Book give away

[Thomas Paul]

A good SAMS book? That one!
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[Mapraputa Is]

Originally posted by chanoch wiggers:
btw, here is a comment we got sent in once that you might appreciate:
"The people on your covers are obviously not programmers. Why does wrox pay professional models to put their photos on the covers?"

They probably were speaking about "Beginning XML" guy.

I should admit that when I had to make a choice between "Beginning XML" and "Professiomal XML", I bought "Beginning", because I liked the cover better (the content was basically the same)

[Thomas Paul]

I think programmers should only be seen in small pictures. In fact, the smaller the better.

[Peter Tran]

Even money says this guy won't have any hairs in 10 years. Anyone want to take this bet? I'll have to change the odds if he decides to use Rogaine.

[Mapraputa Is]

Hey, are you being envious?

[Sahir Shibley]

[This message has been edited by Sahir Shibley (edited August 13, 2001).]

[Mapraputa Is]

Aha. One more envious person.
By the way, Wrox "authors exposed" design strategy doesn't work very well if there is the odd number of authors.

They should either somehow eliminate left over author, or invite one more. Somebody good-looking. Thomas Paul, for example

[Madhav Lakkapragada]

any idea which of these MIDP book authors was online
at javaranch book giveaway, couple of weeks back?
(from the picture above)
- satya

[Manku Thimma]

>odd number of authors
It's funny. There are 9 pics shown, and 10 names listed. Someone didn't want his/her pic on the cover - the real programmer (introvert/socially inept/lack of personal hygiene/whatever)

[Thomas Paul]

Originally posted by Manku Thimma:
>odd number of authors
It's funny. There are 9 pics shown, and 10 names listed. Someone didn't want his/her pic on the cover - the real programmer (introvert/socially inept/lack of personal hygiene/whatever)

I think most of the books are like that. This book has 13 authors (actually 16 including those listed after with...) and 12 pictures. I want to know why the lower 6 got little pictures.

[Thomas Paul]

Originally posted by Mapraputa Is:
They should either somehow eliminate left over author, or invite one more. Somebody good-looking. Thomas Paul, for example

Perhaps I can start a new career as a Wrox cover model.

[Mapraputa Is]

Originally posted by Thomas Paul:
This book has 13 authors (actually 16 including those listed after with...)

How come? I counted only 9 listed authors:
1) EJB
2) JDBC
3) SQLJ
4) JSP
5) XSLT
6) SOAP
7) BC4J
8) interMedia
9) ASP

[Paul Ralph]

You missed the large print...
10. Java
11. PL/SQL
12. XML
and of course the self-author
13. Oracle 8i
Paul R

[Mapraputa Is]

Oh, I see... Yes, I missed those. Hm, is PL/SQL one author or two? I know (better would be say "knew") both PL and SQL and they are very different um... authors. Or maybe PL is the first name and SQL the last? Then why Wrox allows other authors to provide only first names? All these EJB and JSP... Or are they last names? You see now, why we here, at JavaRanch, require both first and last names (like "Thomas Paul") - it greatly helps to avoid confusion.

[Peter Lyons]

Originally posted by Thomas Paul
I want to know why the lower 6 got little pictures.

Those are the photographers who took the pictures of the six authors displayed at the top.
Duh.
[This message has been edited by Peter Lyons (edited August 14, 2001).]

[Thomas Paul]

Originally posted by Mapraputa Is:
Hm, is PL/SQL one author or two? I know (better would be say "knew") both PL and SQL and they are very different um... authors. Or maybe PL is the first name and SQL the last?

I think Ms. PL married Mr. SQL. So it should really be Ms. PL-SQL but dashes cause problems in some computer languages.

[Manku Thimma]

Now these guys are actually chatty. Notice those weird ties


[This message has been edited by Manku Thimma (edited August 14, 2001).]

[Mapraputa Is]

Originally posted by Thomas Paul:
I think Ms. PL married Mr. SQL.

Hm... They sound like close relatives to me... Are marriages between close relatives allowed in the USA? XML amd UML seem belong to the same family...

[Thomas Paul]

Originally posted by Manku Thimma:
Now these guys are actually chatty. Notice those weird ties

I'll bet the guy on the right is saying, "Pull my finger."

[Thomas Paul]

Originally posted by Mapraputa Is:
Hm... They sound like close relatives to me... Are marriages between close relatives allowed in the USA? XML amd UML seem belong to the same family...

Do you think ASP and JSP are close relatives?

[Mapraputa Is]

Originally posted by Thomas Paul:
Do you think ASP and JSP are close relatives?

Certainly. ISP is another next-of-kin
P.S. Just couldn't resist a temptation to post the 100-th message in this thread.

[chanoch wiggers]

bottom right hand corner

Originally posted by Madhav Lakkapragada:

any idea which of these MIDP book authors was online
at javaranch book giveaway, couple of weeks back?
(from the picture above)
- satya

[Damian White]

Chanoch, why isn't your photograph on the Java Mobile book when you wrote on it?

Originally posted by chanoch wiggers:
bottom right hand corner

[chanoch wiggers]

ummmm....
it would've messed up the cover by having an odd number of authors?

