I've just picked up a copy of #apress "Electronics for Beginners", which seems like a really terrific, practical book for, er, beginners in electronics like myself. I think it might even have been recommended here; can't remember.
Turns out the author runs his own publishing house and is the author of several books promulgating #intelligentdesign. Now I feel dirty.
@fluidlogic In their defence, though, old and supposedly reputable companies sometimes also miss. I recall reading a pretty weird book, full of dubious claims on parsing techniques, from Wiles, around the late Bush crisis.
No Starch Press seems to be one of the few tech publishers that consistently puts out high-quality books. O'Reilly and Addison-Wesley get pretty close, too; I'd even accept an argument that they're essentially on the same tier, they just do more books, so their occasional questionable editorial choices are statistically indistinguishible from No Starch Press getting nearly everything right.
One needs to be vigilant with Apress; they seem to believe in a process more than expertise proper, and probably just can't really tell a good tech book from a bad one. And Packt, well, is the blind pig that might sometimes find a tasty acorn, but I'd never bet on that. Perhaps not exactly a vanity press, but awfully close.
@riley @fluidlogic Bill Pollock of No Starch is a helluva guy. He gave me an hour of his time to talk through my (unsolicited) proposal when he could've just rejected me with a form letter. Great conversation - I learned a lot, nothing really surprising but definitely a thorough yet comfortable call.
Serious pro tip: Read the submission guidelines and do what they say. A depressingly large fraction of would-be authors get tripped up by this.
Amin Girasol
Riley S. Faelan
arclight