A private message from pooja

[ent1ty]

Hi! I'm wondering if everyone got a PM from this user ^^ about authoring a book and it's just a spam or some people really think that I rock at coding

[Acki]

yes, I got it too...
but I also don't know what to make of this...
but the site looks serious tho (http://www.packtpub.com)

[ent1ty]

Wow! Only 17 and they are offering me to write a book. One day I'm gonna make it to pope
No, seriously, there is no way I am that good at programming to author a book.

[Eigen]

Probably just a clever type of spam.

[ACE247]

Got an e-mail too. But it's probably fake.
For Intrest's Sake here's the message.

Hi,

I am an author recruiter at Packt Publishing (www.packtpub.com). We publish computer-related books on a wide variety of IT topics.

We are planning to publish a new book on Irrlicht. While trying to look out for potential authors to write this book, I came across your posts in Irrlicht forum and it seems that your expertise lie in this area. This gives me an impression that you could be a potential author for this book.


Title: Irrlicht Beginner's Guide.
It is planned to be a 300 page book targeted at C++ programmers who want to learn using Irrlicht.


Prerequisite for readers: Knowledge of C++. Prior knowledge of Irrlicht is not required.


To give you an idea about the way things works at Packt:

- The editorial team at Packt works with the author through out the project.
- We pay a royalty of 16% and an advance against it.
- The marketing team at Packt ensures that the book is well promoted.
- In its ongoing commitment to OpenSource, Packt donates a percentage of revenue generated by the book to the OpenSource project on which it is based. We have donated more than 150 000 dollars to various OpenSource projects since inception in 2004.

Could you please let me know if you find it interesting to author this book?

Thanking you in anticipation.
--
Pooja Channe
Author Relationship Executive
Packt Publishing
www.PacktPub.com
MSN: poojac@packtpub.com
Interested in becoming an author? Visit http://authors.packtpub.com for all the information you need about writing for Packt.

[Acki]

Got an e-mail too.

so he also wrote this to you ?!?!?

I came across your many of your posts in the Irrlicht forum

I mean 42 posts isn't that much (no offend tho ), so the mail seems to be pretty randomly sent to forum members...

[ACE247]

Did some research, seems like Packt did actually publish several hundered books. However I don't think that the person who mailed the message actually works for them, so it could be fake.
On the other Hand i don't know for sure since searching for packt publishing, pooja channe or so turns up hundreds of thousands of results! So it could be serious. The message just has that kind of spam style or tone to it.

[bitplane]

Everyone on the dev team got the email too, and it's not fake if you can reply to the sender

They want a 300 page book made over 10 months, they pay in installments over this time, own all copyrights and pay the author a 16% royalty (of their profits, which are 70-75% of list price). They estimate they will sell over 500 copies over 18 months. This would sound like a good deal, but to make a wage out of it you'd have to write the book in a few hundred hours and do a good job of it. Writing technically yet easy for beginners to understand takes a lot of thought and proofreading.

I'd actually like to write a book on Irrlicht if I had the time, but my main problem is that it doesn't pay well enough to be a main job and I wouldn't want some company to have ownership of the content and prevent distribution to our main audience (students who can't afford to spend £30 on a book). BlindSide and I were talking about collaborating on it as a joint project, but he's not interested until after his exams.

I still think it would be cool to write a book, but as a volunteer project for the community rather than a way for a company to extract money from our users. We could use volunteer writers and proofreaders, then use Amazon's vanity publishing service to get a 50% royalty and put that into competitions or bounties for the engine. It could be a free download under CC:NC/ND/Attribution.

[ent1ty]

Still, I don't understand how could someone read posts from me here on forum and think that I could write a book

[sRc]

yah book publishing is a pretty narrow royalty if you do it the "traditional" way. there's a lot of things that arent to like about the traditional print industry

[ACE247]

So it aint fake! But really, picking random 'authors' from the forum isn't really going to work is it? And then there's the issue sRc mentioned.
I bet one of Packt's people will,is or has read this thread at some point in time.

On the other hand I don't think Irrlicht really needs a 'Beginners Manual' It's already quite easy enough to learn.

[bitplane]

Still, I don't understand how could someone read posts from me here on forum and think that I could write a book

They won't pay you any money until the first 5 chapters are accepted by their editors, they have nothing to lose!

[bitplane]

But really, picking random 'authors' from the forum isn't really going to work is it?

Yeah I agree, I can only think of one person who could effortlessly write the sort of beautiful, technical, witty prose required to author a damn good book in a short period of time: Rogerborg.

I'm not saying that the rest of us can't write, there are lots of people here who have the skills to write a book, but an absolutely blindingly awesome book which is a joy to read? I don't think so.

[slavik262]

I'd rather write code than a book.

[Virion]

i got the PM too