It seems like it used to mean more to be published. Somehow, the mere existence of your book on the shelf made it clear that a high standard for quality had be

It seems like it used to mean more to be published. Somehow, the mere existence of your book on the shelf made it clear that a high standard for quality had been met. In recent years, especially in technical books, this doesn't seem to be true anymore. One problem is that there's 40 books on any given subject. Each time a new language or tech comes along, there are lots of publishers wanting to be the ones to sell millions of copies. From the point of view of revenue, each publisher has about the same chance of making a sale to an unsuspecting buyer, so it almost doesn't "matter" (to them) if a book has errors everywhere. Another problem is that the industry moves so quickly. Who cares what was published even 5 years ago in tech, in most cases? The problem is, any true experts in a new field won't be working at publishing companies, they'll be doing the high-paying jobs building the actual products. So unless the author sees an error, no one else will, before the book goes to print. The responsibility then falls to the consumers of books. If you want accuracy, you need a more peer-reviewed model; or, simply, peers, for asking questions. Something like Wikipedia has both the immediacy of the web and the accuracy of a huge number of eyeballs (minus a contingent of vandals that seems insignificant in practice).