7 ms·

Get a Packt Pub book a day for free

52 points by Draconar 11y ago

Matachines 11y ago
Pretty cool. There are some great Packt books (I liked Haviv's MEAN Web Development when trying out the stack), but am I wrong in thinking the signal-to-noise ratio is kinda bad? It reminds me a lot of Udemy (seems like anyone can publish).
- dorfsmay 11y ago
  The quality varies greatly from one book to the next, more so than with other tech publishers in my opinion.
- techpeace 11y ago
  Many of their books, as far as I can tell, are simply reprints of a framework's API documentation.
  - greg_data 11y ago
    Interesting counterpoint to this is jQuery. Their jQuery book came out very early in the game and was authored by people very much involved in the project. Some of the jQuery API docs are actually based on the book.
- monksy 11y ago
  The Guava book, and the High Performance Postges book was pretty good. Additionally, something with Packt that you have to watch out for: Some of their titles conflict with each other. I.e. Along with the High Performance Postgres book, theres another book called Managing Postgresql, its not so great ircc.
amenghra 11y ago
My experience as a reviewer for a Packt book: I gave them feedback about specific technical issues, large pieces which I felt were missing and some general feedback about how the text was full of spelling mistakes and general lack of quality. I didn't hear much back from the coordinator and/or author and a few months later I received a free copy of the book. It was hardly any different from the draft I reviewed.
- jordigh 11y ago
  I'm generally unimpressed with Packt. Bill Pollock said (so consider the source) that Packt is not really a publisher, but just a printer. They don't really have any (copy)editors. They make everyone else do the work and pay them with complimentary copies of their (in my opinion) low-quality books.
  - adam-a 11y ago
    I almost became an author (of a video series) for them. I signed a contract and produced a couple of chapters. I found they had pretty reasonable copy editors, at least the one I worked with was helpful and thorough. My main problem, and the reason I didn't finish the series was their advance was very low and the royalty rate was too. After looking round it seemed the rate was probably reasonable for authors in other fields, but very bad compared to what I would earn actually programming. Plus they absolutely refused to give me any indication of how many sales I could expect. I couldn't justify spending the time to complete the series vs regular contracting. I think this low remuneration affects the quality of the authors they are able to attract, so you're right in that part.
    - TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
      The advance they offered me was less than a quarter of the advance I've seen quoted for other specialised tech books, and about a tenth of what an author would expect for a best-selling mainstream consumer-oriented title. They also spam people on mailing lists looking for authors. (Not spam the mailing lists - harvest addresses and contact people more or less at random.) >I think this low remuneration affects the quality of the authors they are able to attract, so you're right in that part. From what I've seen, not all the books are terrible. ;) But they're certainly not in the same league as No Starch, or most of the self-pubbed titles on LeanPub.
    - erroneousfunk 11y ago
      I wrote a book for Packt and made less than $1000 from it, two years later. However, it is something to put on your resume (if you want to) and I managed to use it to leverage a book deal for a more reputable publisher later on. So it can be useful if you think you might want to write books in the future. However, yeah, the money isn't going to be worth your time by a long shot.
SSilver2k2 11y ago
