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Writing a Technical Book for Manning

tunetheweb.com

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Re: Writing a Technical Book for Manning

#41

Post by garren »

theredbox wrote: post #30

Would not consider buying from manning again. The books are unreadable on kindle and they made no effort to correct it.

Device or app? I've found that pretty much all technical books look terrible on Kindle devices - the screens are too small, the technical content (source) usually formats poorly, and diagrams are often screwed up. That's not unique to Manning.

I have a lot of Manning books that I've purchased directly from their site and/or from Amazon. I generally read them in the Kindle app (iOS, lt, web) or in iBooks. The only Kindle device that I've comfortably read any technical books on is the old Kindle DX, and that was just because the screen was relatively large.

Technical content and smaller e-reader devices will never be a good fit. Occasionally it's tolerable, usually it's not.

Re: Writing a Technical Book for Manning

#42

Post by garren »

spectramax wrote: post #12
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 Sprin…

I agree with you regarding Packt - books I've purchased from them tend to be more miss than hit. I haven't had the same experience with Manning though. In fact, Manning has been my go to rather than O'Reilly, the former king of technical books, for a few years now.

I used to be a big O'Reilly fan, but the quality of their content seemed to go down 5 or so years ago. It seemed like they were at the peak of churning out books on every topic imaginable - I think they stretched themselves too thin. They seemed to go from great to mediocre overnight. When they closed their online shop a year or so back, and really started pushing Safari hard I stopped getting anything from them.

Re: Writing a Technical Book for Manning

#43

Post by tunetheweb »

mjcohen wrote: post #40

Found a few typos: "if you ever what to write a book," - "want" "I needed to tke care of including images" - "take" "in an attempt to illicit feedback" - "elicit" "likely won't actually be approved until early 2010, " - "2020" (probably) "copy-editing to correct grammar, and spelling," - "grammar and spelling" "Manning do a lot of promotion" - "does" "a random random tip of this list isshown" - "random", "is shown" "…

Thanks fixed. This is why I need editors :-)

Re: Writing a Technical Book for Manning

#44

Post by asimjalis »

raboukhalil wrote: post #29

If you want to hear about the alternative approach of self-publishing, check out my post about how I wrote a WebAssembly book in 200 hours: https://medium.com/@robaboukhalil/how-i-wrote-a-technical-bo... This is my second self-published book and I've loved this approach. It lets me focus on writing and marketing, and I get to craft every aspect of the book.

How did you publish the landing page?

Re: Writing a Technical Book for Manning

#45

Post by danpalmer »

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?

OP here, lots of reasons. I reviewed a book called "Node Security".

- The level of technical quality of the book was not what I would expect for ~$40.

- I was arguably naive and under qualified (although probably qualified enough for the level the book ended up being), having some Node and some security experience.

- The author was probably more naive and no more qualified, having no security experience.

- The book ended up becoming a list of tutorials about how to use certain libraries for authentication/etc in Node apps.

- My main feedback was that I felt an additional last chapter should be added, that showed how to deploy a node app behind Nginx with a basic security setup in production. I felt this was in-line with the very (in my opinion overly) practical nature of the book, I also felt that "deploy behind Nginx" or something along those lines was one of the most obvious things to do in terms of security, and a real quick win. They made it clear that adding a chapter, however short, was out of the question.

- Really the only thing I was encouraged to do was to test the code examples to make sure they worked. I did find a security vulnerability in one of them, and that was fixed, but that was probably the most meaningful change I had an impact on.

Re: Writing a Technical Book for Manning

#46

Post by danpalmer »

GrinningFool wrote: post #4
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 dropped out of being a technical reviewer for Packt after they declined my suggestions about things that were factually wrong , because that's not what they wanted me to review. They never fixed the many factual inaccuracies before it went to print.

This does not surprise me. In the book I reviewed there were a lot of simplistic explanations that lacked nuance. Even if that's the right level for their target market, I think it could have been done in a better way, giving the reader the push to go and research in more depth if they so wish, but to be honest I'm not sure the author was at that level.

Re: Writing a Technical Book for Manning

#47

Post by taude »

theredbox wrote: post #30

Would not consider buying from manning again. The books are unreadable on kindle and they made no effort to correct it.

I'm just fine reading them on an iPad, though. I typically download the epub from their site and upload it to Google Play Books, so I can access it from all my devices.

The latest book "C#, In Depth", Fourth Edition is really readable, even the code, on the iPad (9.7"). I even occasionally read some on my Android phone and while the code samples fold on themselves, they still make sense at atleast (nothing getting cut off by invisible scrolling or anything).

I don't know how people would expect to read a tech book on a 6" screen of a Kindle, there's a reason print versions of tech books aren't the same size of a mass market genre paperback.

Re: Writing a Technical Book for Manning

#48

Post by newscracker »

4thaccount wrote: post #25
detaro wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't sell their books themselves anymore, only a digital subscription (so you need to buy from bookstores etc), parent might have been thinking of that.

This. They still make content, but I believe it's all digital. I don't think they create paper books anymore. Is that incorrect?

No, it's not "just digital". It's subscription-only through Safari Online! You can "stream" books and learning videos from there, but you'd never own one. You cannot buy a DRM free O'Reilly eBook anymore, unless it's from one of those Humble Bundle sales (where the selection may or may not suit your needs). I just stopped supporting O'Reilly when it went subscription only, and I'm guessing there are lots of people and companies with Safari subscriptions that don't really use it as much (compared to the percentage that uses it).

Re: Writing a Technical Book for Manning

#49

Post by newscracker »

mjcohen wrote: post #40

Found a few typos: "if you ever what to write a book," - "want" "I needed to tke care of including images" - "take" "in an attempt to illicit feedback" - "elicit" "likely won't actually be approved until early 2010, " - "2020" (probably) "copy-editing to correct grammar, and spelling," - "grammar and spelling" "Manning do a lot of promotion" - "does" "a random random tip of this list isshown" - "random", "is shown" "…

> "Manning do a lot of promotion" - "does"

I'm going to nitpick. The original sentence is grammatically correct in the UK and some other non-U.S. English speaking parts. I know this may sound very weird, but it's all fine and correct somewhere else, treating companies and establishments as plural.

Re: Writing a Technical Book for Manning

#50

Post by raboukhalil »

asimjalis wrote: post #44
raboukhalil wrote: post #29

If you want to hear about the alternative approach of self-publishing, check out my post about how I wrote a WebAssembly book in 200 hours: https://medium.com/@robaboukhalil/how-i-wrote-a-technical-bo... This is my second self-published book and I've loved this approach. It lets me focus on writing and marketing, and I get to craft every aspect of the book.

How did you publish the landing page?

The landing page is static HTML hosted on GCP's cloud storage platform.
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