6 ms·

Avoid Apress

172 points by jemeshsu 15y ago

dablue 15y ago
time to boycott apress, and use dollars to vote for other well behaving publishers. Big companies are known to write contracts that favor themselves, rather than the little guy.
projectileboy 15y ago
I'd like to hear what Peter Seibel's experience was with Practical Common Lisp, or some other authors. From an outsider's perspective, I've always been impressed that some Apress books continue to offer online versions for free, which suggests that Apress allows their authors to retain IP rights to their books. Can anyone comment?
- lukev 15y ago
  Author of Practical Clojure here. Without getting into detail, the experiences outlined in the article are not unique to him. If you're really interested in the gory details feel free to email me at <my first name>@<my last name>.net
adamjernst 15y ago
Mike, did your refusal to sign the contract (despite your continuing work on the project) have anything to do with the delay in payment? Did you attempt to modify the deadline to a future date, and if so did they refuse to accept that version of the contract?
- mikeash 15y ago
  For the first payment, I signed a contract as soon as they asked me to, and they still didn't pay me for months. For the book, my refusal to sign almost certainly delayed payment. I modified the deadlines, removed clauses about ongoing work (dealing with errata etc.) that I wasn't going to do, etc., but nothing major. They refused to accept it, but immediately changed their tune once I pointed out that they couldn't actually publish what I wrote without a contract, and there was no way I was signing without those changes.
jeremymcanally 15y ago
I'm convinced that most publishers are difficult to work with and actually care very little for their authors. It seems that O'Reilly really has some great people inside, and I really think the Pragmatic Bookshelf is a fantastic staff and author program. But for my part with the few publishers I've worked with, it's been nothing but hassle. The issues with payment were annoying, but even worse in my case were publisher content control struggles. The book concept I was to work on was explained to me numerous times as "not a recipe book but an example driven narrative book." I think we discussed that at least 5 times leading up to the kick off. After I submitted the first 3 chapters, they suddenly shifted gears and gave me example outlines for the chapters that remained to follow. They were freaking recipe chapters (problem/solution/discussion ad nauseum). There was no discussion of this change, and any attempted further shift in content was met with "well we told you we hadn't worked out this series fully yet." They'd basically jacked the book out from under me and changed it to a book I didn't want to write. I think I wrote one or two more chapters and farmed the rest out to contributors. Terrible experience. To make matters worse, I made very little money off of it because they didn't promote it at all. They never sent copies to conferences or user groups unless I asked them to. They never sought out blogs and other things like that to help promote it whatsoever. Part of the problem was they really sucked at promoting their books (other authors have had the same issues), but another part was that they had about 4 different marketing managers during the timeline for my book, which made coordinating efforts incredibly difficult. So, yes, I think this gent's experience isn't totally out of the norm, even though I wish that wasn't the case.
- zedshaw 15y ago
  Curious, what was the title and subject matter for the book?
  - aaronbrethorst 15y ago
    I'm going to guess it was http://www.manning.com/mcanally/ http://www.manning.com/mcanally/
    - 15y ago
jackowayed 15y ago
It seems like starting work before a contract is in place (save maybe very high-level exploratory work, like a table of contents) is a recipe for disaster. They don't really owe you anything until there's a signed contract in place saying you do. Now, it's possible that Apress is problematic in that they strongly encourage people to work despite there being no contract in place ("we'll figure it out", "you have our word", "legal is slow", etc), which then puts them in a better negotiating position when it is contract time because people have already done much of the work. But I wonder what would have happened if he had said, "I'll do high-level planning, but I won't write a single paragraph of actual content until we have a firm, mutually-satisfying contract in place." Maybe it would have gotten him a firm date on when he would get his advance that they would stick to, plus deadlines in the contract that were actually in the future and other good things. Or maybe they would have still said, "no, just write it, we'll figure that out later", which would not look good
- awolf 15y ago
  Yes, absolutely. When you are an individual dealing with another individual and you both want to move quickly, then possibly considering getting some small work done ahead of settling on a contract. But if you are an individual dealing with a larger corporation then you are really opening yourself up to this kind of thing if you begin work without a contract. It doesn't matter if there are some genuinely good people at the company pulling for you. Accounts payable doesn't care. Get a contract.
- mixu 15y ago
  Apress is a freaking publisher - shouldn't they be expected to be at least minimally professional? Whatever the initial agreement e.g. regarding advances was, the fact remains that Apress did not pay the author until several months after they had completed the work despite several months of inquiries, reminders and so on. Either Apress is just plain unprofessional (e.g. unwilling/extraordinarily slow) or as you said they are doing this in order to put themselves in a better negotiating position. I had a similar experience with Apress while working with them as a technical reviewer. They printed the book without asking me for my bio, so I didn't get my five lines of text credits for the work I did. It wouldn't have cost them anything to do that, but they nevertheless screwed it up. Needless to say, I figured it's way too much of a hassle to deal with them when they approached me to write an actual book, since I want to spend my time writing rather than following up to make sure my publisher does what they are supposed to do. Yes, with a contract you have better legal recourse. But I'd prefer to work with people I don't have to sue in order to get paid, esp. when the sums involved are tiny.
latchkey 15y ago
I think maybe a better title would be 'Lesson learned: Don't start work until a contract is signed.' I fully understand that the potential for delaying or losing the contract completely could be part of the motivation for starting work in advance or in parallel to a contract. But, it seems that in this case, was the headache worth it? Regardless, I do agree that it sounds like Apress should have treated the author with more respect. I'd love to hear the other side of this story as well.
- pwaring 15y ago
  That lesson also applies to every industry, not just publishing. I can't understand why people start a major piece of work (books can take years to write) without having an agreed and signed contract in place - you're just asking to be screwed over.
- pbreit 15y ago
  But that might get shortened to "Don't start work". Contracts are notoriously difficult to finalize. If you don't take the risk, someone else probably will. Best is to establish trust with counterparty.
  - otoburb 15y ago
