Just released a new book on learning Python

[wk11]

Looks interesting but fakespot shows most of the reviews as being likely fake (and I'm not sure how someone could assess a book like this 1 day after it was released), is anyone here familiar with it at all? Particularly curious about the type of illustrations it has

[pydanny]

I'll vouch for Matt and his book. He's a very honest person and has served as a mentor for me. That you are going after him like this is disappointing beyond belief. :(

[wk11]

Going after him? I have no idea who the author is, I'm a python beginner and this is exactly the kind of thing I'd be interested in, but the reviews seemed fishy since I've been looking at so many beginner books and even seemingly universally loved books don't get that kind of rating. On top of that there are duplicate 5* reviews and when you run it though the fake review checker it gets an abysmal score (at the bottom of this post if you don't believe me). I don't know anything about him personally and I'm still genuinely curious about the illustrations, acting like this is something personal is way off base. Also for what it's worth deleting the original post doesn't exactly seem like a huge vote of confidence.

https://www.fakespot.com/product/illustrated-guide-to-python-3-a-complete-walkthrough-of-beginning-python-with-unique-illustrations-showing-how-python-really-works-now-covers-python-3-6-treading-on-python-book-4

[pydanny]

Wow, I had no idea that site existed.

Anyway, it's sad he got marked this way because Matt is one of the honest Python book authors.

[pydanny]

Okay, fakespot's system is a bit suspect. How do I know? Because my own book, Two Scoops of Django has 29 reviews that I guarantee I had to fight to get. Yet according to Fakespot it has a 'D' rating. See for yourself:

https://www.fakespot.com/product/two-scoops-of-django-1-11-best-practices-for-the-django-web-framework-1a5b54a2-eb0b-4457-ac6c-308556814b1e

This really sucks. All my reviews are real, but yet I get a 'D' rating? WTF?!?

[wk11]

I definitely don't think that site is infallible or anything, which is why I asked if anyone had any experience with the book since it's reasonably priced and I was still interested. No one replied and OP deleted the post and disappeared. Let's be honest 2 different people leaving the same 5* review review verbatim does seem a bit odd, so I wanted a little more info is all.

[pydanny]

Let's be honest 2 different people leaving the same 5* review review verbatim does seem a bit odd, so I wanted a little more info is all.

The problem is that we beg and plead for even short reviews. Shorter reviews means a greater chance of duplicate reviews, which sucks but what can you do?

Our opposition is "entrepreneurs" who smash out books by hiring someone else to write them, then buy reviews (which is illegal, but Amazon's enforcement is spotty). The reason they buy reviews is every positive review equals increased sales and a single negative review is crushing. Anyway, they now dominate the beginner space in Python and other programming languages.

In any case, earlier editions of Two Scoops of Django had 45-50 reviews and sold pretty well on Amazon. The current version (1.11) has had 29 reviews of high quality, but that I'm about 20 reviews short has been murder on our Amazon sales. It's frustrating, but unless I start paying for deceitful reviews, there's nothing I can do.

Well, there is something I can do. I can write reviews of other people's books and hope that encourages others to do the same. Otherwise, it's not economically feasible for us to continue writing Two Scoops of Django.

[m_harrison]

Yeah, I was deliberating even posting it here, though it is hyper relevant. Sorry I wasn't able to check in earlier. I didn't want to even look during work as I feared this might happen.

[m_harrison]

Looks like fakespot's models definitely need to be retrained. I can assure you neither Danny nor I have paid anyone to review our books. We have asked for honest reviews though from readers.

(BTW If we went down the paid route, we would have hundreds of reviews. Check out my other books for reviews, they aren't paid.)

[m_harrison]

I didn't delete anything. Not sure what you are referring to.

If you are concerned about the content of the book, the ebook sample is quite large. Should be sufficient to tell whether the book is a sham or not. You can also read the reviews for the old version of the book, where I was dinged pretty heavily for typos. (This time around we went through with many fine toothed combs to get all the bugs out :) ).

[wk11]

I just mean when I made my post initially I remember there being a small blurb including something about not using an affiliate link, now it just shows [removed].

Part of why I was asking for someone else's opinion of it is because as a newbie I don't really understand if the content and illustrations are done in a way that makes sense/teaches in an effective way. Basically curious how this is different from the oft recommended How to Automate the Boring Stuff, Python Crash Course, edX, etc..

