What makes a good software book?

Software industry trade books are in a difficult position. (I am the author of one book, co-author of three, and contributor/editor to many more.) The industry changes versions too fast for books to be written by authors with significant experience in the products. Doc suggests (http://doc.weblogs.com/2003/03/19#bookSupport) that publishers or manufacturers pay you to maintain a blog, but where’s the money in it for a publisher, and what’s to control the influence of a manufacturer. Most of my books are about Microsoft products; I am not going to give them editorial control of my blog! Many publishers only understand the economics of dead-tree books and have little to no support for e-books. My current publisher, Hentzenwerke, http://www.hentzenwerke.com, is selling e-books and white papers that are electronic only, but just starting that one. O’Reilly has Safari – is that a success for them? Pirillo has GnomeTomes.

Powered by WordPress. Designed by Woo Themes

This work by Ted Roche is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States.