    In some professional service firms, this situation is called "starting working at-risk". Depending on the deal size, this often requires obtaining approval up the chain so that somebody can evaluate and ideally limit the risk involved. I completely agree with this sentiment; sometimes starting work at-risk is a sign of good faith and goes a long way to establishing trust. Just make sure that there is a follow-up plan along the lines of "I'm working at-risk for X days. If the contract isn't signed by then, or if I've reached the first small milestone/chapter/deliverable, I stop work." Except, in this case, it seems the OP actually had a signed contract (half way through his timeline) but Apress still refused to cough up the payment that they obligated themselves to pay. That just sucks.
    - mikeash 15y ago
Lazare 15y ago
For me, Apress's apparent feeling that the wording of contracts just doesn't matter, and the comment that they "don't modify the standard contract" are huge huge red flags, and I've had major issues in the past with this. Their seems to be a scarily common school of thought that contracts are, basically, magic incantations to ward off the lawyer demons. You just need to have a contract, sign it, and somehow, magically, everything will be okay. This is, obviously, not how it works. The wording of a contract is of absolute import; you should never ever sign one without reading it closely, and (ideally) getting a lawyer familiar with the issues to read it over. But I've had more than one boss or client who had a "standard" wildly inappropriate contract they expected me to sign, and when I pointed out some issues would just say "oh, those clauses don't matter"/"don't apply to you"/"just ignore them". In my experience, confidentiality agreements are especially likely targets for this egregious mentality. "Uh, this contract says that if I throw together a mockup of an iPhone app for you, you will own all the IP/product ideas/designs/technology I develop for the next three years." "Oh, don't worry about that, it's just a standard clause - just sign right here." "...No." Madness. And yes, most people are playing it honest, and have no intention to try and enforce whatever crazy clause is in the "standard" contract, or invalidate it, or other legal shenanigan. But you just never know...
- wisty 15y ago
  IANAL, but if you want a "standard" contract, then you just put the deal on paper. Common law and legislation automatically has a framework for "standard" contracts - that's the legal framework that governs your plumber when they fix your leaking tap. If the negotiator doesn't know what terms can be changed (as they are just there to define the deal), and which can't (as they are there to limit legal risk, and can't be changed in any way without upsetting the lawyers), it's a bad sign. Some terms will tend to describe the work (you do X, we pay you Y). The lawyers don't need to touch that, as long as everything is clearly defined (though they will want to check the definitions). It's up to non-lawyers to decide what the deal is. Other terms are less flexible, and describe what the legal situation will be if the shit hits the fan. Stuff like jurisdiction, arbitration, liability, when the contract becomes void, and resolution process. You won't like it (as it's there to cover the other party's ass), but you probably won't get it changed - that's the way their lawyers like to play ball, and the agent you are dealing with won't be able to convince the legal team to change anything without a lot of work.
vonskippy 15y ago
Since we only "hear" one side of the story, it's impossible to tell if he's brave, daring, or foolish doing work without a specific and valid contract. At least it ends with him getting paid.
- mikeash 15y ago
  Perhaps some combination of all three. I consider getting involved with Apress in general to have been a big mistake, and there are certainly warning signs (like the contract) that I should have paid more attention to.
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user63447 15y ago
Tldr. Don't do business with mikeash because he will totally criticize you on the main page of Hacker News.
- zedshaw 15y ago
  Welcome to the free market. It requires open information for everyone, which includes criticisms. As long as it's true or obviously a hilarious joke or parody, he's totally allowed to say it. And, doing that benefits everyone else because the market can adapt. Then again you're trolling so this comment is more for everyone else than for dipshits like you.
  - its_so_on 15y ago
    I like how you say "as long as it's true or obviously a hilarious joke or parody". It's like, it's not enough to be obviously a joke or parody, your standard requires actual hilarity. I can see you in the judge's chair: "I'm sorry, it's obviously a parody but I just don't see it as all that funny." "But your honor! [explains joke]." "Oh. Hahaha, okay, I missed that. Haha, that's pretty funny. All right, counsel, case dismissed!"
    - mikeash 15y ago
      "At 43 millihedbergs, this work falls short of the legal minimum of 50 millihedbergs, and therefore is not protected."
- mikeash 15y ago
  Pay me when I'm owed and you won't get criticized for not paying me. I'm simply saying what happened: if they didn't want to have it talked about, they shouldn't have let it happen.
rwmj 15y ago
My Apress experience: http://blog.merjis.com/2006/11/08/practical-ocaml/ http://blog.merjis.com/2006/11/08/practical-ocaml/
- deleted 15y ago
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- gtani 15y ago
  Always wondered about that, I spent a lot of time in Borders reading the Apress Ocaml and F# books (and bought the F# books). The Ocaml book is ... exceptional
  - rwmj 15y ago
    The whole experience (which went on for something like 2 years!) was screwed up from beginning to end. My apologies to you or anyone who spent money on that book. It was published against my advice. Apress promised there'd be a heavy copy edit/rewrite before publication, but that never happened. Jason Hickey's OCaml book (search for it - a PDF is floating around) is excellent.
    - deleted 15y ago
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Uchikoma 15y ago
If you write books for the money, you're doing something wrong. Writing code for the same amount of time will make you much more money. Writing tech books is for advancing your career, get consulting gigs, get invited to conferences etc. That said, sending contracts with deadlines that are in the past or before work started looks not very professional.
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lionhearted 15y ago
A lot of industries that perform badly for no good reason rely on shaming and saying "it's unprofessional to come out publicly" to keep people in line, or they use legal threats and other leverage. Good on Mike for coming out. If 5% of people shared their experience honestly, damn near every bad industry would be reformed quickly.
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reuven 15y ago
