wagnerblog.com

Apress is owned by Springer Publishing, a German company best known for the German equivalent of the National Enquirer. Although I have to tell you thats really really stretching it. I should probably say more the equivalent of People magazine, with a bit more sensationalism. In my 23 years in the US, Springer has bought up numerous media companies, among them some very serious technical publishing houses in Europe. So its no surprise that Apres should make a good target. At the very least this brings a parent company with deep pockets. I do hope Apress does not make the mistake that Wrox made when it used to publish 400 page books written by 17 authors. Everybody gets 2 words.

I recently had a chance to look at some of the pre-press chapters of Ingo Rammer’s Remoting Bible (version 2), and I must saw what little I got to see was indeed very intriguing. Having published a couple of things myself I can appreciate the work that must have gone into this piece. Ingo has a great way of explaining things without assuming that his readership is familiar with every nuance of the topics he covers. So what does he do? He provides a nice general introduction to the subject. For example, I read chapter 13 which discussed remoting via SMTP and Pop3 - Ingo spent a few pages on giving a brief intro to SMPT and Pop3 , including where to find the documentation and requests for comments of these items. This sort of thorough discourse comes from the combination of good author and good publishing house. I swear if Wrox had tried to publish something similar they would have taken someones white paper and wrapped it up with disjointed chapters by 5 or more authors from Asian sub-continent (perhaps those poor fellows worked cheaply). The result would have been a mess. So please Apress keep up the good work and as far as Ingo’s book goes - I want it !