Thinking about an acquisitions strategy in terms of compelling topics is a good idea. It is also dangerously seductive. If your entire acquisitions strategy is content driven, you will miss opportunities, because we are part of an industry with not only topics of strategic importance, but people of strategic importance as well.

I found out about two recently published books this week that should have been O'Reilly books, and in both cases I knew enough about the authors in question that I should have known these books were in the works. That I didn't know says that I made a mistake; one I'll try not to make again.

Nicholas Wells is the Web master for Caldera. Caldera is kind of the stealth Linux company: they certainly have a presence at all of the shows and events where I see Red Hat, for example, and they seem to be doing quite well, but they never really come up in my discussions with Linux people. Unlike other Linux companies, Caldera seems to work very hard at business to business relationships. That means they are very interested in talking with publishers. It also means they have strong connections with Netscape. Thus a Web server book from someone in house at Caldera can do something no other Linux book can do: cover not just Apache, but also Netscape servers on Linux. So when I saw that someone of Nicholas Wells' repute had published the "Linux Web Server Toolkit" with IDG, I felt really devestated.

I have been a big fan of "Boardwatch" magazine for as long as I have been following the computer publishing industry. It ranks at the top of my list of essential publications to read in order to know what is going on in the computer industry. And I always have my eye on the regular columnists as potential authors. So I'm thrilled, of course, that Mike is signing Doug Shaker to do a book. Doug is by far the best writer that writes for Boardwatch, and as technically knowledgable a guy as you'll find. That's the good news. The bad news is that this month No Starch Press has published "Steal This Computer Book" by "Boardwatch" columnist Wallace Wang. No Starch Press, for those of you who don't know, is a scrappy little publisher based here in San Francisco that does semi-technical semi-counterculture books on Internet topics. Two years ago their single claim to fame was having a computer book best seller in "The Internet for Cats". Since then they've pulled off several acquisitions coups, like getting Bob Rankin to write a Linux book. They certainly have my admiration for this latest effort. I had no idea Wally was interested in writing another book at this time, and I certainly had no idea that he'd want to write on anything this interesting. Wally is "Boardwatch"'s most senior columnist, but lately he's mostly been writing their AOL column. Looking at the information on "Steal This Computer Book" that Amazon as on their site, I'd say that this is a great topic covered by a very good author. Wish I'd thought of it.