I've written a book (a decade ago, for Prentice Hall), and I talked with Apress about writing a second one. Apress, it should be noted, forgot about our discussions, and I didn't push, so the project dropped. The first thing to realize about writing a computer book is that you probably won't make much money off of it. Indeed, you'll probably make very little money from it. So it's not a surprise to hear that the author made so little. It's also not surprising to hear that Apress didn't promote the book. I'm on the receiving end (as a Linux Journal columnist) of book press releases, and I easily get 1-2 such messages per week. The publishing business is in a terrible state, and while it seems paradoxical that it costs too much to market the book in a serious way, that is the case. When I wrote my book (and granted, this was before Facebook Twitter, and the like), I was responsible for ensuring that it was reviewed on Web sites and magazines; I didn't feel like the publisher did very much. Given that my book got very positive reviews, you would have thought that they would have pushed to market it more, or to do a second printing. But they didn't. Most books are basically thrown out there, and the few that make a lot of money, by some combination of skill, contacts, and luck, get additional printings. Apress was founded by someone who was fed up with other publishers, and so it's sad to hear that they have problems with contracts. But it's always unwise to into into a business agreement without a contract of some sort; I've learned this the hard way on a number of occasions through my 15-year consulting career. Writing the book before the contract was set was a mistake that the author made. When I wrote my book, I also hired an agent. On the one hand, he got 10 percent of whatever I earned, which wasn't much to begin with. On the other hand, he got rid of many clauses in the contract that I never would have thought to notice or remove. It was probably a wash financially, but knowing that someone was there, helping me out, was a good feeling. If I had to write a book nowadays -- and I'm certainly thinking of doing so -- I'd probably go the self-published, Ebook route. Ebooks can be shorter, are more flexible in terms of format, and will probably net a good author about the same amount of moeny as they would get from a publisher, minus much of the hassle. True, a good publisher will give you good technical edits, indexes, and distribution, but with rare exception, I have to wonder how useful those really are nowadays. The bottom line is what while Apress might not have been professional about how they treated this author, it seems pretty par for the course in today's world. It's a shame, given how much work goes into writing a book, that he had to have such problems. I'm guessing that if had signed a contract in advance of the work, and perhaps even had an agent helping him, it would have worked out better. But maybe Apress has lost touch with their author-centric roots (that's the "A" in Apress, by the way), and smaller publishers such as the Pragmatic Programmers are the place to go for aspiring authors.
harryf 15y ago
I got mixed up these guys back in 2003, when the were still called Wrox press. Reading this timeline makes me think this "bait and switch" is part their standard operating practice when dealing with authors. Back in 2003 they were also desperate for cash ( http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/03/17/wrox_hit_the_rocks_as/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/03/17/wrox_hit_the_rocks_a... ) and ended up publishing the book I worked on (with 3 others) minus the last 5 chapters which were still being written. I wont mention the title as frankly I'm ashamed of it. Happy to verify via PM to the same username on reddit
- hello_moto 15y ago
  These guys as in publishers or Apress? I thought Apress is a totally different company altogether?
  - harryf 15y ago
    On paper yes. But Apress bought all Wrox successful titles and (I suspect) it's people. Same game different name in other words
jefflinwood 15y ago
I like most of the people I've come into contact with at Apress ever since they acquired my first book from Wrox after a giant debacle. That said, they've made some very strange strategic decisions about their book line that basically involved my co-author and I taking future editions of our books in directions that we completely disagreed with. Tech book authoring really isn't a very good way to make money, so I wouldn't really worry about a thousand dollar advance - after all, it's an advance against royalties, so you should get paid either way.
maxer 15y ago
i was asked to be a technical reviewer on a book with apress, i felt really good about reviewing and agreed. When i received the first few chapters i realized the book would have to be re-written. The English was bad and the code was mediocre. Since it wasn't a paid gig i felt insulted with the experience, the book would require days if not weeks of work to complete rather than a few hours which i had thought.
- swaroop 15y ago
  Same exact experience here but with a different publisher - I also agreed to be a technical reviewer which I ended up regretting after reading the prose and code.
- anghyflawn 15y ago
  Not to be snarky, but that's what reviewers do: help with good stuff, reject bad stuff. Academia works the same way. Even if you think it's a racket, this is far from unique to Apress.
  - mikeash 15y ago
    I don't think that's the case. The purpose of a technical reviewer is to do fact checking on the technical aspects of the writing. If the writing itself is bad, it never should have gotten that far.
marcf 15y ago
You were working without a contract. I would suggest that is the whole reason this experienced sucked, not because of Apress.
- mikeash 15y ago
  While that certainly explains some of it, they still failed to pay for months after a contract was in place.
- huxley 15y ago
  Not quite, he actually might have been working with a contract depending on what the communications were between Apress and Mike. An oral contract with implied commitments on both sides can still be legally binding. It is certainly possible to sue someone for breach of an oral contract.
orbitingpluto 15y ago
The experience is not limited to Apress. I was at a garage sale. Tons of Wrox books were in a pile for two bits each. When I went to pay I noticed that the spiky haired blond guy on the cover of one of the books was the same spiky haired blond guy I was handing quarters to. Paying attention can earn you a very interesting story! Short version: In this case the author did have a contract, but they kept upping the schedule as they were selling the company (and didn't tell the author). He was paid, but it took a very very long time and he said that was the last book he is ever going to write. I asked him if he was sure he wanted to sell it. (It was his last and only copy.) "I guess I should keep it. I wrote the book after all."
Nelson69 15y ago
Why aren't more technical books self published? I've heard these same things echoed from non-technical book publishing experiences too. The publishers are quite simply middlemen, they can front some production costs to get books in to brick and mortar stores but expect very little unless you have a proven track record and you give a lot up for that. A friend wrote a book (a novel), found a publisher, and basically he was going to pay for everything, literally, pay for the first round of published books, pay to promote, effectively self-publishing the book but sharing the profits. His best avenue for making money on it is to sell the books himself on amazon. Never mind the crappy nature of so many technical books anymore. Technical books, with technical audiences? Short of the tiny amount of money upfront, I can't see at all why you wouldn't self-publish. The audience is forward thinking, they get it.
- toyg 15y ago
  Oh but they are: the number of technical howtos and tutorial on the internet is huge. Just because they are not collected and printed on dead trees doesn't mean they are not published.
- mechanical_fish 15y ago
