

Get a Packt Pub book a day for free - Draconar
https://github.com/draconar/grab_packt

======
amenghra
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.

~~~
coleifer
I am actually the author of an as-yet-unpublished book by Packt and have a few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.

~~~
organsnyder
What value are they contributing in the publishing process, then? Anything
other than typesetting and marketing?

~~~
coleifer
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.

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arooaroo
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.

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Matachines
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).

~~~
techpeace
Many of their books, as far as I can tell, are simply reprints of a
framework's API documentation.

~~~
greg_data
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.

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colinramsay
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.

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SSilver2k2
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
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.

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mpdehaan2
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.

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buckbova
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
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.

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lawry
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.

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AlexeyBrin
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.

