Atari Corporation - Business is War book?

[dhedberg]

Does anyone have any information about the "Atari Corporation - Business is War" book, i.e., the sequel to the "Atari Inc. - Business is Fun" book? Wasn't able to find any information about it on the authors' website. The first book was released over 2 years ago...

Thanks,
Daniel

[MrMaddog]

Might be coming out next year last I heard... Meanwhile you can read Commdore: Company on the Edge which gives you an insight on how Jack Tramiel would run Atari Corp. just like he did with Commodore.

[dhedberg]

Might be coming out next year last I heard... Meanwhile you can read Commdore: Company on the Edge which gives you an insight on how Jack Tramiel would run Atari Corp. just like he did with Commodore.

I did and what a great book! Highly recommended! I was so looking forward to the second part about the Amiga years when all of the sudden it was cancelled. What a pity!

[calimero]

Sam Tramiel (or Leonard) highly regard "Commdore: Company on the Edge"

[DarkLord]

I did and what a great book! Highly recommended! I was so looking forward to the second part about the Amiga years when all of the sudden it was cancelled. What a pity!

I would have liked to have read that one too.

[MrMaddog]

Might be coming out next year last I heard... Meanwhile you can read Commdore: Company on the Edge which gives you an insight on how Jack Tramiel would run Atari Corp. just like he did with Commodore.

I did and what a great book! Highly recommended! I was so looking forward to the second part about the Amiga years when all of the sudden it was cancelled. What a pity!

Yeah, I know... I'll have to find another book that talks about the Amiga years. Might check out "The Future Was Here" but it won't mention the other Commodore computers like the C-128 or their PC's.

It's a shame that the 16-bit computer era is barely documented, especially with the Amiga & ST being popular in Europe.

[Frank B]

Might be coming out next year last I heard... Meanwhile you can read Commdore: Company on the Edge which gives you an insight on how Jack Tramiel would run Atari Corp. just like he did with Commodore.

I did and what a great book! Highly recommended! I was so looking forward to the second part about the Amiga years when all of the sudden it was cancelled. What a pity!

Yeah, I know... I'll have to find another book that talks about the Amiga years. Might check out "The Future Was Here" but it won't mention the other Commodore computers like the C-128 or their PC's.

It's a shame that the 16-bit computer era is barely documented, especially with the Amiga & ST being popular in Europe.

The first edition has a lot of content on the Amiga years. I've not read the second edition yet.

Frank

[MrMaddog]

The first edition has a lot of content on the Amiga years. I've not read the second edition yet.

Frank

The second edition only goes up to when jack Tramiel left Commodore but there's more detailabout the pre-Amiga years. First edition is not available in e-book format...

[dhedberg]

The first edition has a lot of content on the Amiga years. I've not read the second edition yet.

The second edition only goes up to when jack Tramiel left Commodore but there's more detail about the pre-Amiga years. First edition is not available in e-book format...

Right, and as far as I can tell by reading the reviews of the first edition, the Amiga years aren't covered that well in it.

[Frank B]

The coverage is ok. It is a shame the second volume was cancelled

[DarkLord]

The coverage is ok. It is a shame the second volume was cancelled

Agreed - I'd have loved to have seen as much coverage for the Amiga side as everything
that came before...

[martyg]

We released the cover for the second book, Atari Corp. - Business Is War, on July 2nd. We're not publicizing a release date yet as we're planning on going out one more time to California for a big round of final interviews sometime this Fall.




We're also in the process of working on the second edition of the first book. The first book had a deadline coinciding with getting it out in time for the 40th anniversary when we really could have used another six months for editing a book that large. Though the constant barrage of people getting pissed off and demanding it's release (and complaining every time we pushed it back) played their role in that as well, which is ironic considering a bunch of those people are also the ones who complained about the editing and said we should have taken longer.

The changes being done for the second edition of the first book are going beyond simple grammar fixes, I'm doing rewrites of sections to make sure the narrative voice/character of the first quarter of the book is solid throughout the book. Plus we're taking several of the intermission chapters and putting them as appendixes instead, since some people who didn't get they were intermission chapters complained about the jumping back and forth on the timeline. We're also adding an index and adjusting some of the photos to account for Amazon's b&w printing process (since some of the European printed ones came out a bit dark from what we were told). There will be some minor updates of info. I'm even going through some of our past interviews and such and rediscovering a few gems here and there that I think should have made it in but were overlooked in the mad rush. Plus some things that upon further reflection don't really need to be there are being cut out to account for the other changes (considering we still have a size limit for Amazon/Createspace). We also had a new cover done for the book as well by the same artist that did this cover.

We're also not going to do pre-orders this time around, Amazon payments really screwed that up for us, either not reporting sign-ups correctly to us (and eventually getting lost) because of the length in time between the pre-order and when we were able to publish, or not releasing funds until after we opened the book for regular order. Plus again, it's print on demand so in order for us to get copies to mail out we need to order them like everyone else. Which means we have to open up book ordering to the public in order to get copies, which further pissed off the people who pre-ordered because people were going online able to order their book while they were still waiting for theirs. And then we were winding up having to fill a lot of these out of pocket because the money hadn't been released to us yet (not to mention the fortune in shipping since again we pay more than someone actually ordering the book directly through Amazon since we don't get the supersaver shipping like they do, we're paying full shipping to Europe and elsewhere).

[dhedberg]

Sounds great! Thanks for the work you guys put into these books! The Business is War book will be the most interesting one for most people on this forum I would assume! I'm for sure really looking forward reading it! Please keep us updated! Thanks!

[dhedberg]

Does anyone have any updated information on when (or if) this book will be published?

[schmudde]

Does anyone have any updated information on when (or if) this book will be published?

Obviously Marty would be the man with the best knowledge.

I believe Curt, the co-author, decided to prioritize the delivery of the Atari 7800 expansion module over shipping the book. The 7800 expansion still hasn't shipped. Actually, I found their posting from 7/January:

We regret to inform you that work on our followup book "Atari Corp. - Business Is War" is being pushed back to later this year to allow us to focus all resources on finishing the the Atari 7800 XM Expansion unit.

~ https://www.facebook.com/AtariIncBusine ... 5257746529

I'm not on Facebook, so if there has been another update, I have not been privy to it.

/ü

[nada-san]

I am looking forward to this. The cover looks very promising indeed! Seems to be the right way to take time for the release.

[jd]

Did this ever get finished?

[dhedberg]

Nope, it's supposedly still in the works, but I have no hope that it'll ever be finished and released. It's very unfortunate. I've said it before and I'll say it again: I'd be prepared to pay some serious money for an in-depth book on Atari Corp.

[DarkLord]

Ditto!

[penguin]

I guess Curt wants to finish the XM first (which was publicly tested at last year's ejagfest by the way). I do believe the book is still coming out - no one who has invested so much work wants to leave it unfinished.

[dhedberg]

Nobody would be happier than me if they do finish that book!