10 ms·

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 feed

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.
    - zwischenzug 11y ago
      I did a video for them, and got a book deal with another publisher off the back of it. I actually learned a lot through doing the video, and the guidance I got was pretty good over the technical aspects of putting a video together. The later script editing and review stage was dismal, though. I got the feeling the less experienced editors I worked with later were overworked.
- evilduck 11y ago
  They're the print equivalent of shovelware. I've been contacted by them before and declined because I don't want to be associated with their brand, and I've proofread a friend's book that was published through them because he didn't trust their actual editors. They do have a process that's more than just "submit anything and we'll print it", but they're not very good at what they do (books are submitted in MS Word format!?). I think they're mostly just riding the monetary coattails of fad tech topics, they don't care if their publishings are worthless because they just print so much volume that no single book will ever be popular enough that a bad one will gain much notice, and their topics are generally so niche or topic-of-the-month oriented that there will never be enough readers for an individual book to throw much of a fit over quality problems.
  - mrbill 11y ago
    Other than O'Reilly, I think most publishers still insist on MSWord for submissions.
    - jordigh 11y ago
      The times I've worked with them, No Starch was quite happy with LibreOffice, if that's any better. O'Reilly's insistence on making everyone use git (including non-programmers) seems a bit nuts to me.
      - organsnyder 11y ago
        Having worked on the editorial/production side in a couple of publishing ventures, being able to insist on a git-based workflow would have been a godsend. Given O'Reilly's reputation and prominence, they can get away with requiring more from their authors. If they have any high-profile authors that refuse to use git, I'm sure that they could assign an assistant to manually translate between git and the author's preferred workflow.
        jordigh 11y ago
        Not just the authors. The editors, the designers, the people who do layout, and people who just never wrote a single line of code or typed a single command into a Unix shell in their life... all of them use git, and last I heard, they all have to learn how to use the CLI version of git. It's nuts. Git is hard enough to learn for people who know the internals of how computers work. Making people who would rather be drawing artwork learn how to use git seems really crazy to me. Hearing the coping stories from non-technical people using git is very sad.
jwblackwell 11y ago
I can also back this up from experience reviewing a Packt book. By the end of the process I regretted starting after quickly realising the quality was so low.
SanderMak 11y ago
Similar experience here: got a draft that was so far off the mark, I declined the opportunity to review. In general their game seems to be quantity over quality.
coleifer 11y ago
I am actually the author of an as-yet-unpublished book by Packt and have a few things to say about their publishing process. Essentially the quality of the book boils down to the author, with very little in the way of copy-editing or technical reviewing. The quality I would assume varies wildly from book to book, depending on how much time the author was willing to put into it.
- jordigh 11y ago
  I did technical reviewing for one of their books. Did they offer you a technical reviewer? Maybe they look for one but if they can't find one, they go ahead and publish whatever crap they have anyway.
- organsnyder 11y ago
  What value are they contributing in the publishing process, then? Anything other than typesetting and marketing?
  - cpayne 11y ago
    Distribution! They have an audience, and they know if they publish x books per week, they will make y $$$'s. But that is a fair question for an author to ask. If you already have an audience, then you would seriously look at what value they bring.
  - coleifer 11y ago
    That's a good question -- I mean, they will run through the code and make sure it compiles or runs as specified. They will find and provide you with technical recruiters from the community (with promises of their name appearing in the list of technical reviewers). But Packt themselves do not add anything as far as I can tell besides printing and publicizing.
eco 11y ago
I also was a reviewer on a Packt book. The coordinator was sometimes a bit uncoordinated but I felt the book that came out was excellent (D Cookbook). This is probably more due to the author than anything though. Browsing their books while choosing my free book made me realize they definitely have very open floodgates when it comes to publishing. I don't really consider flooding the market with books a problem though because I read books based on recommendation. If only a few gems come out as a result of their shotgun approach to publishing I think we are still all better off for it.