Originally posted by Damian White:
Chanoch, why isn't your photograph on the Java Mobile book when you wrote on it?

[chanoch wiggers]

i'm too ugly for even wrox to put me on the cover?

[Damian White]

Originally posted by chanoch wiggers:
i'm too ugly for even wrox to put me on the cover?

now you are being too modest

[Simon Brown]

So what's Craig's excuse for not appearing on Pro EJB?
------------------
Simon Brown
Co-author of Professional JSP 2nd Edition

[Mapraputa Is]

I know that other publishers now use Wrox's design as a threat. They say their authors: "... and if you will exceed page limit, or will be late with your submission, we'll put you ON THE COVER! And then your readers will ask why we did not put a camel pictures instead.

Originally posted by Thomas Paul:
This book has 13 authors (actually 16 including those listed after with...) and 12 pictures.

Consider typical Wrox book size. I think that Wrox put all authors who exceeded page limit on the cover. Only few authors, who control themselves well, can avoid this misfortune.

[Mapraputa Is]

Originally posted by chanoch wiggers:
ummmm....
it would've messed up the cover by having an odd number of authors?

In this case they could have two your pictures...

[Thomas Paul]

Originally posted by chanoch wiggers:
i'm too ugly for even wrox to put me on the cover?

What a great signature that would make.
------
Too ugly for even a Wrox book!

[Thomas Paul]

Originally posted by chanoch wiggers:
ummmm....
it would've messed up the cover by having an odd number of authors?

I think that 9 is an odd number.

[Mapraputa Is]

Wrox covers may look boring compared to O'Reillys and Manning, but if you think about their books serially, everything is different. How many Wrox books do you have? One, two? Technology changes fast and pretty soon you will have around 20. Now imagine that your CEO visits your department and sees 20 O'Reilly books on your shelf. What is s/he supposed to think? "Who is that idiot, who placed a zoologist in this @#$% software development department?" - the only meaningful reaction. What about 20 Manning books? Not much better: "Why the heck do we hire anthropologists, if we recently fired 35 Senior Software Engineers?" With 20 Wrox books you are safe. The worst thing your CEO can think is that you are an amateur photographer, but well... who is perfect?

[Thomas Paul]

The problem is that when they are sitting on the shelf, they all look the same... yellow writing on a red background. Maybe they should have a picture on the side of the book. They could pick out the best looking of the bunch (relatively speaking, of course) and put his/her picture on the side. That way if someone asks for your "Java Server Programming" book, you can just say that it's the one with the guy who looks like a dweeb. On second thought, I guess that wouldn't help much.

[Simon Brown]

Originally posted by Thomas Paul:
... that way if someone asks for your "Java Server Programming" book, you can just say that it's the one with the guy who looks like a dweeb. On second thought, I guess that wouldn't help much.

Charming!

[Mapraputa Is]

There is another issue of paramount importance: quality of paper. O'Reilly's "Programming Python" was a commercial failure because the author was so envy with Wrox books popularity, so he wrote twice as much as he was supposed to. Now there was the only chance to save the book - to make it of Wrox's size, but O'Reilly people were too addicted to their standard size. They found another solution - they used thinner paper, so the book still looked more or less O'Reilish. However, meticulous readers noticed that now they cannot highlight, because "the ink soaks through to the other side".
O'Reily's Editor-in-Chief Frank Willison tried to to save the situation, by quoting the latest cognitive science researches that proved that highlighting is harmful and recommended to use a pencil to make marginal comments instead. And as Frank Willison ingeniously noted, pencil won't bleed through.
What O'Reilly did not know, however, is that programmers do not care a damn about the latest scientific researches.

[Thomas Paul]

I have to admit that I didn't quite understand Frank's comments about paper. If lighter paper is better, why not put O'Reilly books out on tissue paper? I compared one of my O'Reilly books with a Wrox book. The O'Reilly book had 12% more pages for the same width. Doesn't that mean that Wrox is using better quality paper? I next compared an O'Reilly book with a SAMS book and they were almost exactly the same width. I next compared O'Reilly to Apress. O'Reilly had about 11% more pages than Apress for the same width. O'Reilly and Manning were almost exactly the same.
So a careful comparison of book widths says that Wrox uses the best paper. Apress is second. Wiley is third. Addison-Wesley is fourth. And then O'Reilly, Manning, and Sams are all tied for last.

[Thomas Paul]

I just checked my McGraw-Hill, "Instant Enterprise JavaBeans" book and it has a whopping 30% fewer pages than a Wrox book of the same width! That is incredible. That comes out to 43% fewer pages than a typical O'Reilly book. An O'Reilly book of 1,000 pages would take up the same space as a 550 page McGraw Hill book.

[Thomas Paul]

Wow! Frank died!
http://www.oreilly.com/frank/
That is so sad. I can't see how O'Reilly will ever replace him. My sympathies to Frank's family and the O'Reilly company.

[Mapraputa Is]

Did you check Deitels books? Their "Internet & WWW" has 1157 pages and is 2/3 Wrox's "XML databases" width (1007 pages) BTW, paper is the only thing I really like in Deitels books

[Mapraputa Is]

Oh no! What happened to Frank???
Anyway, from now on, I will always use a pencil for comments...