I recently purchased an O'Reilly book and downloaded the examples from the web site. The examples I was most interested in did not work, and there is no place on your site where I can ask questions about why. Should I write a review for amazon.com?

--John

Dear John:

Whoa, big fella! Am I to interpret that final question as a threat? Give us a chance to redeem ourselves here.

But before I answer your question, let me address the larger issue implied in your last question. Amazon.com, as well as many other online book and computer-related Web sites, allows readers to enter review comments about books. These are often very interesting; O'Reilly editors follow comments at several sites. We do find, however, that a reader must take these reviews with a grain of salt.

Enterprising authors sometimes recruit their friends or mothers to write complimentary reviews. That's to be expected. Occasionally, we suspect that some negative reviews are also solicited. In one particular case, someone anonymously reviewed a book of ours in a very negative manner and recommended a competing book instead. We were sort of surprised to see the review because we knew that our book was still at the printer. Unless that reviewer sets type or has a 900-number psychic hotline, (s)he was shilling for the author of that other book. Because reviews on most sites can be anonymous, it is very difficult to guarantee the accuracy and impartiality of reviews at bookstore sites.

When you see a review at an online bookstore, look for specific information that you can verify yourself. Question the accuracy of any conclusions in anonymous reviews. Don't rely on any reviews when only one or two reviews exist for a particular book. Even if these reviews are honest, they could represent the idiosyncratic views of a couple of unusual readers.

Mostly, nothing beats reviewing the book yourself. I like to go to actual physical bookstores and leaf through the book. If you don't, then come to our site. For most of our books, you can find sample chapters, a table of contents, examples, and the index. For some, you can find more: biographies of the authors, interviews, and related articles.

But you, John, made a specific complaint: you said that O'Reilly has no place to report problems with our books. Let me say, as the French do: au contraire. We publish errata (a list of errors) for all of our books online. Just click on the " Errata" link on any of our book's catalog pages. (Note that readers can also submit their own errata on every errata page.)

Furthermore, O'Reilly is the only publisher of which I am aware that has a technical service department for its books. We have two very able fellows, technically adept and familiar with our books, who can answer questions about any of our products. You can call them at (800)998-9938 or you can reach them at

Let them know in which book you have found the error. (I bet I know which one it is because other readers who found the alias have reported the kind of error you hint at; but I won't say here, to avoid prejudicing your response.) They will let you know if they have a correction, or a workaround, or some other way to gain your satisfaction. (If they can't regain your satisfaction, we'll give you your money back.) They will also let the editor know about the error. We'll put the correction online and linked to the book. If it's egregious, we'll fix it in the next printing. (This one sounds pretty egregious.)

In any case, we'd like to hear from you, as we are pleased to hear from any of our readers. Let us know what the book is; see how we respond; and then decide what you want to do next.

Thanks,

Frank Willison
Editor-in-Chief, Technical Publishing

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