While no one expects the computer book category to return to the heady pre—dot.bomb days, many booksellers, like Jim Treitman, owner of Softpro Books in Denver, Colo., are starting to see "a glimmer of hope. I'm staying in business and seeing some customers buy more books," he told PW. At Bookspan's Computer Books Direct book club, "we've seen things stabilize and trend slightly upward in the last year," adds Don Jackson, v-p and editor-in-chief for computer and science book clubs. "Computer books can work if you're careful and know what you're doing." Of course, being careful can vary as much as the Microsoft and Macintosh operating systems. For most general retailers, computer book offerings have shrunk to just a small section, geared primarily to consumer-oriented titles. The few remaining technology specialty stores, like Softpro, continue to cater to programmers and other hardcore users.

Consumer Reports

Last year the Colgate Bookstore in Hamilton, N.Y., moved its computer books to the area of the store where it sells computers. "It seemed logical that when people have questions, they talk to the computer sales service manager," explains general books manager Rob Stahl. "The thing with computer books is you do have to stay very current. It's really a matter of [matching] the most recent software and the most recent books." Despite the university connection, Colgate's bestselling books are written for non-technical users who want to send and print digital photographs with Adobe Photoshop, a trend verified by Nielsen Bookscan.

But it's not just general stores that looked to Photoshop to boost sales last year. At Portland, Ore.—based Powell's Books technical store, sales have become much more consumer- and Photoshop-driven. Store manager Lisa Miller: "We are seeing more seniors in the store, shopping for Photoshop books especially." Her store also attracts a lot of students, programmers and Web and game designers, who are creating a buzz for books on the Mac's about-to-be released Tiger operating system and RFID (Radio Frequency Identification). Computer security, Miller notes, continues to be an evergreen topic.

At 17,000-sq.-ft. Stacey's Bookstore in San Francisco, the two leading computer book sellers for 2004 were both O'Reilly titles—David Pogue's Mac OS X: The Missing Manual, Panther Edition and Eric A. Meyer's Cascading Style Sheets; The Definitive Guide, 2nd Edition—and the computer book area has a separate O'Reilly section. Other strong sellers helped computer users with Access and Excel.

University Bookstore, which has eight stores in and around Seattle, has cut the number of computer book titles it carries by half. "The hot stuff you hear about like iPods—we don't sell books on them. The eBay books have all tanked. Linux books and operating systems titles are relatively steady. The ones we sell the most of these days are the Mac books, since Mac went to OS 10. Web design packages and graphics books are probably our strongest sellers," says technical buyer Geoff Nichols.

Co-owner Harry Gillian of Andrea's Bookstore in Palatka, Fla., reports, "We carry a full line of Dummies and we try to push the stuff for hardcore computer users. There's not much call for things in between." Most of his sales are program-driven, with Photoshop, Excel, PowerPoint, Word and WordPerfect, all programs that people use at work

Technically Speaking

Technical booksellers have had to confront the double whammy of consumers' reduced computer book spending and increased retail competition, especially from Amazon. "Surviving as an independent in an incredibly complex environment, we need to go to our roots and be responsive to the community we're in," says June Katitin, co-owner of Quantum Books in Cambridge, Mass.

To do that, Katitin partnered with local publisher AK Peters in Natick, Mass., to promote a book by Robert Lang, artist-in-residence at nearby M.I.T. She sold more than 100 copies of his $48 paperback, Origami Design Secrets: Mathematical Methods for an Ancient Art.

Bookspan's Computer Books Direct caters to programmers and developers. In fact, one of its bestselling titles is a $60 reference, Platinum Edition Using Microsoft Windows XP (Que) by Robert Cowart and Brian Knittel. "Outside of Microsoft, our members are interested in Adobe software—Photoshop and Acrobat would be our most popular. The other area we do well with is Linux books, primarily Red Hat," says Jackson, who notes that, unlike retailers, the club looks for higher-priced items to discount. Like retailers, he also notes there are really only two types of books on the market—easy, visual titles and those aimed at programmers. For him, the in-between titles usually are geared to operating systems, and Microsoft's Longhorn won't be out until sometime in 2006.

While no retailers expressed unbridled enthusiasm, the general atmosphere is encouraging. With Apple's Tiger out soon and at least one Longhorn beta book due this season, plus a drop in prices for digital cameras, that optimism could be rewarded with even stronger sales in 2005.