  Unfortunately the answer for your friend is simple: He got scammed. If a "publisher" asks you to pay for everything, or indeed for anything but postage, they are a scammer. There are entire message boards dedicated to authors warning other authors away from such scams; look e.g. for Absolute Write's "Bewares" section or google "Yog's Law" ("Money flows toward the writer.") Paying for your own publication costs is called vanity press publishing, and it's okay provided you know what you're doing: You are almost certainly taking a big loss in order to get your work into paper form. You will only make money if you've got publishing talent, which equates to "marketing talent": You've got to be good at selling books, which is very hard, especially if you've never done it before. (Before I got distracted by the story of your poor friend, I was going to answer: many do self-publish, more and more every day, but you don't notice them as often because they aren't as well promoted. Also, whereas it's fairly easy to market tech books online non-tech books are far harder to sell without market knowledge that publishers have scraped together over decades, non-techie writers therefore lust after contracts, and techies imitate non-techie writers. And, because getting a publishing contract probably increases the odds that your book will get finished, because someone else is pushing you toward completion, when we survey the universe of manuscripts we disproportionally sample the ones that get turned into finished books by publishers.) (And, yes, e-readers are busily upending this centuries-old industry, so ask again in five years for a completely different answer.)
mikeash 15y ago
I'm seeing a few common themes in comments, so I figure I'll address them all at once. I'm writing this comment both for my blog and Hacker News, so please excuse vagueness etc. Beginning work without a contract was certainly not a smart move. They talked a good game but I still should have known better. However, I think I was still in a pretty good position, because it is that contract that gave them the right to use my work. I already had a reasonably popular technical blog that would have made a fine home for what I wrote if they had changed their minds. In fact, this gave me quite a bit of leverage when it came time to get the Pro Objective-C contract amended. After they refused my amendments, I pointed out that they could not use my work without a contract, and that I would not sign anything that didn't have my amendments. They changed their tune with amusing rapidity. The amendments I requested were fairly simple. Aside from fixing the dates, I struck out portions that required ongoing work from me, such as responding to errata, since I was no longer involved with the book. The money involved was not large, for sure. In general, writing technical books doesn't pay well. There are good reasons to do it (exposure, fun, satisfaction, etc.) but money isn't one. I went into the project knowing that I wasn't doing it for the money. Given that, it might seem strange to have such a problem over money, but I don't think it is: even though I wasn't doing it for the money, I was still promised money, and I simply couldn't tolerate any crap over it. For everyone talking about other publishers, I appreciate the sentiment, but I have moved into self-publishing. The Complete Friday Q&A is self-published and the experience was great. I intend to continue doing so in the future. I really don't see much of a role for traditional publishers these days.
- jpdoctor 15y ago
  Thank you for the post. This stuck out at me: > but I have moved into self-publishing. As near as I can tell, publishers have one and only one purpose in the modern world: Publicity. They might as well change the name of the biz to reflect this, because it is the only differentiator they have.
  - mikeash 15y ago
    They do provide other useful services, like copy-editing and tech review. However, they don't provide these very well, and the amount of money they take in exchange is huge. They also provide a bit of financing, sort of like how movie studios are basically banks who specialize in investing in one particular area. But with the typical tech book advance coming in under five figures, this isn't very big.
taylorbuley 15y ago
From a reader perspective, I would highly advise checking out No Starch Press (http://nostarch.com/ http://nostarch.com/) and Rosenfeld Media (http://rosenfeldmedia.com/ http://rosenfeldmedia.com/) if you haven't heard of these smaller imprints yet.
- marijn 15y ago
  I've published a book with NoStarch, and can endorse them from an author's perspective as well.
  - taylorbuley 15y ago
    I read that book! Very elegant stuff :)
Juha 15y ago
I had my suspicions of Apress already after reading their Practical Django Projects (2004) book. Book itself was quite ok, but it was referring to downloadable source code of the presented projects from Apress website. To my knowledge this sourcecode of the sample projects isn't still there. Gladly I found some bitbucket projects with those sample projects written by other readers, but my trust for Apress was lost.
Zeus-TheTrueGod 15y ago
So have you earned only 3k$ for the whole book? What is your effective hour rate then ? 10$ or 5$ per hour ?
hello_moto 15y ago
This is the nail in the coffin for me when it comes to purchasing books from Apress. If my memory serves me right, both Peter Cooper (Beginning Ruby) and Mark Pilgrim (Dive into Python) had "hiccups" as well dealing with Apress. Average or below quality marred with treating the people like this is enough red marks to stay away from them. Note: I know there are a few books that HN-ers love published by Apress such as the XYZ At Work series. That particular series, no pun intended and not to disrespect to author, is totally different when you compare it to technical books.
mark_l_watson 15y ago
I liked working with APress for my book that they published. They found a very good technical editor for my book project who added a lot of value and the editors were all nice to work with. The only negative thing was that the book did not sell very well so I didn't make money for my business partner (i.e., APress). The only publisher I ever had a negative experience with was Manning. My project was cancelled and they told me to keep the advance. I wanted to return the advance and own the book and they declined (I think because they had similar titles in the pipeline). However, I continue to think that the owner of Manning is a great guy (I very much enjoyed all of our conversations), and I still buy lots of Manning books (probably 10 in the last year). The author of the linked article seems kind of bitter and it was unusual that he didn't sign the contract for so long. Anyway, I wish him luck in his future projects - it is great fun writing books.
stevenp 15y ago
I too was one of the contributing authors on iPhone Cool Projects and I also had to run around chasing people to get paid my "advance" months after the book had already been published. I did have a contract in place before starting, but Apress just ignored it, and the only way I was able to track anyone down was to ask another more popular author to help me find someone who could get me paid. My contacts at Apress basically just ignored my emails and phone calls. None of that even touches on the antiquated process where I got to spend hours screwing around with a bunch of confusing MS Word templates because most of an author's time is clearly best used trying to correct style errors. The entire process had me wondering if this is really how these books get created. If it is, I decided it definitely isn't for me, especially considering the minimal pay. Needless to say, I had a pretty awful experience with Apress too, which is a shame, because I'm not a prolific blogger like Mike, and getting to have my name on the front of a technical book was a really exciting achievement for me. I'm proud of the work I did, but not really sure that I'd ever want to go through this again.
alanh 15y ago
Reminds me of the stand Sebastian Marshall is taking against Simon & Schuester. He also points to overdue advances and sluggish response times. http://www.sebastianmarshall.com/an-open-letter-to-simon-and-schuester-ceo-carolyn-reidy http://www.sebastianmarshall.com/an-open-letter-to-simon-and...