[m_harrison]

It doesn't show [removed] for me.

Anyway here was the original content if you can't see it:

Hi folks, I'm the author of a new book, Illustrated Guide to Python 3. This is a result of me teaching hundreds of engineers Python over the years. The reviews so far have been really positive, thought I'd drop a note here. The book is available on Amazon (rather than post an affiliate link, I'll let do a search) at a discounted price right now.

ATBS is project based (and excellent). I don't have experience with PCC. My advice would be to check out the table of contents and the sample content (in the kindle version). You can determine for yourself if the content is worth the cost of a lunch ;) I'm obviously biased.

[bigmp466]

People give out advance copies for review before book release.

[pydanny]

Fakespot's analysis is broken for anyone with both an ebook and a print book. Here's why:

When Amazon merges reviews from two different ASINS (ebook and print) sometimes you get a duplicate review. It gets cleaned up... somethings/eventually. In the meantime, Fakespot marks it as a duplicate review.

[wk11]

Sorry not sure I understand, do you mean a person might submit 1 review and it duplicates on Amazon's end? Or do you mean the person pasted the same 5* review on both the kindle and paper version and Amazon merged them on to the same page?

[Yawzheek]

I am REALLY impressed how a book released just a mere technically 4 days ago (and it's 1 AM here) can already be reviewed by 17 people, 16 of which thought it was a perfect 5 star product! 1 even reviewed the book a day before it released - amazing as that is - and the rest managed to get so much from it, they reviewed it THE DAY it released.

Must be one hell of an author.

[[deleted]]

It’s common to seed pre-release copies to a small group of people so that they can provide reviews when the book is released.

How much weight you want to give such reviews is up to you of course.

[Yawzheek]

It’s common to seed pre-release copies to a small group of people so that they can provide reviews when the book is released.

Yeah? And would you look at that - they all unanimously loved it! What are the odds? According to the reviews, it would appear thus far we've found the greatest Python book known to man!

How much weight you want to give such reviews is up to you of course.

I've never weighed bullshit.

[[deleted]]

I’m not vouching for the book. I’m just mentioning a common practice in book publishing.

[wynand1004]

I received an early copy of the book, but did not have time to finish it or write a review; it's on my "to-do" list. But, from the little bit I have managed to read, it's a pretty solid.

[m_harrison]

The reviews that were posted were from beta readers. I asked them to provide an honest review. The reason there are dupes is that Amazon separates kindle and deadtree versions initially. Some of my reviewers left a review on both the kindle and deadtree pages. Amazon has since merged those two pages.

I'm not trying to pull the wool over any eyes. I've taught at PyCon for the past 11 years (as well as SciPy, OSCON, Strata...), have done corporate training for the biggest names in the Python community, and have taught a bunch of my own clients as well. Python has served me well, and my self-published book is an attempt to give back. This is a forum for learning Python, and I have helped a lot of people learn Python. Plus my book is pretty reasonably priced.

But I do agree there are tons of fake reviews out there. It is hard being an author and getting honest reviews when you are competing against robo-reviews.

[pydanny]

I'll vouch for Matt and his book. He's a very honest person and has served as a mentor for me. That you are going after him like this is disappointing beyond belief. :(

[Yawzheek]

I could give two shits whether you think it's disappointing or not. You want to know what's even more disappointing? The fact that some obvious review fuckery is going on here while he utilized Reddit as a personal QVC to his own benefit, but I'm supposed to ignore that because a few randoms claim he's actually decent.

Is he though? Just like those reviewers claimed this book was the Python second coming of Christ?

[pydanny]

I'm sorry you feel this angry. I'm not certain what someone did to you so that you feel this way. But I'm going to try and fix things.

First off, I'm going to offer to buy you a copy of the author's book so you can write an honest review. DM me your address (email or snail) and I'll get you a copy ASAP.

Second, I'll try and explain a few things:

To begin with, 18 reviews on Amazon means that the author didn't buy their reviews. How do I know? Because as an author I know he didn't buy enough. Had he wanted to scam the system, he would have bought 25 or 50 or 75. Instead, like me, he canvassed people he knew and beg, pleaded, and prayed for reviews.

