I have reviewed for Packt (for free). It was not a bad experience, and the book is now available and getting great reviews (<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Git-Version-everyone-Ravishankar-Somasundaram/dp/1849517525" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/Git-Version-everyone-Ravishankar-Somas...</a>). After this book was released and doing well, I was asked to write for Packt as well, but let's just say I would have to have done it for virtually no payment. From what I understand however, this is common with most publishers. I had to opt out after doing a cost/benefit analysis on the project. I figured, if I really wanted to write about the things that interest me, I could do so on my blog.<p>Some of the work I had to do was non-technical. I would often find myself translating and rewording awkwardly written passages so that they sounded better (the author is a non-English speaker).<p>That said, Packt is pretty hands off and don't micromanage (which I actually really enjoyed). Most communications that I had with them were initiated by me when I felt things needed to be pushed along during the review process. That said, in the end, a book was published, so I suppose even if the process leading up to that moment was not completely optimized on their end, the end result was a successful book.
Was in a similar position to you actually - I got an offer from Packt to write a book on ElasticSearch. I've learnt that if you write a blog piece about some obscure/hot tech and articulate yourself well enough; you'll get an offer from an author head-hunter from Packt shortly enough as several of my friends had similar offers!<p>I decided not to go ahead because I'm a perfectionist - I'd want to write a damn good book and the opportunity cost loss of earnings whilst I was writing the book didn't compare to the relative prestige of saying I was a "published" author.
I've just received (another) cold-call email from Packt Publishing asking me if I'm interested in writing a tech book. I'm actually considering doing this, but want to get some more information first. Has anyone ever worked with them as an author before? What was it like?
Another guy just posted an article - he's just written a book for Packt. Why not ask him?<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6373775" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6373775</a>
I can't speak from personal experience, but the one piece of advice every single person I know who's written a book has given me is don't do it for the money.