[Discuss] Have you done a technical book review?

[Englander, Irvin]

As a textbook author, I agree. When my editor sends out my work for technical review, I'm only interested in seeing that my manuscript is accurate throughout, and correct in every detail. Other than that, I would like to see suggestions for technical improvement, perhaps a different approach to a particular topic or an area that needs improvement or elaboration. Copy editing is somebody else's job. Unless the overall writing is so bad that the whole topic is unclear and the book should be scrapped, the English is outside the scope of the review.

Actually, in my case, extraneous copy editing is annoying. Indeed, when reviewers make English comments in the reviews I receive, I tend to think their reviews are to be taken less seriously technically, since their focus is misplaced.

Irv Englander
________________________________________
From: discuss-bounces+ienglander=bentley.edu at blu.org [discuss-bounces+ienglander=bentley.edu at blu.org] on behalf of Dan Ritter [dsr at randomstring.org]
Sent: Tuesday, November 19, 2013 12:10 PM
To: Greg Rundlett (freephile)
Cc: GNHLUG; blu
Subject: Re: [Discuss] Have you done a technical book review?

On Tue, Nov 19, 2013 at 11:36:34AM -0500, Greg Rundlett (freephile) wrote:
> I was asked by Packt publishing to do a technical book review (Apache SOLR
> for Beginners)
>
> I'm wondering if anyone else on the list has been a technical reviewer
> before and would share your experience.
>
> I was initially excited about the opportunity but it's become apparent, at
> least in this case, that the quality is not all there.  The author is
> Italian, and I'm re-writing the book in proper English rather than making
> quality/style assessments.  I believe the job of a technical reviewer is to
> confirm accuracy in the specifics and concepts to ensure that the author's
> message is delivered effectively to the reader.
>
> I like Packt for their emphasis on Open Source, but I'm at the point where
> I have to decide if this project is worthwhile.  To help in that decision,
> I'm interested to know firsthand how other authors and contributors worked
> through the publication process.
>

I've been a technical reviewer for two books and several papers.
"re-writing" is not the job of a technical reviewer. The job is to make
sure that the facts presented are correct and the scope of the work is
reasonably complete.

For example, if the book is about setting up a home network, then it
will need to cover ethernet, wifi, and powerline interfaces. Leaving
one of those out is problematic. But if the book is about setting up a
small office network, then you can ignore powerline systems but you'll
need to increase the coverage of gigabit ethernet switches.

That's the sort of recommendation a technical reviewer would
make.

-dsr-

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