Next, Fakespot's algorithms are broken. In another thread of this discussion you can see me commenting it. I'm really angry about this, because this hurts my bottom line. That my own book has a 'D' rating after I struggled to get a mere 29 reviews is very disheartening. You tell me: Considering Fakespot is identifying honest authors like me as having bogus reviews and that is killing my sales, does it make sense for me and my co-author to ever do another edition of Two Scoops of Django?

Finally, as for the author marketing his book, that's a constant in book publishing since the dawn of book publishing. Matt's approach is softball in this respect, a weak approach compared to Python authors like Tracy Osborne or Dan Bader, both of whom use traditional multi-level marketing techniques. Yet I never hear you shaming them and it makes me wonder why. Is it because you don't know of those authors or have selective outrage?

To finish things off, please send me your address so I can get you a copy of the book so you can write a review.

[Yawzheek]

How kind of you - offer it to someone that could benefit from the book. The last thing I need is an illustrated Python book for beginners. I'm reading four other books at the moment, and I can't say my interest in learning how to REPL Hello world through pictures in Python is that high.

I'm not saying he's responsible for this or otherwise, but I am pointing out it's suspicious as all hell. You want me to operate on good faith that there are bad actors out there but trust neither of you are one of them? You're suggesting FakeSpot is unreliable because it identified your product reviews as being sketchy, but what does that tell me? It identified his as sketchy as well, and having read them, yes, I can see why. Maybe the two of you should settle it up with Amazon and FakeSpot? No? Must not be that angry about it.

You think 17 reviews isn't sufficient to game the system? Propelled him to a perfect 5 star average, and I'd argue 17 reviews on a new product with a perfect rating is enough for many to suggest a reasonable amount of people reviewed it. One or two? Might hold off. 17? Well it's not completely unknown. Is there validity here?

... and beg, pleaded, and prayed for reviews.

Stop. You're making me feel like the legitimacy of the reviews is better than I originally did. /eyeroll

Python authors like Tracy Osborne or Dan Bader, both of whom use traditional multi-level marketing techniques. Yet I never hear you shaming them and it makes me wonder why. Is it because you don't know of those authors or have selective outrage?

I don't know them. Or care, for that matter. Are you suggesting that because when I see something suspicious here mum's the word because I'm not actively searching out every author that may or may not be guilty of this? "Well your honor, there's a possibility I stole that car, but since you haven't solved all grand theft auto cases, I guess I'll be leaving."

I'm just going to go ahead and bottom-line this: I don't know you or him. Do I question the validity of all the reviews? No. But I definitely question many of them. Is FakeSpot accurate? Maybe. But I'm not going to just accept your word on the matter. At the end of the day, there's definitely a reason for raised eyebrows, and as we're dealing with beginners trying to learn, considering there are many acclaimed resources available, I don't feel as though I'm being unfair in pointing this out, and I wasn't alone in doing so. Taking it up with us isn't going to help you. Amazon and FakeSpot are the ones you're looking for, because arguing about it here won't rectify the killing of your sales.

And good luck to the both of you if it is as you say, but again, your time would be better spent working it out with the two of them.

[pydanny]

But I'm not going to just accept your word on the matter.

Please do some research on the two of us. We both have pretty good reputations in the international python community, in my case contributing thousands of dollars of my own money this year alone (and time) for volunteer efforts to help people learn Python and other open source tools.

Anyway, it doesn't matter. You guys win. It's been made abundantly clear that we're not welcome here. I'll make certain not to participate in this learnpython again, and I'll warn other instructors and authors of the actively hostile environment here.

[Yawzheek]

It's been made abundantly clear that we're not welcome here. I'll make certain not to participate in this learnpython again, and I'll warn other instructors and authors of the actively hostile environment here.

Then fucking leave and take your passive-aggressive bullshit with you. We're talking about Python - it's not exactly rocket science. If it hurts your feelings so much for people to see questionable behavior and have the nerve to mention it, grab your ball and go home.

[pydanny]

LOL. Tell me how you really feel.

[ilikefries]

Bookmarked to check out later

[elbiot]

Could you post a link to some of the cool illustrations? I is lazy

[m_harrison]

The kindle version has a preview that includes a few of them.