Final Comments on Pro Puppet 2nd Edition

[Jon Forrest]

I just posted my list of issues I discovered in Chapters 11
and 12 - the last two chapters of Pro Puppet 2nd Edition.

I found a lot of issues with this book. I simply don't
understand how these issues escaped the editors. One reason
I posted what I did is so that anyone thinking about buying
the book will know what to expect.

I just hope the technical material about Puppet was higher
quality than the editing job that went into this book. Since
I'm not a Puppet expert I have no way of judging, so I won't
comment.

I've posted the complete list of issues on
https://www.dropbox.com/s/qmcdgdo4bvq620q/propuppet2.txt

Jon Forrest

[Kurt Wall]

I'll make the observation that it *is* possible to produce an
error-free printed product, but the cost to do so would easily double
or triple the cost of the title. The cost of proofing, plus the
smaller and captive market, is why quality textbooks are so
ridiculously expensive. And why mass market softback titles are not.

Kurt

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[Daniele Sluijters]

Hi,

I'm going to be slightly blunt here. The authors of the book have, repeatedly, ask you to connect with them through different channels and contribute your fixes to the Github repository that was set up. Though I appreciate your review of the book, the way you've handled the situation is not exactly exemplary.

I'm also wondering what you're trying to achieve here. I'm sure you realise that most people won't be reading your posts on the mailing lists before buying the book. From reading your comments most of them are not about errors with regard to Puppet but with (perceived) errors in grammar, style or formatting. Only a few are actually about code or command errors and a few about terminology that's used before it's been explained or other issues that could potentially hamper the users understanding.

-- 

Daniele Sluijters

[Jon Forrest]

On Thu, Mar 27, 2014 at 3:02 PM, Daniele Sluijters
<daniele....@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm going to be slightly blunt here.

That's fair.

> The authors of the book have, repeatedly, ask you to connect with them through different channels and
> contribute your fixes to the Github repository that was set up.

One author asked me once. I've never heard from any of the other authors.

Furthermore, as of today, Apress *still* doesn't show anything on
their Errata page for the book. That's the first place where issues should show up.

>Though I appreciate your review of the book, the way you've handled the situation is
> not exactly exemplary.

I obviously don't agree. I'm doing this editing for free, on my own
time. I don't make any money from doing it. Helping the authors, who are making money
from the book (which is entirely fine), doesn't seem like an exemplary way
to handle the situation either. The list of issues is freely available
for them, or anybody
else, to do whatever they want with, including putting them on GitHub.

Let's say I had chosen to work with the authors. What difference would that
have made?

> I'm also wondering what you're trying to achieve here. I'm sure you realise
> that most people won't be reading your posts on the mailing lists before
> buying the book.

Maybe not, but I hope I've helped those that do.

Other than listing the issues with the book, I'm not trying to achieve anything.
I'm not a Puppet expert so I'm not promoting a Puppet consulting business.
These days I don't work as an editor so I'm not trying to get editing work.

> From reading your comments most of them are not about
> errors with regard to Puppet but with (perceived) errors in grammar, style
> or formatting.

Exactly right. This is a point I've made several times. But these are
exactly the kind of errors that the publisher had the responsibility
to fix. They didn't. When I buy a book with these kinds of problems
I feel ripped off, especially since it's not that hard to do right.
It's the technical stuff about Puppet that's hard.

I just got a copy of the latest version of Patterson and Hennesy's
Computer Architecture book. That's an example of how a book should
be edited.

> Only a few are actually about code or command errors and a
> few about terminology that's used before it's been explained or other issues
> that could potentially hamper the users understanding.

Right again. I even went to the trouble of clearly labeling the issues I
found so that people who don't care about typos, grammar, style, or
formatting can ignore all that and only look at the true errors.

I knew that not everyone would be interested in what I found. That's
why I clearly labeled my postings so that people who didn't care about
issues in the book could ignore what I said.

What would you have done?

Jon Forrest

[Spencer Krum]

Hi,

I am one of the authors of Pro Puppet. I have asked the Apress administrators to link to https://github.com/pro-puppet/pro-puppet-errata from the Apress errata section. I'm sure that will appear eventually. I invite all community members to contribute directly to this project or to email us with any feedback, positive or negative about the book or its content.

Jon,

Thank you for your attentive reading and comments. I don't agree with all of your feedback, but that's to be expected. I'll be pushing up the rest of your chapter notes and notes from others as soon as I find a hole in my schedule.

Thanks,
Spencer

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