172 points by jemeshsu 15y ago

time to boycott apress, and use dollars to vote for other well behaving publishers. Big companies are known to write contracts that favor themselves, rather than the little guy.

projectileboy 15y ago

I'd like to hear what Peter Seibel's experience was with Practical Common Lisp, or some other authors. From an outsider's perspective, I've always been impressed that some Apress books continue to offer online versions for free, which suggests that Apress allows their authors to retain IP rights to their books. Can anyone comment?

lukev 15y ago
Author of Practical Clojure here. Without getting into detail, the experiences outlined in the article are not unique to him. If you're really interested in the gory details feel free to email me at <my first name>@<my last name>.net

adamjernst 15y ago

Mike, did your refusal to sign the contract (despite your continuing work on the project) have anything to do with the delay in payment? Did you attempt to modify the deadline to a future date, and if so did they refuse to accept that version of the contract?

mikeash 15y ago
For the first payment, I signed a contract as soon as they asked me to, and they still didn't pay me for months. For the book, my refusal to sign almost certainly delayed payment. I modified the deadlines, removed clauses about ongoing work (dealing with errata etc.) that I wasn't going to do, etc., but nothing major. They refused to accept it, but immediately changed their tune once I pointed out that they couldn't actually publish what I wrote without a contract, and there was no way I was signing without those changes.

jeremymcanally 15y ago

I'm convinced that most publishers are difficult to work with and actually care very little for their authors. It seems that O'Reilly really has some great people inside, and I really think the Pragmatic Bookshelf is a fantastic staff and author program. But for my part with the few publishers I've worked with, it's been nothing but hassle. The issues with payment were annoying, but even worse in my case were publisher content control struggles. The book concept I was to work on was explained to me numerous times as "not a recipe book but an example driven narrative book." I think we discussed that at least 5 times leading up to the kick off. After I submitted the first 3 chapters, they suddenly shifted gears and gave me example outlines for the chapters that remained to follow. They were freaking recipe chapters (problem/solution/discussion ad nauseum). There was no discussion of this change, and any attempted further shift in content was met with "well we told you we hadn't worked out this series fully yet." They'd basically jacked the book out from under me and changed it to a book I didn't want to write. I think I wrote one or two more chapters and farmed the rest out to contributors. Terrible experience. To make matters worse, I made very little money off of it because they didn't promote it at all. They never sent copies to conferences or user groups unless I asked them to. They never sought out blogs and other things like that to help promote it whatsoever. Part of the problem was they really sucked at promoting their books (other authors have had the same issues), but another part was that they had about 4 different marketing managers during the timeline for my book, which made coordinating efforts incredibly difficult. So, yes, I think this gent's experience isn't totally out of the norm, even though I wish that wasn't the case.

zedshaw 15y ago
Curious, what was the title and subject matter for the book?
- aaronbrethorst 15y ago
  I'm going to guess it was http://www.manning.com/mcanally/ http://www.manning.com/mcanally/
  - 15y ago

jackowayed 15y ago

It seems like starting work before a contract is in place (save maybe very high-level exploratory work, like a table of contents) is a recipe for disaster. They don't really owe you anything until there's a signed contract in place saying you do. Now, it's possible that Apress is problematic in that they strongly encourage people to work despite there being no contract in place ("we'll figure it out", "you have our word", "legal is slow", etc), which then puts them in a better negotiating position when it is contract time because people have already done much of the work. But I wonder what would have happened if he had said, "I'll do high-level planning, but I won't write a single paragraph of actual content until we have a firm, mutually-satisfying contract in place." Maybe it would have gotten him a firm date on when he would get his advance that they would stick to, plus deadlines in the contract that were actually in the future and other good things. Or maybe they would have still said, "no, just write it, we'll figure that out later", which would not look good

awolf 15y ago
Yes, absolutely. When you are an individual dealing with another individual and you both want to move quickly, then possibly considering getting some small work done ahead of settling on a contract. But if you are an individual dealing with a larger corporation then you are really opening yourself up to this kind of thing if you begin work without a contract. It doesn't matter if there are some genuinely good people at the company pulling for you. Accounts payable doesn't care. Get a contract.
mixu 15y ago
Apress is a freaking publisher - shouldn't they be expected to be at least minimally professional? Whatever the initial agreement e.g. regarding advances was, the fact remains that Apress did not pay the author until several months after they had completed the work despite several months of inquiries, reminders and so on. Either Apress is just plain unprofessional (e.g. unwilling/extraordinarily slow) or as you said they are doing this in order to put themselves in a better negotiating position. I had a similar experience with Apress while working with them as a technical reviewer. They printed the book without asking me for my bio, so I didn't get my five lines of text credits for the work I did. It wouldn't have cost them anything to do that, but they nevertheless screwed it up. Needless to say, I figured it's way too much of a hassle to deal with them when they approached me to write an actual book, since I want to spend my time writing rather than following up to make sure my publisher does what they are supposed to do. Yes, with a contract you have better legal recourse. But I'd prefer to work with people I don't have to sue in order to get paid, esp. when the sums involved are tiny.

latchkey 15y ago

I think maybe a better title would be 'Lesson learned: Don't start work until a contract is signed.' I fully understand that the potential for delaying or losing the contract completely could be part of the motivation for starting work in advance or in parallel to a contract. But, it seems that in this case, was the headache worth it? Regardless, I do agree that it sounds like Apress should have treated the author with more respect. I'd love to hear the other side of this story as well.

pwaring 15y ago
That lesson also applies to every industry, not just publishing. I can't understand why people start a major piece of work (books can take years to write) without having an agreed and signed contract in place - you're just asking to be screwed over.
pbreit 15y ago
But that might get shortened to "Don't start work". Contracts are notoriously difficult to finalize. If you don't take the risk, someone else probably will. Best is to establish trust with counterparty.
- otoburb 15y ago
  In some professional service firms, this situation is called "starting working at-risk". Depending on the deal size, this often requires obtaining approval up the chain so that somebody can evaluate and ideally limit the risk involved. I completely agree with this sentiment; sometimes starting work at-risk is a sign of good faith and goes a long way to establishing trust. Just make sure that there is a follow-up plan along the lines of "I'm working at-risk for X days. If the contract isn't signed by then, or if I've reached the first small milestone/chapter/deliverable, I stop work." Except, in this case, it seems the OP actually had a signed contract (half way through his timeline) but Apress still refused to cough up the payment that they obligated themselves to pay. That just sucks.
  - mikeash 15y ago

