Ok, not 100% sure what you mean about the books, Vasile, but I 
quickly looked up these McGraw-Hill electronics books on Amazon:

Electronic Gadgets for the Evil Genius : 28 Build-It-Yourself

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0071426094/qid=1147220271/sr=1-13/ref=sr_1_13/104-7948617-8449517?s=books&v=glance&n=283155

Programming & Customizing PICmicro Microcontrollers

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0071361723/qid=1147220440/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/104-7948617-8449517?s=books&v=glance&n=283155

Judging from the fact that they came out in paperback editions or 2nd 
editions and seem to hold their value, I'd say that they did pretty 
well.  If the book is out under a year, you can also tell from the 
Amazon rating down at the bottom of the listing.  Those are all 
healthy for these books being out so long.  The numbers aren't exact, 
but you can get an order-of-magnitude sales figure from that.  A book 
rated 10,000 on Amazon is selling about 15 books a month.  I would 
take a wild guess they sold over 15,000 copies, and Evil Genius could 
have sold over 40,000.    Author contracts are typically made for 7 - 
14% of net sales, which is around 40 - 50% of list price of the 
book.  So there you go.

By the way, the magazine pays me to write about Microchip, not the 
company.  The magazine wants it probably because of the stock 
valuation.  It was my idea to try to tie their success to how they 
treat the engineers.

If you could answer one question for me:  To do this story, I started 
opening up all the electronics in my house to see which uses 
freescale, atmel, microchip.  Why do some manufacturers grind off the 
name and model numbers off the chips?   One of the products I tried 
to open up had all the chips wiped clean.  Maybe it was just a fluke?

Here's my list so far:

Atmel:

Honeywell 7-day programmable thermostat - ATMEGAA32L

ST:

Microsoft I-Feel Mouse -- ST72T631L4M1

Freescale:

Logitech Trackball -- 68HC908JC3

Microchip:

First Years Baby Monitor -- PIC16C505

Onset HoboWare Sensors -- PIC16F684

Microsoft Mouse -- PIC16C54C

iPod remote control -- PIC12C508

Kidde Fire Alarm --- PIC16LCE625

Holtek:

EPT Pregnancy Test (don't ask) - HT48


>I'm a spurious user of Microchip pics, located in the East of the
>Europe and some very small amount of time at NY. Maxim looks much
>better to me than Microchip talking about the feedback and implication
>in user's real problems.
>So, I'll vote for Maxim, but you'll have to write about Microchip...
>hard stuff, but if they pay you well, no problem.
>BTW, I've seein many books (most of them published by Mc Graw-Hill) in
>which the first 40 pages the author is talking (using pictures) a bout
>how looks a hammer, a drilling machine, a soldering iron or a
>prototyping card.
>The next few chapters are how to mount a LED into the holes and make
>it blink using a PIC and usualy a compiler.
>I'm just curious, -and as a writer you must know- those kind of books
>can be sold well in the US ?
>
>cheers and thx,
>Vasile

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