Packt: A Publishing House for the Future

Since I first heard of them several years ago, I've viewed Packt as the underdog in the world of technical book publishing. In the past year or so, Packt seems to have gained greater and greater influence: their catalog continues to grow, they are attracting talented and knowledgeable engineers as authors, and their titles are things that I'm actually interested in.

Two examples of this are the books Expert Python Programming and Zenoss Core Network and System Monitoring. I received a copy of the former and blogged about my take on it. For the Zenoss book, last year I agreed to be a technical reviewer and am currently preparing a blog post on my pre- and post-publishing experiences.

In both cases, I agreed to work with Packt based solely on the technical merits of their works. However, my experience as a technical reviewer with them was so positive (I have had consistently excellent experiences with their staff over extended periods of time and on long-running conversations) that I have not only agreed to review more titles, but have read up on Packt themselves a bit. Here are some highlights from their wikipedia article:

• They published their first book in 2004 (the same year Ubuntu started!).
• Packt offers PDF versions of all of their books for download.
• When a book written on an open source project is sold, Packt pays a royalty directly to that project.
• As of March 2008, Packt's contributions to open source projects surpassed US $100,000 (I would love an updated stat on this, if anyone has a newer figure).
• They went DRM-free in March 2009.
• Packt supports and publishes books on smaller projects and subjects that standard publishing companies cannot make profitable.
• Their stream-lined business model aims to give authors high royalty rates and the opportunity to write on topics that standard publishers tend to avoid.
• Bonus: they also run the Open Source Content Management System Award.

These guys have some keys things going for them:

• They've got what appears to be a lean approach to business.
• They know how to effectively crowd-source, keeping their overhead low.
• They are rewarding both the authors as well as the open source projects.
• Their titles continue to grow in diversity and depth.
• The have an outstanding staff.

Oh, and I really like the user account management in their website! When I log in, I see a list of owned books, source code links for them, clear/clean UI, very easy to navigate. I can't emphasize this enough to vendors, service providers, etc.: if you want a loyal user base:

1. make a good product that lasts a long time;
2. make simple and great tools that enhance the experience of those products, that truly improve the experience of your users.

All in all, Packt really appear to be leaders in publishing innovation, taking lessons learned from the frontier of open source software and applying that to the older industry of publication production. I would encourage folks to evaluate Packt for themselves: if you like what you see, support them in readership and authorship :-)

I, for one, will continue to review titles that appeal to me personally and that I think others would enjoy as well. I have two books in the queue and three pending blog posts for the following titles:

• Zenoss Core Network and System Monitoring
• Python Testing Cookbook
• Python 3 Web Development Beginner's Guide

And who knows, if I feel like writing a technical book at some point, you may see me in the Packt catalog, too ;-)

Expert Python Programming, a Book Review

A few months back, I received an email from someone at Packt publishing asking whether I'd like a complementary copy of their Expert Python Programming book, and if I would blog about it. I accepted and read the book immediately. However, their request caused me to deeply consider my personal position on grassroots marketing for corporations.

Ultimately, I decided that it wasn't the publisher nor even the author that really mattered or entered into my assessment equation at all. Instead, it's the potential benefit that can be brought to members of the community. So, at long last, I am writing the review :-)

The author of this work is Tarek Ziadé, is a Python contributor, Plone contributor, CTO of Ingeniweb, author of a French Python book, spoke at OSCON last year, and will be talking at PyCon this year. I don't know him personally, but given his credentials, he is a well-qualified and experienced programmer.

Expert Python Programming is actually a shorter book than I expected, coming in at 352 numbered pages. It's also a fairly different book than I expected as well. If these were times when books were given outrageously long titles, I might have suggested something along the lines of:

Expert Python Programming

Wherein the Tools and Methodologies of the Experts

are Described and Discussed

The amount of material that is covered between its covers, though, is impressive. Check out the table of contents to confirm this. This is essentially a book of best practices and tools for Python developers wanting to move from an intermediate (or advanced beginner) stage towards the levels at which experienced programmers operate. In addition to discussing tools and methodologies, Tarek takes the reader on a quick tour of the entire development process -- an invaluable guide for programmers wanting to hit their stride in larger open source projects or on critical company software initiatives.

In Tarek's introductory blog post, he quoted Shannon -jj Behrens as saying the following:

"If you’re looking to progress from knowing Python to mastering Python, this is the book for you. In fact, this is exactly the type of book I wish I had had five years ago. What took me years to discover by steadfastly attending talks at PyCon and my local Python users’ group is now available in a succinct book form."

This is well said... though I would add that this book in conjunction with Python Cookbook (especially the last several chapters) can get you this progress that Shannon mentions :-)

One tiny little quibble ... Given that this book might be read by developers who have no experience with distributed version control systems, I would have liked to have seen Bazaar and Darcs mentioned in addition to Mercurial and Git. The reason being that a developer reading this book as her introduction to working with others in a distributed environment may be given the impression that Mercurial is "the Python way", and that's not necessarily the case ;-)

I've already personally recommended this book to curious and motivated beginning Python programmer friends (as well as an intermediate programmer who felt like he was stuck in a skill rut). If you're one of these, consider this my recommendation to you too :-)