I’m pleased to say that a 10th anniversary edition of my book with Ike Chuang on quantum computing has just been released by Cambridge University Press (Amazon link).
Apart from expressing some authorial pleasure, the point of this post is to let people who already have a copy of the book know that the book hasn’t been substantially revised. Please don’t buy another copy under the impression that it’s an all-new edition. If you actually see a copy in “real life”, the publisher has gone to some effort to make it clear that the changes to the book are largely cosmetic – we have a new foreword, and afterword, and several people kindly contributed new endorsements, and the cover has changed a bit. But I’d hate to think that someone who already owns a copy and who orders their books online will buy a copy under the impression that the book has changed a lot. It hasn’t.
Why release a 10th Anniversary edition? The suggestion came from the publisher. So far as I understand publishing (which is not well), CUP was keen because it lets them make a renewed push on the book with booksellers. Keep in mind that the publisher’s primary customer is the booksellers, not the reader, and it’s to buyers at the booksellers that they are actually selling. I don’t understand the dynamics of sales to booksellers, but it seems that releasing an edition like this, with new marketing materials and endorsements, does result in an uptick in sales. Rather pleasantly, it also drops the recommended retail price substantially (from US 100 to US 75), so if you’ve been put off by the price, now is a good time to buy. (Admittedly, the way Amazon discounts books, it ends up not making that much difference if you buy from Amazon.)