Comment by analogpixel
1 day ago
I would have 100% bought the book the author initially pitched. I could do without the junk the publisher wanted him to add, and really it would have probably caused me to not buy the book.
I've come to hate every cookbook that starts with 100 pages of here is a tour of my pantry, which sounds a lot like, here is how to use pip!
> I've come to hate every cookbook that starts with 100 pages of here is a tour of my pantry, which sounds a lot like, here is how to use pip!
Yeah I agree. I hate when books do more hand holding than the reader clearly needs to the point of tedium. Plus many of those setup steps like how to use a package manager change over time and make the book stale instead of evergreen. And Austin was clearly not writing an absolute beginners book.
That's why when I pitched both the Classic Computer Science Problems series and Computer Science from Scratch I explicitly told publishers in the proposals that I was not writing a beginners book (been there, done that). I was clear that I was writing an intermediate book for people that already know programming.
It's a different, more narrow audience. But you can be successful if you write a good book. It's also a less tapped market and luckily publishers were able to see that.
Just skip the chapter?
It's usually not just one chapter but the style of the entire book. Whenever something relatively advanced comes up it's just briefly mentioned and skipped over to the next topic, which once again starts by explaining the basics that would be better suited for a beginner level book.
I find it quite difficult to find quality programming books that actually deal with the details and waste no pages explaining the basics that can be found in literally any other book about a specific language/technology.
When it was mentioned that the publisher demanded the book be "dumbed down" it wasn't a surprise to me at all. I also think it's hurting sales of programming/SWE books at large as beginners are more likely to just use up-to-date Internet tutorials than books, but those more experienced who would benefit from in-depth books can only find the dumbed-down ones.
It uses up the preview in amazon, so you can't actually see the recipes in the book or if the recipes actually have pictures. All you can see is the default, here is my pantry.
Another bonus feature, would be to remove: breakfast, appetizers, and salads from all cook books, or put them in the back where no one needs to look at them.
Although I have found that cookbooks that don't include the useless fluff to pad the book out are usually much better, like the cookbooks from Milkstreet or Love and Lemons, So I guess it's actually a decent way to just filter out all the crap books.
Speaking of good cookbooks, Big Vegan Flavor by Nish Vora is actually one of my recent favorites. First of all, the pictures are amazing and make it a very fun read. And it is less of a recipe book and more of a guidebook on how to develop a good sense about cooking. Don't let the word Vegan put you off it's not the pompous kind of vegan stuff.
Honestly, I wouldn't consider publishing a book if it didn't have that information. There's no reason to give up half or more of the potential market for a book because it's arbitrarily pitched at advanced users. Assuming the customer knows how to use pip would be crazy.
Honestly I don't want to buy books that pander to the lowest common denominator so the author can make more money.
> I've come to hate every cookbook that starts with 100 pages of here is a tour of my pantry
To each their own. As someone who learned to cook as an adult, I’ve appreciated seeing both what someone has and what nonsense I own that they manage just fine without.