We've been getting questions about Baseball Prospectus 2012… goodness, have we been getting questions. Here's an update on what you can expect from the 17th edition of the New York Times bestselling baseball annual.
Ship Date
The main question we're getting is "when can I get the book?" Baseball Prospectus 2012 is heading to the printer this week. Our publisher is expecting preorders through national accounts to start shipping between Feb 14 and Feb 21.
In the Book
Baseball Prospectus 2012 has some really cool stuff, including
- essays on all 30 teams
- in-depth coverage of over 1600 players
- a compelling author list
- Kevin Goldstein's Top 101 Prospects
-
a Ken Tremendous/Mich
ael Schur foreword - our best fielding data, WARP, and projections to date
- Rookie of the Year co-editors King Kaufman (who also wrote the foreword to Best of Baseball Prospectus Vol 1) and Cecilia M. Tan (author of our latest Proguestus)
As always, Baseball Prospectus 2012 will be sold in paperback at all major online and brick-and-mortar outlets. You can always visit the Prospectus bookstore or the BP homepage to see the current availability and pricing of the annual–as usual, it is being pre-sold at a significant discount. If you buy the book by clicking a link on our site, we get a small commission, which we appreciate.
ebook
For the first time ever, Baseball Prospectus 2012 will also be released in all popular ebook formats–Kindle, iPad, Nook, Kobo, or whatever reader you're using. The ebook version of Baseball Prospectus 2012 will have all the same content as the printed version, will sell for the same price, and should be available at about the same time–maybe a few days earlier. This will not be some crappy five-minute transfer of the print files to a minimal ebook format or a series of images… the ebook will be specially formatted to look good and perform well on your device of choice. Pre-orders for the ebook should be available soon, and we'll keep you updated.
App
Our publisher will also be releasing a fully-featured Baseball Prospectus 2012 app for iPhone and iPad. The app will have most of the same content as the printed book (minus manager stats and comments, Kevin Goldstein's Top 101 Prospects, and Ken Tremendous' 80-grade foreword), and it will also include expanded statistics and sortable projections so you can create your own leaderboards by position or statistic. You'll be able to refer to the app in-season, as it will include statistical updates throughout 2012. The app is iDevice only–sorry, Android users, we're going to try to have it for you next year–and we're hoping to have the initial release available by print date. Pricing is still being determined.
PDF
We'd been looking at offering Baseball Prospectus 2012 as a PDF, but we decided it would be a more useful option for people to make the book available in all popular ebook formats instead, so that's where our publisher directed their efforts. If a Baseball Prospectus 2012 DRM-protected PDF better meets your needs than any of the formats we're offering this year, please let us know what you're thinking in the comments or send us an email.
We'd been looking at offering Baseball Prospectus 2012 as a PDF, but we decided it would be a more useful option for people to make the book available in all popular ebook formats instead, so that's where our publisher directed their efforts. If a Baseball Prospectus 2012 DRM-protected PDF better meets your needs than any of the formats we're offering this year, please let us know what you're thinking in the comments or send us an email.
If you've got any other questions, please let us know in the comments and we'll try to get them answered.
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Any word on when the "Best of BP" books will be in Kindle format?
I could not possibly find a better way to spend the iTunes gift cards from xmas... trust me, I've tried.
Thank you!
It is probably difficult to convert an ebook to a PDF, as the ebook won't have page numbers or headers and footers. The Baseball Prospectus 2012 ebook is also going to have a layout that's optimized for readers, which will almost certainly necessitate some elements moving around.
It is very easy to convert a physical book to a PDF, provided you have the source files. Then the question becomes, is it worthwhile to set up sales and support for the PDF? That all depends on how many people would actually buy it.
PDF will be my first chioce.