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Writing a Technical Book for Manning

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Re: Writing a Technical Book for Manning

#11

Post by 4thaccount »

danpalmer wrote: post #2

Great post, lots of detail. After reading this I would be more likely to want to publish with and buy from Manning. I’ve been a technical reviewer for Packt, and since doing so would avoid buying any of their books. As a customer of Mannings’, they seem better, and seeing the inside of the process and the amount of review that happens, I think they sound great all things considered.

I have lots of programming books (30-40) from half a dozen publishers and Manning is one of my favorite along with NoStarch Press. O'Reilly is probably third, but they don't make books anymore. Packt is alright, but you often don't get the same thing as a Manning book. They're more like a way for someone to quickly get something out that works, but there are definitely misspellings and grammatical errors, but nothing that would prevent you from learning.

Re: Writing a Technical Book for Manning

#12

Post by spectramax »

danpalmer wrote: post #2

Great post, lots of detail. After reading this I would be more likely to want to publish with and buy from Manning. I’ve been a technical reviewer for Packt, and since doing so would avoid buying any of their books. As a customer of Mannings’, they seem better, and seeing the inside of the process and the amount of review that happens, I think they sound great all things considered.

I’ve had bad experience from both Packt and Manning, it’s simply not trustworthy. I’m sure there are a good mix of bad and good books, but I’ve bought books that simply rephrased API docs of insert-popular-open-source-language.

I support independent publishing and small publishers, but as a consumer, you need to build trust in the quality of the content across the board, not just a handful. If I see a book from Springer or O’Reilly, I know I can at least trust some baseline expectations from a book - true there are some bad apples as well, but they are at least edible unlike Manning/Packt where I got a load of shit instead of an Apple for $29.

Re: Writing a Technical Book for Manning

#13

Post by jedberg »

Book writing is a punishing endeavor. I started writing a book once. We got a contract, we got an advance ($5,000), we even wrote 3/4 of the book. Then in one month twelve(12!) books came out on the same topic. The publisher pulled our contract because they didn't want to be yet another book on the same topic. That seemed reasonable.

They were kind enough to allow us to keep the advance and maintain the copyright on what we had written, some of which were turned into blog posts.

Re: Writing a Technical Book for Manning

#14

Post by justin66 »

jedberg wrote: post #13

Book writing is a punishing endeavor. I started writing a book once. We got a contract, we got an advance ($5,000), we even wrote 3/4 of the book. Then in one month twelve(12!) books came out on the same topic. The publisher pulled our contract because they didn't want to be yet another book on the same topic. That seemed reasonable. They were kind enough to allow us to keep the advance and maintain the copyright on…

> They were kind enough to allow us to keep the advance and maintain the copyright on what we had written

It'd be shocking if this weren't the case.

Re: Writing a Technical Book for Manning

#15

Post by mapmeld »

StavrosK wrote: post #3
danpalmer wrote: post #2

Great post, lots of detail. After reading this I would be more likely to want to publish with and buy from Manning. I’ve been a technical reviewer for Packt, and since doing so would avoid buying any of their books. As a customer of Mannings’, they seem better, and seeing the inside of the process and the amount of review that happens, I think they sound great all things considered.

Why would you avoid Packt?

I've been invited to write a Packt book on a topic that I knew very little about; I might have had one repo related to it.

Re: Writing a Technical Book for Manning

#16

Post by nickdrozd »

> I also got to pick the cover image from one of three suggestions the publisher sent me. Manning uses images of historical figures on the covers of their books ... I picked the image of the woman carrying clothes as I thought it was at least somewhat related to a transport protocol carrying messages (a stretch I know but I was rather pleased with myself for coming up with that analogy to justify the cover image somewhat).

Re: Writing a Technical Book for Manning

#17

Post by StavrosK »

mapmeld wrote: post #15
StavrosK wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you avoid Packt?

I've been invited to write a Packt book on a topic that I knew very little about; I might have had one repo related to it.

Come to think of it, they invited me out of the blue to write a book on some random topic as well, I had forgotten about that.

Re: Writing a Technical Book for Manning

#18

Post by jedberg »

justin66 wrote: post #14
jedberg wrote: post #13

Book writing is a punishing endeavor. I started writing a book once. We got a contract, we got an advance ($5,000), we even wrote 3/4 of the book. Then in one month twelve(12!) books came out on the same topic. The publisher pulled our contract because they didn't want to be yet another book on the same topic. That seemed reasonable. They were kind enough to allow us to keep the advance and maintain the copyright on…

> They were kind enough to allow us to keep the advance and maintain the copyright on what we had written It'd be shocking if this weren't the case.

Well the contract said originally that they get the copyright since they paid an advance and it was a "work for hire". If they had stuck to the contract the copyright wouldn't have returned to us unless we paid back the advance and then bought it back from them at "market value".

Re: Writing a Technical Book for Manning

#19

Post by stephenbez »

4thaccount wrote: post #11
danpalmer wrote: post #2

Great post, lots of detail. After reading this I would be more likely to want to publish with and buy from Manning. I’ve been a technical reviewer for Packt, and since doing so would avoid buying any of their books. As a customer of Mannings’, they seem better, and seeing the inside of the process and the amount of review that happens, I think they sound great all things considered.

I have lots of programming books (30-40) from half a dozen publishers and Manning is one of my favorite along with NoStarch Press. O'Reilly is probably third, but they don't make books anymore. Packt is alright, but you often don't get the same thing as a Manning book. They're more like a way for someone to quickly get something out that works, but there are definitely misspellings and grammatical errors, but nothing…

What do you mean O'Reilly doesn't make books anymore? I've read books from them recently.

Re: Writing a Technical Book for Manning

#20

Post by fuzzythinker »

StavrosK wrote: post #3
danpalmer wrote: post #2

Great post, lots of detail. After reading this I would be more likely to want to publish with and buy from Manning. I’ve been a technical reviewer for Packt, and since doing so would avoid buying any of their books. As a customer of Mannings’, they seem better, and seeing the inside of the process and the amount of review that happens, I think they sound great all things considered.

Why would you avoid Packt?

There is a reason why they are the only publisher that discount their books in such a dramatic ways:

- 80% off a topic everyday

- $5 selected ebooks every other week or so

- $5 all ebooks few times a year

Why would they offer such steep discounts if the books are of high quality?

For me, I never even bother to waste time looking even at $5 (or even if free) since 99.9% of them are really just crap.

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