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Seeking Python book authors

David Lees debl2nonospammy at bellatlantic.net
Thu Feb 28 00:45:04 EST 2002 
They published 'The Quick Python Book', which I have found to be quite
useful and accurate for a beginner like me.

David Lees


nlin wrote:
> 
> Susan Capparelle wrote:
> 
> > We're a publisher of high quality computer books currently seeking
> > authors for a number of Python related books.
> 
> As a published book author with two well-selling titles to my name, I'd
> just
> like to warn potential authors about my negative experience with
> Manning.
> After responding to a post similar to the above, I presented Manning
> with a
> book idea. My experience with Manning was marked by their lack of
> technical
> expertise on the subject matter, a failure of upper management to
> understand
> my book's premise, their lack of faith in the author's competence and
> vision,
> and their unbalanced reliance on unqualified "reviewers".
> 
> I lost months lost reworking my material to try to accommodate their
> reviewers
> (in the case of my book, some of these were self-proclaimed experts who
> knew
> little about the topic I was writing about), and to compound the misery,
> my
> earnest attempts to rework the focus of the book were met only with a
> curt
> message from upper management saying "Why the change. I thought your
> book's
> focus was XXX" (where XXX was not even the original focus, but only a
> tangential
> aspect). I never had the feeling that Manning (or at least the upper
> management) was really interested in trying to understand my vision for
> the
> book or make an earnest attempt to work with me - it was almost as if
> the
> publisher was the author's adversary instead of ally!
> 
> Eventually I gave up on them, went elsewhere, and got my book published.
> I was
> interested in writing a book, not making an eternal sales pitch.  It was
> a
> waste of good months working with Manning and attempting to appease
> their
> reviewers and to convince them of my vision. Manning trusted their
> reviewers -
> again, many of whom had dubious or inflated qualifications - more than
> they
> trusted the author - not a very productive situation for the author.
> 
> Maybe things have changed at Manning. If anyone has better experiences
> with
> Manning, feel free to share.
> 
> One author's opinion,
> N Lin
> http://linux3dgraphicsprogramming.org
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