Granted, searching the web for information is nice.
But me – I like print. One – it gets my eyes away from starting at a screen ALL THE TIME.
Second, I like the fact that a book is a concise collection of information: table of contents, glossary, etc. It contains reference that won’t mislead me into going to a forum post where someone asks a question but has no answer, or where the ‘answers’ are guesses or otherwise don’t work.
Books, for me, are a good springboard to get information/ideas, and then to extend that and find further uses and examples jump off that springboard and into the waters of the net.
Jeff, maybe you can also put the name of each author’s blog on the cover too? Maybe you could do this when the first edition sells out and Sitepoint issues a second edition…
The logic is that I read Coding Horror every day for a while before I learned it was written by Jeff Atwood, so I think the “Coding Horror” brand may have more insta-recognition than the “Jeff Atwood” brand.
Congrats on finishing your book! I’m amazed at your prolific high-quality output.
You say: “But that’s the big lie of book publishing, particularly technical book publishing. Publishers don’t screen for quality, they just throw as much out there as they can, and pray that the 1% blockbusters will generate enough revenue to cover the other 99%. That’s how their system works. They won’t say that of course, but that’s the economic reality driving the industry.”
I think that’s true for many publishers, but in the end they’re just hurting themselves by diluting the one thing they have to offer: editorial judgement. The big fight is for attention, and publishers who care about content get more attention, because their readers come to trust them.
The late Richard Brautigan once imagined a library where anyone could place her book, no matter how good or bad the critics might consider it. It would be a place where others could go and look on the shelf for something that suited them at that point in their journey. It’s a pretty dream and I’m glad to see it has come true via the internet.
Blogs are unedited, non-juried writings that serve special needs and they work very well.
I agree that “technical books tied to a specific technology” rarely have a future. I strongly and vigorously disagree that “technical books” have no future.
Books that deal with computer science and computer engineering – that are not tied to a single technology – emphatically have a future. My books about algorithms, software requirements, and software testing are well-used.
The other extreme are the definitions of technology. My book with the complete specification for SQL-99 was heavily used when I worked for a database company.
I might be this emphatic because I’m in the middle of writing a book about statistics for computer scientists. But I don’t think that I am wrong. We’ll find out when the book is published, and the sales figures come in.
Some information is best left to the web, but I always enjoy the book worth buying and the tactile sensation of turning a page, making notes, and reading while sitting on the toilet.
I agree that the web has supplanted books for many things.
However, for jump starting into a new technology, nothing is better than a well written technical book that is organized, brings the key things you need to know together, and gives you a foundation for going to more direct on-line sources of knowledge.
Nothing is more frustrating than trying to learn a system or framework from web documentation, when most of it is cultural, or spread out among blogs, articles, and very occasionally purpose written documentation. You miss out on key concepts or assumptions that would make the rest make sense.
I recently pulled my dusty copy of “The Peter Norton Programmer’s Guide to the IBM-PC” from my basement bookshelves. After reading the blog on your new book, I wondered if your blog would exist today or exist even in the next couple of years if it had not been for this 1980’s “technical” book.
What strikes you about the Norton book is the absolute unadulterated passion he put into that book. The humble yet thunderous accomplishment of propelling the state of electronic computing forward.
I’ve not read your book. However, if it was written in one iota of the same vein as Peter Norton’s you’ve done a great service to yourself and to your fellow human beings.
Tech books dead? Not here, not yet. Maybe it’s my librarian background but I regularly use a small set of tech reference books, including O’Reilly’s “JavaScript: The Definitive Guide”, which FAR exceeds any online JS resource I’ve ever found. IMHO, it’s a must-have for serious JS developers.
when dealing with royalties, contract for GROSS royalties, not net.
You, as the writer should be part of the publishers expenses. As you said, you’re not really helping anyone with this since it’s all freely available in some fashion on the web. Make the publisher pay you whether they met their margin or not, their margins are not your problem.
Next time, don’t let them fool you into the net royalties game, because their executives are getting paid up front before you get the royalties.
If you got a lump sum up front, then you should have worked in small gross percent, with a much larger percentage of the net. even a 1gross/5net split (per writer) plus a lump sum would be more advantageous than a pure net gamble.
Leigh, did you read the two comments on that post you linked? They’re exactly what I’m talking about:
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On the other hand, if I page through another ASP.Net book that describes DataGrid binding without truly diving into how to really get into it (a very difficult task), I’m gonna freakin puke.
Granted there are some good books out there. I just haven’t seen one that starts at the advanced level and assume that I understand the basic stuff. I keep seeing books that talk about string concatenation and stringbuilder. Its almost insulting.
Unfortunately, those types of books dont appeal to a large audience, and therefore all we get is entry-level rehash.
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You do have a valid point.
Now why are such advanced books are not written? Simply because not enough people buy them. You would love such a book, but that kind of book does not sell enough copies to justify the effort. Such a book would end up costing $80 for a 400 page treatise.
In such instances, you have to contend with blog posts, user manuals, and word of mouth. So what you end up with is a lot of conflicting information, and no book to guide you through the mess.
It is a tough choice unfortunately!! A possible solution is to setup a subscription based website where advanced content, and direct contact/communication with authors is possible. But an advanced book in the shrinking sales numbers world - is IMO not gonna happen.
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In other words, online wins. Like I’ve been saying all along.
I agree with most of your views, but you are way off on this one. Books are still the foundation and cornerstone of learning; I don’t care what field it is. Online learning via the first couple of search hits to blogs and other un-edited material just fills in the gaps. I’ve met way too many developers that do their core learning via Google U and it shows in their shallow level of understanding. No depth; all copy/paste quicky knowledge.
Is it books “tied to a specific technology” or those tied to a specific product that have a limited future?
Some good books about core technologies have a long shelf life, such as Ralph Kimball’s data warehousing book and Joe Celko’s SQL books. Data Warehouse Toolkit and SQL for Smarties have been selling since the '90s. They are currently Amazon.com bestsellers in the database category.
Neither book rides a wave generated by the latest product release or technology du jour.
