The Best and Worst Tech-Book Publishers? 271
An anonymous reader writes "I am an author working on a technical book about an open-source software package. I am looking for a publisher, and I would like to hear experiences from any Slashdot authors. Who are the best publishers to work with and why are they great? Who are the worst publishers in the tech book business, and what nightmare/horror stories can you tell us about them? Any publishing company in particular you recommend avoiding? Any gems of advice (rights reversion, etc.) you can provide for first-time tech book authors?"
Typeset but not printed (Score:5, Interesting)
I went through the process of writing a nearly 500-page book on newly minted standard, which went as far as being typeset. Then a another major publisher got a book out a month ahead of me, the market tanked, and they dropped the project.
As bad as that seems, I learned a lot in the process and it would definitely go faster a second time around. Didn't help that I was suffering at that time from an undiagnosed disease (Addison's) that left me fatigued.
But yeah, it bothers me that they would take it that far and elect not to push the jolly red candy-like button on the printing press.
Isn't this the age of e-books? (Score:5, Interesting)
the good and the meh (Score:5, Interesting)
O'Reilly is only meh as far as treating authors. They play favorites, they pay the lowest royalty rate (10%), and they shove so many books out the door that yours may get lost. They pay the same rate for digital sales, which really stinks because their overhead is a lot lower. OTOH they are very good at actually selling books, they keep trying new forms of distribution, the O'Reilly brand is tops, and they pay royalties quarterly, which is a nice thing. Better than the typical annual or bi-annual.
No Starch is very excellent. Good editors, good royalty rates (10-14%), and you get good personal attention.
Both will allow you to write your manuscript in other than Microsoft Word. Many publishers are wedded to Word, which is beyond idiotic. It's a terrible tool for manuscripts, and for people like me who boycott corrupt evil globalcorps it's a deal-breaker.
The Dummies book are very tightly controlled and they pay cheap.
You'll deal first with an acquisitions editor. All publishers have a lot of information on their Websites on how to pitch them. For god's sake read it and do what it says; there is a goldmind of information there and you'll look like a moron if you don't take advantage of it.
Be sure you have what it takes to write a whole book-- it is more work than you ever dreamed. If you want to write a good book, that is. Have several conversations with your potential editor to determine if you can work together. An editor will make or break you.
Cambridge University Press (Score:5, Interesting)
Though it's not specifically a *tech* book (more a science thing), I helped co-author a chapter for a book published by Cambridge.
I hadn't worked with them before, though my co-authors had. I had lots of questions about the contract (re-use of published material, what our responsibilities were, and so on). The publisher was very helpful in figuring them out, and explaining to me what each thing meant (and accepted a couple of changes for future contract versions). The book itself is of high quality, in cover, printing, typesetting, figures, etc., and the turnaround time for reviewing and editing was good.
I'm quite happy with them.
Re:O'Reilly & Associates (Score:5, Interesting)
I used to have warm, fuzzy feelings about O'Reilly and my shelf full of O'Reilly books. That was before they started spamming me. I'm a college professor, and they sent me spam trying to get me to adopt one of their physics books for my courses. This was at a .edu email address that I had never given to them -- in fact, I had no preexisting business relationship with O'Reilly at all, except for buying their books on amazon and in bricks-and-mortar bookstores (and not with that email address, either).
I don't do business with spammers.
Re:Isn't this the age of e-books? (Score:3, Interesting)
Thanks, very informative. One question, though. For books on computer science and related areas, how important are brick-and-mortar sales these days? For books on some topics they're probably very important, but for CS I would think that they wouldn't be, provided that you can get sufficient publicity for the book, via, say, a positive /. review.
Re:the good and the meh (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:the good and the meh (Score:1, Interesting)
That's better than what I get as a textbook author.
No offense intended, but the price of textbooks is so insanely high that I suspect that, dollar for dollar, you get more per sale than the average tech book author, even with your lower royalty rate. However, I agree that it's disgusting that publishers of all sorts take such a larger share of the pie for themselves.
Re:O'Reilly, of course (Score:1, Interesting)
Experiences vary. I've had several books published with O'Reilly. The marketing plan for my most recent book seems to be that the editor Tweets about it once every several weeks.
Re:O'Reilly, of course (Score:1, Interesting)
Posting as AC here... I also worked with Peter Meyers on an O'Reilly book recently and found him to be anything but helpful, responsive and professional. In fact, it was quite the opposite. I won't even buy an O'Reilly book based on the experience.
Re:Why not open source your book? (Score:4, Interesting)
GPL: "When we speak of free software, we are referring to freedom, not price"
So in other words, free as in speech, not free as in beer.
Re:the good and the meh (Score:1, Interesting)
You should underline that the royalty rate you are talking about is NOT based on the cover prize!
It is based on distributor price, that's generally 50% of cover price.
This means that if you publish a book with O'Reilly and the cover price is $40 you will get only $2 for each copy sold. (10% of $20)
Same story for NoStarch etc...
The real avid evil profiter is Amazon&C. They have NO RISK and get up to 50% COVER PRICE for each copy sold. And they are just a courier with a nice web interface!
----
Giving away a PDF and asking for $1 or $2 tips might earn you more if you can promote the book in a focused community (and if the book is good ;)
Obviously you will still be able to provide a paper version via Lulu and other PODs.
Re:Why not open source your book? (Score:2, Interesting)
Thank you. We really do try to do right by our authors. We also read and edit everything that comes in, which is why we're usually not the first ones out with a book on any topic unless we somehow invented the market.
I've always considered the relationship between author and publisher to be a partnership. Sometimes that partnership sours, as in any business arrangement, but many times our authors have become my good friends.
