when the blog is updated.
This is a generic blogger feature and not anything I use actively myself (although I suppose I have enabled it in my Blogger profile). So if it doesn't work you should do some research on the net. Maybe Blogger.com is a good place to start?
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