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.
  - zwischenzug 11y ago
    I did a video for them, and got a book deal with another publisher off the back of it. I actually learned a lot through doing the video, and the guidance I got was pretty good over the technical aspects of putting a video together. The later script editing and review stage was dismal, though. I got the feeling the less experienced editors I worked with later were overworked.
evilduck 11y ago
They're the print equivalent of shovelware. I've been contacted by them before and declined because I don't want to be associated with their brand, and I've proofread a friend's book that was published through them because he didn't trust their actual editors. They do have a process that's more than just "submit anything and we'll print it", but they're not very good at what they do (books are submitted in MS Word format!?). I think they're mostly just riding the monetary coattails of fad tech topics, they don't care if their publishings are worthless because they just print so much volume that no single book will ever be popular enough that a bad one will gain much notice, and their topics are generally so niche or topic-of-the-month oriented that there will never be enough readers for an individual book to throw much of a fit over quality problems.
- mrbill 11y ago
  Other than O'Reilly, I think most publishers still insist on MSWord for submissions.
  - jordigh 11y ago
    The times I've worked with them, No Starch was quite happy with LibreOffice, if that's any better. O'Reilly's insistence on making everyone use git (including non-programmers) seems a bit nuts to me.
    - organsnyder 11y ago
      Having worked on the editorial/production side in a couple of publishing ventures, being able to insist on a git-based workflow would have been a godsend. Given O'Reilly's reputation and prominence, they can get away with requiring more from their authors. If they have any high-profile authors that refuse to use git, I'm sure that they could assign an assistant to manually translate between git and the author's preferred workflow.
      - jordigh 11y ago
        Not just the authors. The editors, the designers, the people who do layout, and people who just never wrote a single line of code or typed a single command into a Unix shell in their life... all of them use git, and last I heard, they all have to learn how to use the CLI version of git. It's nuts. Git is hard enough to learn for people who know the internals of how computers work. Making people who would rather be drawing artwork learn how to use git seems really crazy to me. Hearing the coping stories from non-technical people using git is very sad.

jwblackwell 11y ago

I can also back this up from experience reviewing a Packt book. By the end of the process I regretted starting after quickly realising the quality was so low.

SanderMak 11y ago

Similar experience here: got a draft that was so far off the mark, I declined the opportunity to review. In general their game seems to be quantity over quality.

coleifer 11y ago

I am actually the author of an as-yet-unpublished book by Packt and have a few things to say about their publishing process. Essentially the quality of the book boils down to the author, with very little in the way of copy-editing or technical reviewing. The quality I would assume varies wildly from book to book, depending on how much time the author was willing to put into it.

jordigh 11y ago
I did technical reviewing for one of their books. Did they offer you a technical reviewer? Maybe they look for one but if they can't find one, they go ahead and publish whatever crap they have anyway.
organsnyder 11y ago
What value are they contributing in the publishing process, then? Anything other than typesetting and marketing?
- cpayne 11y ago
  Distribution! They have an audience, and they know if they publish x books per week, they will make y $$$'s. But that is a fair question for an author to ask. If you already have an audience, then you would seriously look at what value they bring.
- coleifer 11y ago
  That's a good question -- I mean, they will run through the code and make sure it compiles or runs as specified. They will find and provide you with technical recruiters from the community (with promises of their name appearing in the list of technical reviewers). But Packt themselves do not add anything as far as I can tell besides printing and publicizing.

eco 11y ago

I also was a reviewer on a Packt book. The coordinator was sometimes a bit uncoordinated but I felt the book that came out was excellent (D Cookbook). This is probably more due to the author than anything though. Browsing their books while choosing my free book made me realize they definitely have very open floodgates when it comes to publishing. I don't really consider flooding the market with books a problem though because I read books based on recommendation. If only a few gems come out as a result of their shotgun approach to publishing I think we are still all better off for it.