Lazare 15y ago

For me, Apress's apparent feeling that the wording of contracts just doesn't matter, and the comment that they "don't modify the standard contract" are huge huge red flags, and I've had major issues in the past with this. Their seems to be a scarily common school of thought that contracts are, basically, magic incantations to ward off the lawyer demons. You just need to have a contract, sign it, and somehow, magically, everything will be okay. This is, obviously, not how it works. The wording of a contract is of absolute import; you should never ever sign one without reading it closely, and (ideally) getting a lawyer familiar with the issues to read it over. But I've had more than one boss or client who had a "standard" wildly inappropriate contract they expected me to sign, and when I pointed out some issues would just say "oh, those clauses don't matter"/"don't apply to you"/"just ignore them". In my experience, confidentiality agreements are especially likely targets for this egregious mentality. "Uh, this contract says that if I throw together a mockup of an iPhone app for you, you will own all the IP/product ideas/designs/technology I develop for the next three years." "Oh, don't worry about that, it's just a standard clause - just sign right here." "...No." Madness. And yes, most people are playing it honest, and have no intention to try and enforce whatever crazy clause is in the "standard" contract, or invalidate it, or other legal shenanigan. But you just never know...

wisty 15y ago
IANAL, but if you want a "standard" contract, then you just put the deal on paper. Common law and legislation automatically has a framework for "standard" contracts - that's the legal framework that governs your plumber when they fix your leaking tap. If the negotiator doesn't know what terms can be changed (as they are just there to define the deal), and which can't (as they are there to limit legal risk, and can't be changed in any way without upsetting the lawyers), it's a bad sign. Some terms will tend to describe the work (you do X, we pay you Y). The lawyers don't need to touch that, as long as everything is clearly defined (though they will want to check the definitions). It's up to non-lawyers to decide what the deal is. Other terms are less flexible, and describe what the legal situation will be if the shit hits the fan. Stuff like jurisdiction, arbitration, liability, when the contract becomes void, and resolution process. You won't like it (as it's there to cover the other party's ass), but you probably won't get it changed - that's the way their lawyers like to play ball, and the agent you are dealing with won't be able to convince the legal team to change anything without a lot of work.

vonskippy 15y ago

Since we only "hear" one side of the story, it's impossible to tell if he's brave, daring, or foolish doing work without a specific and valid contract. At least it ends with him getting paid.

mikeash 15y ago
Perhaps some combination of all three. I consider getting involved with Apress in general to have been a big mistake, and there are certainly warning signs (like the contract) that I should have paid more attention to.

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user63447 15y ago

Tldr. Don't do business with mikeash because he will totally criticize you on the main page of Hacker News.

zedshaw 15y ago
Welcome to the free market. It requires open information for everyone, which includes criticisms. As long as it's true or obviously a hilarious joke or parody, he's totally allowed to say it. And, doing that benefits everyone else because the market can adapt. Then again you're trolling so this comment is more for everyone else than for dipshits like you.
- its_so_on 15y ago
  I like how you say "as long as it's true or obviously a hilarious joke or parody". It's like, it's not enough to be obviously a joke or parody, your standard requires actual hilarity. I can see you in the judge's chair: "I'm sorry, it's obviously a parody but I just don't see it as all that funny." "But your honor! [explains joke]." "Oh. Hahaha, okay, I missed that. Haha, that's pretty funny. All right, counsel, case dismissed!"
  - mikeash 15y ago
    "At 43 millihedbergs, this work falls short of the legal minimum of 50 millihedbergs, and therefore is not protected."
mikeash 15y ago
Pay me when I'm owed and you won't get criticized for not paying me. I'm simply saying what happened: if they didn't want to have it talked about, they shouldn't have let it happen.

rwmj 15y ago

My Apress experience: http://blog.merjis.com/2006/11/08/practical-ocaml/ http://blog.merjis.com/2006/11/08/practical-ocaml/

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gtani 15y ago
Always wondered about that, I spent a lot of time in Borders reading the Apress Ocaml and F# books (and bought the F# books). The Ocaml book is ... exceptional
- rwmj 15y ago
  The whole experience (which went on for something like 2 years!) was screwed up from beginning to end. My apologies to you or anyone who spent money on that book. It was published against my advice. Apress promised there'd be a heavy copy edit/rewrite before publication, but that never happened. Jason Hickey's OCaml book (search for it - a PDF is floating around) is excellent.
  - deleted 15y ago
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Uchikoma 15y ago

If you write books for the money, you're doing something wrong. Writing code for the same amount of time will make you much more money. Writing tech books is for advancing your career, get consulting gigs, get invited to conferences etc. That said, sending contracts with deadlines that are in the past or before work started looks not very professional.

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lionhearted 15y ago

A lot of industries that perform badly for no good reason rely on shaming and saying "it's unprofessional to come out publicly" to keep people in line, or they use legal threats and other leverage. Good on Mike for coming out. If 5% of people shared their experience honestly, damn near every bad industry would be reformed quickly.

