Book review / advise

[Terry Reedy]

On 6/22/2010 11:49 AM, Stephen Hansen wrote:
> On 6/22/10 6:48 AM, lallous wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> I wonder if anyone read this:
>> http://www.amazon.com/PYTHON-2-6-Extending-Embedding-documentation/dp/1441419608/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1277214352&sr=1-7
>> or this:
>> http://www.amazon.com/Python-Extending-Embedding-Documentation-Manual/dp/1441412743/ref=pd_sim_b_3
>>
>> Are these books just a print out of the manual that comes w/ Python
>> distribution or they are written in a different way and more organized
>> way?
>
> Uhh, that looks like a scam. Someone scraped the Python docs and bundled
> it up as a "book" to sell to naive people for outrageous prices;

Various people have asked on this list for printed versions of the docs. 
PSF has never provided them. As I once read the license, it allows 
anyone to do so, and charge whatever price. I considered doing this once 
myself, but they seem to have beaten me to it ...

Except that there is one possible scam aspect -- there is no version 
listed on the cover. A reviewer of the ref manual said his was for 
3.0.1. Selling that now as the Python 3 Ref Manual (there is no such 
thing) *is* a scam. There is no indication that it has been undated. If 
I were to do this, I would be honest in this respect and publish the 
"Python 3.1.2 Refence Manual", etc. Much more work to redo, better 
service. I would publish through print-on-demand so there is no inventory.

Given editorial and administrative costs, printing cost, bookseller 
markup, and "For each copy sold $1 will be donated to the Python 
Software Foundation by the publisher", the price is not unreasonable. 
The fixed costs have to be amortized over an unknown and probably not 
large sales base.  The standard author royalty might be $2, so they are 
not saving that much on that score.

> and put Guido's name on it to give it legitimacy.

Guido and Fred Drake *were* the original author and editor and were once 
listed as such. I am not sure who or what else the publishers should 
list. Python Development Community ? (which includes me for snippets of 
the docs). The license requires that they *not* put themselves as the 
authors.

> It also bundles up the *tutorial* for $22. There's a number of very
> good, large Python books which sell for that. Surely Fred L Drake and
> Gudio aren't really involved in this. I wonder if they even know about it.

You would have to ask them. Perhaps the PSF should publish each edition 
of the manuals. Assembly of the pdfs for say, Lulu (a print-on-demand 
publisher) could probably be pretty well automated with Python and 
Sphinx. There is already a .pdf version produced, but it would need some 
tweaking. And this would need someone's time.

-- 
Terry Jan Reedy