Today I've been reading a few threads about book publishing (I know, this was last week news but I've been traveling around the "park of the delta of the river Po" with a camping car and no Internet during the Labor Day long weekend).

Jeff Atwood of Coding Horror fame has a very interesting post about the fact that programmers in the Internet age don't read books. I mostly agree with him: poor quality, 21-days books, books with more authors than chapters, have made the industry a bad service. And for sure you can find great free online references. But when you need to understand a new topic I found a printed book a better medium. You can read a printed book in many places oyou won't bring your computer (like in a camping car, where I read half of a book about the local mafia of Naples).

Nick Hodges comments citing myself and my experience, among others. Most of it is what I think... .well, we discussed it last week and I haven't changed my mind since then. I partially disagree with his analysis of the book printing process... I did find some good editors in my experience (and some bad ones, for sure) and I still prefer paying a good editor rather than a do-it-yourself approach. It adds value to a book.

Someone at Micro.ISV asia (the name is not visible) further comments, with a slightly more critical description of his experience with Lulu and more thoughts about editing... interesting.

Given that Jeff started this and has tons of comments, I guess there were other posts. I'll add my thoughts later this week.