Bill Pollock, Founder
No Starch Press
Choosing a publisher -- from No Starch Press (Score:4, Interesting)
Here are my (biased I'm sure) thoughts on selecting a publisher. (I founded No Starch Press.)
First of all, remember that a publisher is not a printer. If all you want is to see your book in print or to "get your book out there," you don't necessarily need a publisher to do that. You can use any of several print-on-demand printers; buy a run of books from an offset printer; sell your book as a PDF; post it as HTML; or other. And there's nothing wrong with doing that at all -- your choice depends on your goals.
Publishing is, or should be, a service business. A publisher should work with you to develop, craft, and market your book. They should help you to make the writing clear and understandable. They should be your harshest critics (because if they're not, the reviewers will be). They should involve you in the process and you should get to know their staff. You should feel free to ask them questions and they should provide you with clear and direct answers. Unfortunately, publishers are becoming more like printers everyday. We're resisting that trend.
If you're not getting editorial services from a publisher you might think of using a printer instead and trying distribution though Amazon directly or through your website if you've got a popular one. After all, if you're not getting service from a service business, what are you getting?
At No Starch Press, we read and edit everything. That's what our editors do in addition to bringing in new authors. Throughout our publishing process our emphasis is on producing quality books, not more books. We release a title when we think that we've done our part to make that book the best that it can be and if we think that the book isn't ready we delay it. That's true of all of our titles whether they're our Manga Guides or our hacking, sys admin, or programming titles. That doesn't mean that every book we publish is a winner but we've worked hard on every book to make it great.
When contacting publishers, ask the hard questions before signing a publishing agreement. How does your publisher market and sell books? How will they sell your book? Who will work on it? How will the editing process work? How involved will you be as author and how much can you be involved? What if you have concerns about the editorial work? How will you be paid? How does the agreement work?
We're a pretty editorially-driven publisher. But by the same token, thanks to our distribution relationship with O'Reilly and our agreements with various international partners, we've got great reach into the world marketplace. We've had books translated into over 20 different languages and we sell our books around the world.
One thing that makes No Starch Press unique though is that we are very picky. We don't publish a lot of books because our goal is not to have 10% of our list carry the rest; I'd rather see 90% of our list carry the remaining 10%.
OK, enough said. Time for a blog post.
Bill Pollock, Founder
No Starch Press
Re:O'Reilly & Associates (Score:1, Interesting)
So, because of one piece of marketing email that could have any hundred of reasons for having been sent to you, you recommend not using them for anything? Holy Quantum Mechanics Physics Man, do you do business with *any* company or do you live in some kind of a bubble? Have you ever considered that a colleague, a student, or even the department gave them your email address? Have you realized that you are part of a fairly specific target market segment that got this email, and therefore not really much of a spam which is generally considered to be bulk email sent to thousands or millions of addresses willy-nilly?
I have worked with ORA many times in the past, from being a member of a college CS department asking for a donation (they sent us their *entire* catalog at the time) to being an author (they have an excellent editorial and accounting staff who will work very hard to help you out and a decent royalty plan) to being a reviewer (I've ended up with multiple copies of some books because the mail service was slow and instead of asking for copies back they told me to give them away as gifts).
I've worked with other publishers as well, and while I've not had any problems with any of them, I've always felt ORA was the best as a publisher.
Re:the good and the meh (Score:1, Interesting)
"And unlike most publishing companies today, we edit everything."
Can you please define "most publishing companies"? I've worked with over a half a dozen publishers over the years (and am currently working with two), and they have always edited -- both development and copy, and in most cases technical as well -- all of their books. Same for typesetting. One publisher I worked with did not create an index for me (I had to do it myself, which believe me is a pain), but that's the only thing that has ever been left out.
I've never done fiction or higher-ed, but for trade-level technical books editing is the norm, not the exception.
Re:O'Reilly & Associates (Score:3, Interesting)
Tim O'Reilly here. I was alarmed by this comment, as I don't like to think that my marketing department sends out spam, so I forwarded this message on to the team. Here's the reply I got: "this person has posted this before. We've searched for his email with no luck. I responded to his comment previously on slashdot and asked for him to send me a copy of the email so we could research. He never replied. Instead of letting us fix it, he would rather be a troll."
I suspect, now that I look more carefully, that there's more than to it than trolling. I notice the link, "Find free books," the claim that we tried to send him a physics book, something we haven't yet published, and I suspect that it is the poster who is a spammer.
bcrowell - if this is a legitimate complaint, please send us a copy of the email you received from us, or your own email address, and we'll see if you've ever been on our list, and if so, make sure you aren't any more.
If not, this guy needs moderating down...
Re:the good and the meh (Score:2, Interesting)
I've been publishing technical books since 1991. In my experience, and according to reports form the authors we've worked with, there doesn't seem to be a company that consistently edits every title as deeply as we do. Of course I may be wrong and this information is based only on my experience with other publishers and reports from other authors.
The reports that I get from authors are either that their work is left basically unedited (or it's left to a copyeditor to clean up), or, as was the case with one large publisher that I worked with in the 1990s, a couple of chapters are edited and then the authors are left on their own.
On all of our titles, one of our in-house editors does a developmental edit first. This edit may involve rewriting/reorganizing chapters; extensive queries; reworking paragraphs and sentences; and so on. Or, if the book needs minimal editing, chapters may move on to technical review, once our editor has approved them.
Once chapters are returned by the technical reviewer and cleaned up (by author and editor), they move onto copyedit. Once through copyedit they move onto proofreading. Our authors see every stage of the process.
If you've been receiving this level of editing that's great news. Every publisher in the tech book business should be doing a similar level of editing, as necessary. I wish they all would because the business would be better for it.
Bill