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reuven 15y ago

I've written a book (a decade ago, for Prentice Hall), and I talked with Apress about writing a second one. Apress, it should be noted, forgot about our discussions, and I didn't push, so the project dropped. The first thing to realize about writing a computer book is that you probably won't make much money off of it. Indeed, you'll probably make very little money from it. So it's not a surprise to hear that the author made so little. It's also not surprising to hear that Apress didn't promote the book. I'm on the receiving end (as a Linux Journal columnist) of book press releases, and I easily get 1-2 such messages per week. The publishing business is in a terrible state, and while it seems paradoxical that it costs too much to market the book in a serious way, that is the case. When I wrote my book (and granted, this was before Facebook Twitter, and the like), I was responsible for ensuring that it was reviewed on Web sites and magazines; I didn't feel like the publisher did very much. Given that my book got very positive reviews, you would have thought that they would have pushed to market it more, or to do a second printing. But they didn't. Most books are basically thrown out there, and the few that make a lot of money, by some combination of skill, contacts, and luck, get additional printings. Apress was founded by someone who was fed up with other publishers, and so it's sad to hear that they have problems with contracts. But it's always unwise to into into a business agreement without a contract of some sort; I've learned this the hard way on a number of occasions through my 15-year consulting career. Writing the book before the contract was set was a mistake that the author made. When I wrote my book, I also hired an agent. On the one hand, he got 10 percent of whatever I earned, which wasn't much to begin with. On the other hand, he got rid of many clauses in the contract that I never would have thought to notice or remove. It was probably a wash financially, but knowing that someone was there, helping me out, was a good feeling. If I had to write a book nowadays -- and I'm certainly thinking of doing so -- I'd probably go the self-published, Ebook route. Ebooks can be shorter, are more flexible in terms of format, and will probably net a good author about the same amount of moeny as they would get from a publisher, minus much of the hassle. True, a good publisher will give you good technical edits, indexes, and distribution, but with rare exception, I have to wonder how useful those really are nowadays. The bottom line is what while Apress might not have been professional about how they treated this author, it seems pretty par for the course in today's world. It's a shame, given how much work goes into writing a book, that he had to have such problems. I'm guessing that if had signed a contract in advance of the work, and perhaps even had an agent helping him, it would have worked out better. But maybe Apress has lost touch with their author-centric roots (that's the "A" in Apress, by the way), and smaller publishers such as the Pragmatic Programmers are the place to go for aspiring authors.

harryf 15y ago

I got mixed up these guys back in 2003, when the were still called Wrox press. Reading this timeline makes me think this "bait and switch" is part their standard operating practice when dealing with authors. Back in 2003 they were also desperate for cash ( http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/03/17/wrox_hit_the_rocks_as/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/03/17/wrox_hit_the_rocks_a... ) and ended up publishing the book I worked on (with 3 others) minus the last 5 chapters which were still being written. I wont mention the title as frankly I'm ashamed of it. Happy to verify via PM to the same username on reddit

hello_moto 15y ago
These guys as in publishers or Apress? I thought Apress is a totally different company altogether?
- harryf 15y ago
  On paper yes. But Apress bought all Wrox successful titles and (I suspect) it's people. Same game different name in other words

jefflinwood 15y ago

I like most of the people I've come into contact with at Apress ever since they acquired my first book from Wrox after a giant debacle. That said, they've made some very strange strategic decisions about their book line that basically involved my co-author and I taking future editions of our books in directions that we completely disagreed with. Tech book authoring really isn't a very good way to make money, so I wouldn't really worry about a thousand dollar advance - after all, it's an advance against royalties, so you should get paid either way.

maxer 15y ago

i was asked to be a technical reviewer on a book with apress, i felt really good about reviewing and agreed. When i received the first few chapters i realized the book would have to be re-written. The English was bad and the code was mediocre. Since it wasn't a paid gig i felt insulted with the experience, the book would require days if not weeks of work to complete rather than a few hours which i had thought.

swaroop 15y ago
Same exact experience here but with a different publisher - I also agreed to be a technical reviewer which I ended up regretting after reading the prose and code.
anghyflawn 15y ago
Not to be snarky, but that's what reviewers do: help with good stuff, reject bad stuff. Academia works the same way. Even if you think it's a racket, this is far from unique to Apress.
- mikeash 15y ago
  I don't think that's the case. The purpose of a technical reviewer is to do fact checking on the technical aspects of the writing. If the writing itself is bad, it never should have gotten that far.

marcf 15y ago

You were working without a contract. I would suggest that is the whole reason this experienced sucked, not because of Apress.

mikeash 15y ago
While that certainly explains some of it, they still failed to pay for months after a contract was in place.
huxley 15y ago
Not quite, he actually might have been working with a contract depending on what the communications were between Apress and Mike. An oral contract with implied commitments on both sides can still be legally binding. It is certainly possible to sue someone for breach of an oral contract.

orbitingpluto 15y ago

The experience is not limited to Apress. I was at a garage sale. Tons of Wrox books were in a pile for two bits each. When I went to pay I noticed that the spiky haired blond guy on the cover of one of the books was the same spiky haired blond guy I was handing quarters to. Paying attention can earn you a very interesting story! Short version: In this case the author did have a contract, but they kept upping the schedule as they were selling the company (and didn't tell the author). He was paid, but it took a very very long time and he said that was the last book he is ever going to write. I asked him if he was sure he wanted to sell it. (It was his last and only copy.) "I guess I should keep it. I wrote the book after all."

Nelson69 15y ago

Why aren't more technical books self published? I've heard these same things echoed from non-technical book publishing experiences too. The publishers are quite simply middlemen, they can front some production costs to get books in to brick and mortar stores but expect very little unless you have a proven track record and you give a lot up for that. A friend wrote a book (a novel), found a publisher, and basically he was going to pay for everything, literally, pay for the first round of published books, pay to promote, effectively self-publishing the book but sharing the profits. His best avenue for making money on it is to sell the books himself on amazon. Never mind the crappy nature of so many technical books anymore. Technical books, with technical audiences? Short of the tiny amount of money upfront, I can't see at all why you wouldn't self-publish. The audience is forward thinking, they get it.

