Hello folks at O'Reilly,

I am very satisfied with your work and I think that you produce the best technical books in the world! However, I have some ideas for improvements.

In technical books, I find it very irritating to read wrapped words. Why not turn this annoying feature off (like Wrox)? I don't think that it would consume much more paper and it would make the readability much more relaxing.

Why do you use such wide margins? Why not (like Wrox) extend your margins half an inch further in both directions? This would help to resolve the first problem, and it would also provide the flexibility to add more content or generate savings in weight and production. Your book size (height and width) is already optimal.

I am very happy with the font size that you use. (It's better than Wrox.) Your documents are easy to read, even for senior programmers who have ruined their vision with a lifetime of close-up work. I find it now impossible to read a Wrox book without the perfect lighting. Thank you.

Can you try to shorten time to market? Can't you assist and motivate your talented writers to continue to produce high-quality documents weeks ahead of their current schedules? I have seen it so often and in different offices that when a programming group needs to start a new project, they often have to buy complete sets of books from your competitors and then months later, most always, buy the corresponding higher quality books from O'Reilly. In my opinion, you could almost close down your competition by shortening this time to market and, of course, somehow maintain your heritage of high quality.

I like your small, cost-effective Pocket Reference books like JavaScript Pocket Reference and XML Pocket Reference (although the latter is way out of date). These books are an excellent choice to scatter around the office or keep in the briefcase.

I have observed that international, English-speaking programmers also enjoy the quality of your books. Perhaps you can cultivate more interest in this global market. International customers are not so much concerned with the price of your books, but more concerned about shipping costs and shipping delays. Why not encourage the international market to preorder books to be shipped the first day of printing? One idea that I had is to offer global, free shipping on all pre-ordered books. This would serve two purposes: One, to accelerate delivery to the customer; and two, to motivate customers worldwide to stay tuned to your Web site.

I am confident that you will continue with your heritage of success.

Very Gratefully,

Jack LaPenta
(An American on assignment in Liechtenstein)

Hi Jack,

You have raised excellent points. Thanks for doing so. I'm going to answer your questions, one by one, as you raise them in your email.

In technical books, I find it very irritating to read wrapped words. Why not turn this annoying feature off (like Wrox)? I don't think that it would consume much more paper and it would make the readability much more relaxing.

You're referring, I take it, to hyphenated words. We don't use hyphenation to save space; we use it to create a cleaner page. It's part of an overall page design that I believe is the best among technical books. As you note, our competitor, Wrox Press, does not use hyphenation, and consequently, their books' lines are ragged right--very ragged right, in my opinion. For me, that style is much more difficult to read, certainly more difficult to skim. I believe also that most of our competitors, including Wrox, break up the page too much, with extraneous screen shots, sidebars, notes, and extra illustrations. To me, it often looks like non-textual elements are added strictly for their own sake, not to enhance the delivery of information to the reader. I think our clean page layout creates a book that is easier to read and easier to search.

Why do you use such wide margins? Why not (like Wrox) extend your margins half an inch further in both directions? This would help to resolve the first problem, and it would also provide the flexibility to add more content or generate savings in weight and production. Your book size (height and width) is already optimal.

We use one-inch margins in our "animal" books and three-quarter-inch margins in our "In a Nutshell" books, by the way.

Let me say first that, compared with most technical publishers, we use pretty narrow margins. Some publishers use big outside margins for large icons or for glosses to the text. I think you'll find that O'Reilly presents more information on a page than any of its competitors. Note one other characteristic of our books: their "leanness." Most publishers use heavy or thick paper to bulk up their books (more shelf space; an illusory promise of extra content). We don't do that; we pick the lightest-weight paper that is consistent with the quality and durability we require. The next time you're in a bookstore, pick up an O'Reilly book and a competitor's book with the same thickness as our book. Go to the last page. You'll discover, I'll bet, that our book has more pages.

But, as you note, our margins are wide compared to Wrox Press's margins. There are three main reasons we use wide margins:

1. Line length and readability. How long a line ought to be is a matter of dispute among human factors researchers, but it ought to be no longer than your eye can skim easily (without moving your head, for example). I find the length of our books to be about right. It is part of my job to read Wrox Press books, and I find Wrox's line length inhibits skimming. I want to move on to the next line before the current line ends.
2. The gutter. On the Wrox books, text often extends pretty far into the gutter (the inside margin). That material is difficult to read, especially because the Wrox books I've seen don't use lay-flat binding. So, in the beginning and toward the end of a book, where the binding doesn't make one side lay flat, information can be difficult to read when it extends too far into the gutter area.
3. Bleeding tabs. Some of our books (like the recently published Windows 2000 Quick Fixes) use bleeding tabs as a way of orienting the reader. These tabs take up space in the outer margin.

We recognize the value of a long line in books that often contain long URLs, filenames, and code. We balance that need against readability, and I think our design strikes a nice balance.

