> You're an incredible outlier for even being cognizant of the publisher of your favorite books, I don't know what kind of books grandparent had in mind (ficti

> You're an incredible outlier for even being cognizant of the publisher of your favorite books, I don't know what kind of books grandparent had in mind (fiction or non-fiction?). For me, I have a general awareness of technical book publishers and their strengths. Some examples... In general an Addison-Wesley or Morgan-Kaufmann book is better edited than an Apress book. Also, some publishers tend to gravitate towards certain strengths such as MK's line of books on big data & data mining. O'Reilly and Manning publishers tend to respond very quickly to the latest technologies (some might say "fads") with a topical book whereas Addison-Wesley is much more conservative. Of course, there are exceptions to all of the above but the general tendencies of tech publishers can be used to signal the potential quality of a book (especially for unknown authors.) I don't think the HN crowd would be outliers by having a sense of where the various tech book publishers fit in the marketplace.