I've published two books through them. The first book was an amazing experience. The second was a horrible experience with a high rate of turnover from my "editors" and a total lack of communication. I'm happy with the quality of my books, and I feel it was a great opportunity, but my next book I will goto a better publisher or self publish. Also, my books are about gaming on the Raspberry Pi, which I feel is a very niche topic. http://www.amazon.com/dp/1784399337 http://www.amazon.com/dp/1784399337
- monksy 11y ago
  My friend and I were frequently harassed over writting a book on the Raspberry pi. I'm a dev and hes an it automation person. We both have not had experience with the device.
colinramsay 11y ago
I've just published with Packt and the experience was better than the previous times I've worked with them. The reviewers they had on board spotted lots of issues - both with wording and the technical aspects - and the project coordinator was quick to respond. My biggest issue with them is that their tooling is poor, from using MS Word templates to having no version control process for documents and code. I agree with other posters that the quality of the book will strongly depend on the writer.
buckbova 11y ago
Most of these have been starters or quick intros and over a couple years old, although potentially useful. I have downloaded a few and read through the entire postrgres one in under an hour. I am reading AngularJS Web App Dev Cookbook from packt and it's a pretty good read.
- mfrisbie 11y ago
  I'm the author - thank you! Always great to hear positive feedback. Most of what's been said here stems from truth in their publishing process. They do seem to churn out a large amount of content, and I sense that their higher quality titles stem from the author having to make the push for excellence.
mpdehaan2 11y ago
Packt was a notorious spammer of my mailing lists in the past, asking literally everyone (so it seemed) if they wanted to write a book, and then after producing one, did it again on another related topic. They didn't seem to have concerned editors and I've heard others echo these statements.
AlexeyBrin 11y ago
Packt tends to publish books of wildly different quality, some of them are good, while others are lousy written and full of mistakes (not talking about spelling errors here, but software bugs). Also, they seem to don't know you can use colours in ebooks. I see no excuse for not having syntax highlighting in a programming ebooks. It is just lousy management from their part.
lawry 11y ago
This is pretty neat, but I wonder why not download an epub or pdf version of the book right away as well: var downloadurl = 'https://www.packtpub.com/ebook_download/'+getBookUrl.split('/')[2]+'/epub'; request(downloadurl) .pipe(require('fs') .createWriteStream('./books/book_'+getBookUrl.split('/')[2]+'.epub')); Oh and btw, for those not aware of this yet, if you use gmail, you can use example+spam@gmail.com and it will arrive in your inbox, but more easy to label as spam and auto-delete if they start spamming.
arooaroo 11y ago
Packt once approached me to write a book about LaTeX. They would only accept the manuscript in MS Word. Needless to say negotiations didn't get very far. To be honest that wasn't necessarily a red-line, but it was clear that their typesetting was fairly basic (their books at the time did look like Word docs - I've not looked at one in print for a while so I can't comment on current standards) and their ability to provide information about royalties was opaque to say the least. So my confidence wasn't with them. But fair play to Packt, in a short space of time they've created a large collection of titles, particularly in niche areas which O'Reilly wouldn't touch. It's great that there is a publisher willing to invest in the IT textbook sector. I'm just hoping that things have improved as they've grown.