I am very happy with the font size that you use. (It's better than Wrox.) Your documents are easy to read, even for senior programmers who have ruined their vision with a lifetime of close-up work. I find it now impossible to read a Wrox book without the perfect lighting. Thank you.

No, Jack; thank *you*. Our font size is very readable--compact and yet large enough even for my age-riddled, laptop-ravaged editor's eyes. We've occasionally received complaints about our code font, which is a little thinner to allow for longer code examples. We are using a new font now that, although compressed, is darker and more readable than our former code font. Again, I find Wrox's font to be too small, especially when combined with the longer line. With most reading material, your mind can fill in difficult-to-read material based on the context. In technical material, however, it can be difficult and dangerous to anticipate or fill in: you want to read the page exactly. I think, with our fonts, you can.

Can you try to shorten time to market? Can't you assist and motivate your talented writers to continue to produce high-quality documents weeks ahead of their current schedules? I have seen it so often and in different offices that when a programming group needs to start a new project, they often have to buy complete sets of books from your competitors and then months later, most always, buy the corresponding higher quality books from O'Reilly. In my opinion, you could almost close down your competition by shortening this time to market and, of course, somehow maintain your heritage of high quality.

Jack, you really know how to hurt a guy. I like to talk about interior book design because I'm not responsible for it; time to market, on the other hand, is written in a bold font right in the middle of my job description.

Our time to market is our Achilles' heel. We're pleased with the books we send out or we don't send them out. (When we send them out before we're pleased, we hear about it, and we find out our readers aren't pleased either. You'll find elsewhere on the Frankly Speaking page an article on quality that is the other side of this discussion.)

We don't believe we can send out a book on a technology before there are people who know useful things to do with that technology (and one of those people is our author). The authors we want are in the midst of learning and using these new technologies, and our demand for a book often competes with their employer's demand for new code. (Too often, employers are able to get their hands around our authors' necks, while we have to rely on email.) We don't like books written by too many authors; they tend to be a collection of articles rather than a book, and they seem to me to be suggestive rather than instructive. We like a book that has one voice (even if it has more than one author) and is coherent, a book that stays on one topic all the way through. Those books take longer to write.

Even so, I berate my editors regularly about how bloody long it takes us to get out books on new technologies, and we seem to be getting better at it. Note that our C# Essentials book was published in January 2001, in advance of the official release of the software it describes. I think you'll find that this book contains useful information about this language, written by people with lots of experience with the beta versions, and beats its competitors for accuracy, quality, and brevity. (You can read Chapter 1 on the O'Reilly Web site, by the way.)

I hope you'll find that we have our books on the shelves sooner than in the past, but there certainly will be times when concern about insufficient quality or depth (in the technology or in the book about it) will cause us to hold up the release. We will always strive to emphasize quality and depth over timeliness, even when it costs us early sales.

I like your small, cost-effective Pocket Reference books like JavaScript Pocket Reference and XML Pocket Reference (although the latter is way out of date). These books are an excellent choice to scatter around the office or keep in the briefcase.

Thanks. We hear that a lot about our Pocket Refs. We're working on the second edition of the XML PR, by the way; watch the Web site for an announcement.

In general, I'd like to see us write smaller, more focused books. We get them out sooner, they're more affordable, and they leave room to add the new features of the next release.

I have observed that international, English-speaking programmers also enjoy the quality of your books. Perhaps you can cultivate more interest in this global market. International customers are not so much concerned with the price of your books, but more concerned about shipping costs and shipping delays. Why not encourage the international market to preorder books to be shipped the first day of printing? One idea that I had is to offer global, free shipping on all pre-ordered books. This would serve two purposes: One, to accelerate delivery to the customer; and two, to motivate customers worldwide to stay tuned to your Web site.

I'll share your suggestion with our International group. Interest in our books in Europe has greatly increased over the last couple of years. One reason for this increase is that we have true O'Reilly companies now in the U.K. (Farnham, Surrey); France (Paris); Germany (Koln); Japan (Tokyo); Taiwan; and China (Beijing). Those offices sell and distribute our English-language books, translate and sell those books in their local languages, and create original books of their own, some of which we translate into English. We know we have loyal readers abroad. The technologies we write about cross all borders (except encryption, of course); why shouldn't our books?

I think our International distribution team tries very hard to get our books to you as quickly as possible. They do order books from us prior to release, and we do ship to them when we ship our other advance orders. Even in the highly touted twenty-first century, though, transporting goods across borders is a time-consuming and bureaucratic process. We're always looking for ways to improve this time to market. One method we're exploring is printing English-language books abroad as well as in the U.S. When that becomes efficient, and when we can guarantee comparable quality, we may be able to trim some time from our international distribution.

I am confident that you will continue with your heritage of success.

Very Gratefully,

Jack LaPenta
(An American on assignment in Liechtenstein)

When we ponder our future success, it's customers like you that we envision reading our books. Thanks for your comments.

Frank Willison

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