I can’t remember the first time I met Jim Brogden, but it was likely at a BusinessObjects conference in the 2000s. According to LinkedIn, we connected in April of 2010. Jim was the lead author for the first edition of SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence: The Comprehensive Guide from SAP Press. He inquired if I would be interested in contributing to the second edition. Back then, I was a consultant with a suitcase- a road warrior. So it was relatively easy to find time to write in hotel rooms across the United States.
While we had the first edition as a guide, that book was based on XI 3.1 and our mission for the second edition was to update the book for SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0. So even if the narrative was good (and frequently needed to change to support new workflows), we had to take all new screen shots. This activity turned out to be the most tedious part of the book writing process. Our writing team would gather again in a few years to update the third edition for BI 4.1 and the fourth edition for BI 4.2. We should have gathered again to assemble a fifth edition for BI 4.3 and its all-new Fiori-based user interface. But we didn’t offer and nobody asked, as it was the time period that SAP was all-in on SAP Analytics Cloud and the marketplace was all-in on Tableau and Power BI. Similarly, nobody called last year to offer us million-dollar advances when BI 2025 was released.
Last month, I received the following email from Rheinwerk Publishing, who manages the SAP Press imprint, overseeing editorial, production, and distribution for all SAP Press books.
Dear authors,
This email is to inform you that we are going to retire the print version of your book “SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence” (ISBN 978-1-4932-1547-8). It was successful for a long time, but sales have declined significantly. We will keep offering the e-book version on our website.
Thank you and all the best,
Rheinwerk Publishing, Inc.
I’m grateful for my relationships with the entire writing crew- Jim Brogden, Heather Sinkwitz-Hill, Gabriel Orthous, and Christian Ah-Soon– as well as the fine editorial and production teams at Rheinwerk Publishing who took us from proposal to published book. Thank you for the collaboration, the craft, and the camaraderie.
I would also like to thank everyone who purchased a copy of SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence: The Comprehensive Guide. In the immortal words of Douglas Adams: so long, and thanks for all the fish.