toyg 15y ago
Oh but they are: the number of technical howtos and tutorial on the internet is huge. Just because they are not collected and printed on dead trees doesn't mean they are not published.
mechanical_fish 15y ago
Unfortunately the answer for your friend is simple: He got scammed. If a "publisher" asks you to pay for everything, or indeed for anything but postage, they are a scammer. There are entire message boards dedicated to authors warning other authors away from such scams; look e.g. for Absolute Write's "Bewares" section or google "Yog's Law" ("Money flows toward the writer.") Paying for your own publication costs is called vanity press publishing, and it's okay provided you know what you're doing: You are almost certainly taking a big loss in order to get your work into paper form. You will only make money if you've got publishing talent, which equates to "marketing talent": You've got to be good at selling books, which is very hard, especially if you've never done it before. (Before I got distracted by the story of your poor friend, I was going to answer: many do self-publish, more and more every day, but you don't notice them as often because they aren't as well promoted. Also, whereas it's fairly easy to market tech books online non-tech books are far harder to sell without market knowledge that publishers have scraped together over decades, non-techie writers therefore lust after contracts, and techies imitate non-techie writers. And, because getting a publishing contract probably increases the odds that your book will get finished, because someone else is pushing you toward completion, when we survey the universe of manuscripts we disproportionally sample the ones that get turned into finished books by publishers.) (And, yes, e-readers are busily upending this centuries-old industry, so ask again in five years for a completely different answer.)

mikeash 15y ago

I'm seeing a few common themes in comments, so I figure I'll address them all at once. I'm writing this comment both for my blog and Hacker News, so please excuse vagueness etc. Beginning work without a contract was certainly not a smart move. They talked a good game but I still should have known better. However, I think I was still in a pretty good position, because it is that contract that gave them the right to use my work. I already had a reasonably popular technical blog that would have made a fine home for what I wrote if they had changed their minds. In fact, this gave me quite a bit of leverage when it came time to get the Pro Objective-C contract amended. After they refused my amendments, I pointed out that they could not use my work without a contract, and that I would not sign anything that didn't have my amendments. They changed their tune with amusing rapidity. The amendments I requested were fairly simple. Aside from fixing the dates, I struck out portions that required ongoing work from me, such as responding to errata, since I was no longer involved with the book. The money involved was not large, for sure. In general, writing technical books doesn't pay well. There are good reasons to do it (exposure, fun, satisfaction, etc.) but money isn't one. I went into the project knowing that I wasn't doing it for the money. Given that, it might seem strange to have such a problem over money, but I don't think it is: even though I wasn't doing it for the money, I was still promised money, and I simply couldn't tolerate any crap over it. For everyone talking about other publishers, I appreciate the sentiment, but I have moved into self-publishing. The Complete Friday Q&A is self-published and the experience was great. I intend to continue doing so in the future. I really don't see much of a role for traditional publishers these days.

jpdoctor 15y ago
Thank you for the post. This stuck out at me: > but I have moved into self-publishing. As near as I can tell, publishers have one and only one purpose in the modern world: Publicity. They might as well change the name of the biz to reflect this, because it is the only differentiator they have.
- mikeash 15y ago
  They do provide other useful services, like copy-editing and tech review. However, they don't provide these very well, and the amount of money they take in exchange is huge. They also provide a bit of financing, sort of like how movie studios are basically banks who specialize in investing in one particular area. But with the typical tech book advance coming in under five figures, this isn't very big.

taylorbuley 15y ago

From a reader perspective, I would highly advise checking out No Starch Press (http://nostarch.com/ http://nostarch.com/) and Rosenfeld Media (http://rosenfeldmedia.com/ http://rosenfeldmedia.com/) if you haven't heard of these smaller imprints yet.

marijn 15y ago
I've published a book with NoStarch, and can endorse them from an author's perspective as well.
- taylorbuley 15y ago
  I read that book! Very elegant stuff :)

Juha 15y ago

I had my suspicions of Apress already after reading their Practical Django Projects (2004) book. Book itself was quite ok, but it was referring to downloadable source code of the presented projects from Apress website. To my knowledge this sourcecode of the sample projects isn't still there. Gladly I found some bitbucket projects with those sample projects written by other readers, but my trust for Apress was lost.

Zeus-TheTrueGod 15y ago

So have you earned only 3k$ for the whole book? What is your effective hour rate then ? 10$ or 5$ per hour ?

hello_moto 15y ago

This is the nail in the coffin for me when it comes to purchasing books from Apress. If my memory serves me right, both Peter Cooper (Beginning Ruby) and Mark Pilgrim (Dive into Python) had "hiccups" as well dealing with Apress. Average or below quality marred with treating the people like this is enough red marks to stay away from them. Note: I know there are a few books that HN-ers love published by Apress such as the XYZ At Work series. That particular series, no pun intended and not to disrespect to author, is totally different when you compare it to technical books.

mark_l_watson 15y ago

I liked working with APress for my book that they published. They found a very good technical editor for my book project who added a lot of value and the editors were all nice to work with. The only negative thing was that the book did not sell very well so I didn't make money for my business partner (i.e., APress). The only publisher I ever had a negative experience with was Manning. My project was cancelled and they told me to keep the advance. I wanted to return the advance and own the book and they declined (I think because they had similar titles in the pipeline). However, I continue to think that the owner of Manning is a great guy (I very much enjoyed all of our conversations), and I still buy lots of Manning books (probably 10 in the last year). The author of the linked article seems kind of bitter and it was unusual that he didn't sign the contract for so long. Anyway, I wish him luck in his future projects - it is great fun writing books.

stevenp 15y ago

I too was one of the contributing authors on iPhone Cool Projects and I also had to run around chasing people to get paid my "advance" months after the book had already been published. I did have a contract in place before starting, but Apress just ignored it, and the only way I was able to track anyone down was to ask another more popular author to help me find someone who could get me paid. My contacts at Apress basically just ignored my emails and phone calls. None of that even touches on the antiquated process where I got to spend hours screwing around with a bunch of confusing MS Word templates because most of an author's time is clearly best used trying to correct style errors. The entire process had me wondering if this is really how these books get created. If it is, I decided it definitely isn't for me, especially considering the minimal pay. Needless to say, I had a pretty awful experience with Apress too, which is a shame, because I'm not a prolific blogger like Mike, and getting to have my name on the front of a technical book was a really exciting achievement for me. I'm proud of the work I did, but not really sure that I'd ever want to go through this again.

alanh 15y ago

Reminds me of the stand Sebastian Marshall is taking against Simon & Schuester. He also points to overdue advances and sluggish response times. http://www.sebastianmarshall.com/an-open-letter-to-simon-and-schuester-ceo-carolyn-reidy http://www.sebastianmarshall.com/an-open-letter-to-simon-and...