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I am actually the author of an as-yet-unpublished book by Packt and have a few things to say about their publishing process. Essentially the quality of the book boils down to the author, with very little in the way of copy-editing or technical reviewing. The quality I would assume varies wildly from book to book, depending on how much time the author was willing to put into it.

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I did technical reviewing for one of their books. Did they offer you a technical reviewer? Maybe they look for one but if they can't find one, they go ahead and publish whatever crap they have anyway.

What value are they contributing in the publishing process, then? Anything other than typesetting and marketing?

Distribution! They have an audience, and they know if they publish x books per week, they will make y $$$'s.

But that is a fair question for an author to ask. If you already have an audience, then you would seriously look at what value they bring.

That's a good question -- I mean, they will run through the code and make sure it compiles or runs as specified. They will find and provide you with technical recruiters from the community (with promises of their name appearing in the list of technical reviewers). But Packt themselves do not add anything as far as I can tell besides printing and publicizing.

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