"Delphi High Performance" eBook free on Packt today.

[Daniel 417]

5 minutes ago, haentschman said:

 

@Markus Kinzler: Please download the PDF and send it here.

No - this would be a violation of their terms of use. If they wanted you to download a PDF, they would provide a link for this.

[Rollo62 536]

I asked myself if this "free learning" is confirmed from the authors, or if Packt chooses books randomly on their own, w/o permission ?

Would be good to know if somebody thinks about publishing with Packt.

[Markus Kinzler 174]

@haentschman I don't think this would be legal.

[haentschman 92]

Ok, Ok... but why can you download it ... and i not? 

[Markus Kinzler 174]

As you see, this product appears twice. The one I claimed yesterday (first entry) doesn't allow the download as it is in your case. But I already owned it (second entry).

[David Heffernan 2345]

50 minutes ago, haentschman said:

 

@Markus Kinzler: Please download the PDF and send it here.

You might consider buying the book if you want it. 

Edited June 7, 2019 by David Heffernan

[haentschman 92]

Quote

But I already owned it (second entry)

Now it is clear...

[Joseph MItzen 251]

8 hours ago, Rollo62 said:

I asked myself if this "free learning" is confirmed from the authors, or if Packt chooses books randomly on their own, w/o permission ?

Would be good to know if somebody thinks about publishing with Packt.

Oh boy, the things I've heard about Packt Publishing. You'd be better off publishing yourself. Their agents work on commission so they'll basically try to talk anyone into writing a book. They'll set impossible deadlines, their editors don't speak English as a first language and will often introduce errors, they ignore the corrections/suggestions of technical editors, etc. They don't do the promotion they promise. And they've been caught before "accidentally" not paying any commission on the book sales generated through a link one could add on one's own blog for readers to buy one's book. I've seen one successful author declare he sold more copies himself than through Packt and when they finally agreed to let him out of his contract due to his allegations they hadn't done what they promised, they still refused to stop selling his book themselves. He then made his book available for free on his webpage to stop them from profiting from his book.

 

It's a horrible, horrible outfit that's little more than a self-publishing firm that takes a large percentage of your sales and does nothing in return.

[Guest]

Well, @Primož Gabrijelčič (the author) is active here - we could ask him about his experience with Packt Publishing.

[Bill Meyer 337]

2 hours ago, Joseph MItzen said:

It's a horrible, horrible outfit that's little more than a self-publishing firm that takes a large percentage of your sales and does nothing in return.

As with most generalizations, there is probably some truth in your comments.

That said, the relatively small number of books I have acquired from Packt have been better than average. In particular, they have done a very nice job with e-books, which for code, are notoriously difficult to format well.

Very few publishers will consider a Delphi title any more, so self-published books and books from Packt or perhaps Manning are among the few available resources. Packt also publishes some very capable authors, and I certainly number @Primož Gabrijelčič among them.

Self-publishing is not a valid condemnation, either. Our own @Dalija Prasnikar published a very worthwhile volume on memory management in Delphi. (Full disclosure: I did assist with proofreading and editing on her book.) Equally, some self-published books on Delphi have been pretty disappointing.

Software development books appear most often for well marketed language tools, whether they are expensive or free. One metric I have watched is price per page. When that goes higher than five to eight cents, the book better be excellent. Sadly, that is not often the case.

[Steffen Nyeland 10]

On the Packt free learning offer, whether you can download or only read online. I think that has changed recently, having grabbed my free book almost daily for years.

So I already owned this one, but most others I have can be downloaded PDF, epub or maybe mobi with code samples. And the ones I actually started reading I ended up buying as dead trees 😊

 

I would actually think that free learning sells more books, that otherwise would not have been sold. And we have more Delphi book than we have had I years.

 

You don't get rich by writing a book, that should not be the reason for writing it in the first place anyway. You write because you want/have to.