A Note About Wrox Press (taken from http://www.extremephp.org/)
Now that Wrox Press is no more (the parent company is liquidating everything because they can't own up to their financial agreements), there isn't much point to purchasing any of my authored books (Professional PHP4, Professional PHP XML and Professional PHP Web Services). Why? All of the latest line of Wrox specialty books and handbooks was a huge scam to make more money to pull the organization out of dept. Was the content any good? - Perhaps, but you could get the hang of Web Services from Pro PHP XML and could even get the hang of XML in Pro PHP4. This went even further as they started to write specialized 'handbooks', as you very well know.
In any case, this book isn't that old and there are even newer Wrox books released this month. Sadly, the authors won't benefit from your contributions because Peer Information is not compensating the authors for any unpaid royalties. All you would be doing is helping the company in question get out of dept - and believe me, it's not something you want to do.
Wrox was an unethically placed organization who will never take advantage of its writers again. I guess I won't be getting paid any more money (not a big loss since my advance money was more than the actual sales), but the total payment usually results to be less than $2/hour and I wasted an entire year with these people. They even lie on their royalty information, saying that their books sell 49,000 copies on average (when some of their best books only sold 8000 and many of them did not sell even 400-1000). This makes people jump at the chance of writing a book only to realize that they never made any money while working for them (rent and food expenses).
They were also late in making payments and try to hold back in giving you money so you can sign another contract with them (before you turn away when realizing the scam).
They also had a terrible marketing department. I gave them 20 or so ideas that they could persue to improve marketing of the books and all they ever tried to do was defend their own ideas, dismissing all my valid arguments. Should it really matter where the ideas come from if they are better? It's like they never even cared about the authors and making more money.
They also can't make up their minds on what's going to be in the book, they don't favour the visionaries behind the content, they only give you 10 days to write a given chapter (which means that they are going to suck if it has to be 50 pages - I've been there) and they try to deceive you at every turn.
If you ask me, they wanted to hurt the authors the most. Just a month ago, they offered me to do a few chapters in a book, probably with full knowledge that they were going out of business. They knew I was dissatisfied with working with them and the constant deception, so that was their way to 'rectify' the situation. Now, how can one ethically waste someone's time like that with full knowledge, just so they can take advantage of you for their own benefit (evening knowing that they tried to scam before)? Of course I declined because I would never trust them again and I'm not that naive, but I can't think of any company that wouldn't do the same thing - all companies seem to be corrupt more or less when it comes to money.
I tried to warn people on slashdot, but the slashdot news approval people never found it interesting and I felt compelled to let people know. I'm sorry, but the fact that Wrox no longer exists is a very good thing. Because of their deception, my life has been very poor both mentally, physically and financially and I'm still feeling the effects. I gave so much to these guys for nothing and in a sense, it turned a highly motivated, skilled individual into a very unhappy and bitter one.
I've been through my share of mistreatment from every employer I've worked for, most customers I've dealt with (I was CEO of a enterprise application development company) and noticed that suppliers are never willing to take any responsibility, even if you that's a principle for your own organization. I realized quickly when I was 20 that you have to play by some pretty sour rules to stay ahead and that quality products and being a leader of integrity, sound judgement and character gets you no where.
I personally think capitalism is reaching it's usefulness, but we don't have the technology to create a better form of maintaining supply and demand. It's very sad indeed that consumers, workers and even honest business owners (if there are any) have to put up with the current mistrust of organizations today - talk about the hugest breach of human rights and ethics.
When I think of humanity, sometimes it's hard to see the good in it when your world leaders want to engineer world war III and business is never honest. What ever happened to people who are intelligent, skillful and motivated that just wanted to make something useful and make a difference? It's all law, politics and money. It really turned me off completely.
In any event, don't purchase any of my books since I or the other authors won't benefit from your contributions. Even if this were not the case, our advance money is still higher than any amount gained due to sales.
I hope you found this little article informative.
Best Regards,
Ken Egervari