52 points by Draconar 11y ago

Pretty cool. There are some great Packt books (I liked Haviv's MEAN Web Development when trying out the stack), but am I wrong in thinking the signal-to-noise ratio is kinda bad? It reminds me a lot of Udemy (seems like anyone can publish).

dorfsmay 11y ago
The quality varies greatly from one book to the next, more so than with other tech publishers in my opinion.
techpeace 11y ago
Many of their books, as far as I can tell, are simply reprints of a framework's API documentation.
- greg_data 11y ago
  Interesting counterpoint to this is jQuery. Their jQuery book came out very early in the game and was authored by people very much involved in the project. Some of the jQuery API docs are actually based on the book.
monksy 11y ago
The Guava book, and the High Performance Postges book was pretty good. Additionally, something with Packt that you have to watch out for: Some of their titles conflict with each other. I.e. Along with the High Performance Postgres book, theres another book called Managing Postgresql, its not so great ircc.

amenghra 11y ago

My experience as a reviewer for a Packt book: I gave them feedback about specific technical issues, large pieces which I felt were missing and some general feedback about how the text was full of spelling mistakes and general lack of quality. I didn't hear much back from the coordinator and/or author and a few months later I received a free copy of the book. It was hardly any different from the draft I reviewed.

jordigh 11y ago
I'm generally unimpressed with Packt. Bill Pollock said (so consider the source) that Packt is not really a publisher, but just a printer. They don't really have any (copy)editors. They make everyone else do the work and pay them with complimentary copies of their (in my opinion) low-quality books.
- adam-a 11y ago
  I almost became an author (of a video series) for them. I signed a contract and produced a couple of chapters. I found they had pretty reasonable copy editors, at least the one I worked with was helpful and thorough. My main problem, and the reason I didn't finish the series was their advance was very low and the royalty rate was too. After looking round it seemed the rate was probably reasonable for authors in other fields, but very bad compared to what I would earn actually programming. Plus they absolutely refused to give me any indication of how many sales I could expect. I couldn't justify spending the time to complete the series vs regular contracting. I think this low remuneration affects the quality of the authors they are able to attract, so you're right in that part.
  - TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
    The advance they offered me was less than a quarter of the advance I've seen quoted for other specialised tech books, and about a tenth of what an author would expect for a best-selling mainstream consumer-oriented title. They also spam people on mailing lists looking for authors. (Not spam the mailing lists - harvest addresses and contact people more or less at random.) >I think this low remuneration affects the quality of the authors they are able to attract, so you're right in that part. From what I've seen, not all the books are terrible. ;) But they're certainly not in the same league as No Starch, or most of the self-pubbed titles on LeanPub.
  - erroneousfunk 11y ago
    I wrote a book for Packt and made less than $1000 from it, two years later. However, it is something to put on your resume (if you want to) and I managed to use it to leverage a book deal for a more reputable publisher later on. So it can be useful if you think you might want to write books in the future. However, yeah, the money isn't going to be worth your time by a long shot.

SSilver2k2 11y ago

I've published two books through them. The first book was an amazing experience. The second was a horrible experience with a high rate of turnover from my "editors" and a total lack of communication. I'm happy with the quality of my books, and I feel it was a great opportunity, but my next book I will goto a better publisher or self publish. Also, my books are about gaming on the Raspberry Pi, which I feel is a very niche topic. http://www.amazon.com/dp/1784399337 http://www.amazon.com/dp/1784399337

monksy 11y ago
My friend and I were frequently harassed over writting a book on the Raspberry pi. I'm a dev and hes an it automation person. We both have not had experience with the device.

colinramsay 11y ago

I've just published with Packt and the experience was better than the previous times I've worked with them. The reviewers they had on board spotted lots of issues - both with wording and the technical aspects - and the project coordinator was quick to respond. My biggest issue with them is that their tooling is poor, from using MS Word templates to having no version control process for documents and code. I agree with other posters that the quality of the book will strongly depend on the writer.

buckbova 11y ago

Most of these have been starters or quick intros and over a couple years old, although potentially useful. I have downloaded a few and read through the entire postrgres one in under an hour. I am reading AngularJS Web App Dev Cookbook from packt and it's a pretty good read.

mfrisbie 11y ago
I'm the author - thank you! Always great to hear positive feedback. Most of what's been said here stems from truth in their publishing process. They do seem to churn out a large amount of content, and I sense that their higher quality titles stem from the author having to make the push for excellence.

mpdehaan2 11y ago

Packt was a notorious spammer of my mailing lists in the past, asking literally everyone (so it seemed) if they wanted to write a book, and then after producing one, did it again on another related topic. They didn't seem to have concerned editors and I've heard others echo these statements.

AlexeyBrin 11y ago

Packt tends to publish books of wildly different quality, some of them are good, while others are lousy written and full of mistakes (not talking about spelling errors here, but software bugs). Also, they seem to don't know you can use colours in ebooks. I see no excuse for not having syntax highlighting in a programming ebooks. It is just lousy management from their part.

lawry 11y ago

This is pretty neat, but I wonder why not download an epub or pdf version of the book right away as well: var downloadurl = 'https://www.packtpub.com/ebook_download/'+getBookUrl.split('/')[2]+'/epub'; request(downloadurl) .pipe(require('fs') .createWriteStream('./books/book_'+getBookUrl.split('/')[2]+'.epub')); Oh and btw, for those not aware of this yet, if you use gmail, you can use example+spam@gmail.com and it will arrive in your inbox, but more easy to label as spam and auto-delete if they start spamming.

arooaroo 11y ago

Packt once approached me to write a book about LaTeX. They would only accept the manuscript in MS Word. Needless to say negotiations didn't get very far. To be honest that wasn't necessarily a red-line, but it was clear that their typesetting was fairly basic (their books at the time did look like Word docs - I've not looked at one in print for a while so I can't comment on current standards) and their ability to provide information about royalties was opaque to say the least. So my confidence wasn't with them. But fair play to Packt, in a short space of time they've created a large collection of titles, particularly in niche areas which O'Reilly wouldn't touch. It's great that there is a publisher willing to invest in the IT textbook sector. I'm just hoping that things have improved as they've grown.