Hi, When I replied to Tilghman Lesher's message, I did not notice that he had copied this public list. I realized that when we received a message of abuse today from someone who seems to have read the messages in this thread. I asked Tilghman Lesher whether he would forward the reply I sent him to the list, but he suggested that I can do that myself as it is a public forum.
For those who are not aware, the first article by Bruce Lawson http://www.brucelawson.co.uk/archive0401.htm#pp was followed by an update http://www.brucelawson.co.uk/packt.htm. The latter article had the page title of "why author won't work with Packt Publishing," so I guess the message of the article is clear. The interest that the first article generated and is mentioned in the second refers to a number of other articles that appeared on the web in the few days following the publication of Mr Lawson's first article. All of this happened about nine months after the bankruptcy of Peer Information (PI) (the parent company of Wrox) and seven months after the establishment of Packt. The first article starts with what suggests that discovering who Packt was required some detective work, including a who-is lookup. From day one at Packt, we were contacting authors and people whom we knew from our days at PI, as well as new people, to work with us at Packt. No detective work was really needed to know who we are. Mr Lawson's articles are of course based on a real story, but they are misleading in two major ways: their description of what happened at PI, and their presentation of David Maclean and Packt as one and the same. I will address both of these. I am not interested in defending David Maclean, and he is capable of speaking for himself, but I worked at Wrox and work at Packt, so all of this is very relevant to me and the other people who work at Packt, all of whom were among the people who lost their jobs, salaries, bonuses�etc on the day PI went out of business. No business like PI would go bankrupt unless major mistakes are made, and it goes without saying that management is to blame in such situations. David would be the first to accept that he made mistakes. I think everyone who worked at PI has a lot to say about what went wrong. Some problems were already known and others became known later after PI went down. However, PI's history was not one of a string of failures as some seem to think. Wrox started as a very small publishing company, but within 6-7 years it became one of the major independent publishers of computer books -- establishing itself as market leader in a number of programming markets, and competing with much larger publishers. During its 10 years, Wrox made a lot of money, and paid its authors generously millions of dollars. It also introduced to the computer book market hundreds of new authors many of whom would probably not have had the opportunity to become authors. Some of them went on to make a career out of writing computer books. It is of course true that what happened to PI at the end was sad, people lost their money, jobs�etc. That was simply the end of a period of decline that had started two years or so earlier. This demise was not the whole history of Wrox or PI, however. It is misleading to reduce the history of PI to a month or two in 2003 or even to its last two years or so. As MD of PI, David Maclean certainly carries the largest share of responsibility for its demise. No question about that. But then he should also be credited with a share in the success of PI, which he turned into a company with a turnover of over $20m. David could not have been the sole factor in the many successful years of Wrox, but he also could not have been the only reason for its eventual fatal failures. Neither the success nor the failure was the result of the actions of one individual. The bottom-line of what happened to PI is this: publishing so many books that did not sell. The key is not "publishing so many book," but the fact that these books "did not sell." I will leave it for others to decide for themselves if this can be explained by the actions of one individual. There was no conspiracy by David Maclean or anyone else to bring PI down. Up to the last few days before the directors were forced to place the company into liquidation, they were working on a plan to keep PI in business, thought that did not work at the end. Those who know about PI know that David Maclean lost much more than anyone else by the bankruptcy. PI was at some point valued at about �20m, and David Maclean owned almost half of the shares. Even when sold as ruins after its collapse, PI generated a decent amount or money. It was not in any one's interest that PI should go down the way it did. Everyone associated with PI lost. There was no conspiracy to not pay authors, staff, or other creditors. There was simply no money left at PI when it went out of business. This is not because David Maclean and the other directors took the money home, but simply because the company lost quickly a lot of money as most of its published books did not appeal to customers. When the bank asked for the millions that it had invested in the business, there was no money to pay off the debt. The other misleading aspect of Bruce Lawson's articles is the attempt to treat Packt and David Maclean as one and the same. David Maclean is the MD of Packt, but he is not Packt. Packt consists of people who used to work for Wrox, so they are people who lost their jobs, salaries, bonuses, and other benefits like the rest of the staff of PI. In fact, the losses of each one at Packt was probably a lot more than what each of most authors lost. While I was a Managing Editor at Wrox, none of my Packt colleagues were managers -- in case being a PI manager is also a stigma. In fact, one of our commissioning editors was one day managed by Bruce Lawson himself. Incidentally, despite what he says in his articles about David Maclean and what was happening at PI, Mr Lawson left PI only when it went out of business -- not a single day before that. The money that is running Packt has nothing to do with the money that was not paid to the authors, employees, and other creditors. PI went through a proper legal and closely scrutinized liquidation process that would have found out and exposed any wrongdoing. Most people who were involved with PI, including authors, and those who followed the process closely do understand that. While what I have written above is new to people who are not familiar with what went on at PI, it should all be known to those who were closely involved. I fully understand and appreciate the sadness and anger that many authors and creditors feel about what happened. But I do not believe that the majority of them would take the line suggested in Bruce Lawson's articles. In fact, a number of former Wrox authors have been writing for us, and two of them have already published with us. Finally, this message has nothing to do with Bruce Lawson personally. There was never any ill feelings between me and him. In fact, I am rather surprised and disappointed with what he had to say. The last time Bruce and I had contact was a few months after the bankruptcy and before he started writing about Packt. At the time we exchanged a number of friendly messages which I am sure he remembers very well. I am sure he knew that I was working with David Maclean, and that did not seem to bother him at all at the time. I hope this explains some of issues surrounding PI and Packt. If you have any question, please let me know. Thank you. Louay -----Original Message----- From: Tilghman Lesher [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, July 16, 2004 6:05 PM To: Louay Fatoohi Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Asterisk Book Reviewer On Friday 16 July 2004 08:30, Louay Fatoohi wrote: > Packt Publishing is in the process of developing a book about > Asterisk, and we are looking for experienced users of Asterisk to act > as technical reviewers. I have seen some of your posts to the Asterisk > user mailing list and I am therefore writing to ask if you would be > interested in becoming a technical reviewer for the book. If you are > interested in this project, please let me know and I will give you > more information. http://www.brucelawson.co.uk/archive0401.htm#pp I won't do work for Packt Publishing. -- Tilghman _______________________________________________ Asterisk-Dev mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-dev To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-dev
