[Asterisk-Dev] Re: Asterisk Book Reviewer

[asterisk at packtpub.com]

Hi,

When I replied to Tilghman Lesher's message, I did not notice that he had
copied this public list. I realized that when we received a message of
abuse today from someone who seems to have read the messages in this
thread. I asked Tilghman Lesher whether he would forward the reply I sent
him to the list, but he suggested that I can do that myself as it is a
public forum.

For those who are not aware, the first article by Bruce Lawson
http://www.brucelawson.co.uk/archive0401.htm#pp was followed by an update
http://www.brucelawson.co.uk/packt.htm. The latter article had the page
title of "why author won't work with Packt Publishing," so I guess the
message of the article is clear. The interest that the first article
generated and is mentioned in the second refers to a number of other
articles that appeared on the web in the few days following the
publication of Mr Lawson's first article. All of this happened about nine
months after the bankruptcy of Peer Information (PI) (the parent company
of Wrox) and seven months after the establishment of Packt.

The first article starts with what suggests that discovering who Packt was
required some detective work, including a who-is lookup. From day one at
Packt, we were contacting authors and people whom we knew from our days at
PI, as well as new people, to work with us at Packt. No detective work was
really needed to know who we are.

Mr Lawson's articles are of course based on a real story, but they are
misleading in two major ways: their description of what happened at PI,
and their presentation of David Maclean and Packt as one and the same. I
will address both of these. I am not interested in defending David
Maclean, and he is capable of speaking for himself, but I worked at Wrox
and work at Packt, so all of this is very relevant to me and the other
people who work at Packt, all of whom were among the people who lost their
jobs, salaries, bonuses
etc on the day PI went out of business.

No business like PI would go bankrupt unless major mistakes are made, and
it goes without saying that management is to blame in such situations.
David would be the first to accept that he made mistakes. I think everyone
who worked at PI has a lot to say about what went wrong. Some problems
were already known and others became known later after PI went down.
However, PI's history was not one of a string of failures as some seem to
think. Wrox started as a very small publishing company, but within 6-7
years it became one of the major independent publishers of computer books
-- establishing itself as market leader in a number of programming
markets, and competing with much larger publishers. During its 10 years,
Wrox made a lot of money, and paid its authors generously millions of
dollars. It also introduced to the computer book market hundreds of new
authors many of whom would probably not have had the opportunity to become
authors. Some of them went on to make a career out of writing computer
books.

It is of course true that what happened to PI at the end was sad, people
lost their money, jobs
etc. That was simply the end of a period of decline
that had started two years or so earlier. This demise was not the whole
history of Wrox or PI, however. It is misleading to reduce the history of
PI to a month or two in 2003 or even to its last two years or so.

As MD of PI, David Maclean certainly carries the largest share of
responsibility for its demise. No question about that. But then he should
also be credited with a share in the success of PI, which he turned into a
company with a turnover of over $20m. David could not have been the sole
factor in the many successful years of Wrox, but he also could not have
been the only reason for its eventual fatal failures. Neither the success
nor the failure was the result of the actions of one individual. The
bottom-line of what happened to PI is this: publishing so many books that
did not sell. The key is not "publishing so many book," but the fact that
these books "did not sell." I will leave it for others to decide for
themselves if this can be explained by the actions of one individual.

There was no conspiracy by David Maclean or anyone else to bring PI down.
Up to the last few days before the directors were forced to place the
company into liquidation, they were working on a plan to keep PI in
business, thought that did not work at the end. Those who know about PI
know that David Maclean lost much more than anyone else by the bankruptcy.
PI was at some point valued at about £20m, and David Maclean owned almost
half of the shares. Even when sold as ruins after its collapse, PI
generated a decent amount or money. It was not in any one's interest that
PI should go down the way it did. Everyone associated with PI lost.

There was no conspiracy to not pay authors, staff, or other creditors.
There was simply no money left at PI when it went out of business. This is
not because David Maclean and the other directors took the money home, but
simply because the company lost quickly a lot of money as most of its
published books did not appeal to customers. When the bank asked for the
millions that it had invested in the business, there was no money to pay
off the debt.

The other misleading aspect of Bruce Lawson's articles is the attempt to
treat Packt and David Maclean as one and the same. David Maclean is the MD
of Packt, but he is not Packt. Packt consists of people who used to work
for Wrox, so they are people who lost their jobs, salaries, bonuses, and
other benefits like the rest of the staff of PI. In fact, the losses of
each one at Packt was probably a lot more than what each of most authors
lost.

While I was a Managing Editor at Wrox, none of my Packt colleagues were
managers -- in case being a PI manager is also a stigma. In fact, one of
our commissioning editors was one day managed by Bruce Lawson himself.
Incidentally, despite what he says in his articles about David Maclean and
what was happening at PI, Mr Lawson left PI only when it went out of
business -- not a single day before that.

The money that is running Packt has nothing to do with the money that was
not paid to the authors, employees, and other creditors. PI went through a
proper legal and closely scrutinized liquidation process that would have
found out and exposed any wrongdoing. Most people who were involved with
PI, including authors, and those who followed the process closely do
understand that.

While what I have written above is new to people who are not familiar with
what went on at PI, it should all be known to those who were closely
involved.

I fully understand and appreciate the sadness and anger that many authors
and creditors feel about what happened. But I do not believe that the
majority of them would take the line suggested in Bruce Lawson's articles.
In fact, a number of former Wrox authors have been writing for us, and two
of them have already published with us.

Finally, this message has nothing to do with Bruce Lawson personally.
There was never any ill feelings between me and him. In fact, I am rather
surprised and disappointed with what he had to say. The last time Bruce
and I had contact was a few months after the bankruptcy and before he
started writing about Packt. At the time we exchanged a number of friendly
messages which I am sure he remembers very well. I am sure he knew that I
was working with David Maclean, and that did not seem to bother him at all
at the time.

I hope this explains some of issues surrounding PI and Packt. If you have
any question, please let me know.

Thank you.


Louay


-----Original Message-----
From: Tilghman Lesher [mailto:tilghman at mail.jeffandtilghman.com]
Sent: Friday, July 16, 2004 6:05 PM
To: Louay Fatoohi
Cc: asterisk-dev at lists.digium.com
Subject: Re: Asterisk Book Reviewer


On Friday 16 July 2004 08:30, Louay Fatoohi wrote:
> Packt Publishing is in the process of developing a book about
> Asterisk, and we are looking for experienced users of Asterisk to act
> as technical reviewers. I have seen some of your posts to the Asterisk
> user mailing list and I am therefore writing to ask if you would be
> interested in becoming a technical reviewer for the book. If you are
> interested in this project, please let me know and I will give you
> more information.

http://www.brucelawson.co.uk/archive0401.htm#pp

I won't do work for Packt Publishing.

-- 
Tilghman