Bad review day

Nobody likes being criticized, but I suspect writers, along with the acting profession, are probably among the most sensitive. I visit Amazon.com regularly to see how well my books are selling and what readers are saying about them. Foundation PHP 5 for Flash has been out for about a year, has sold quite well, and generally attracted favourable reviews. So I was disheartened (to put it mildly) when I saw an Amazon review by Seattle Biker, which began with the words, “I don’t care for this book.”

Basically, Seattle Biker’s complaint is that the examples are unwieldy, and that by page 370 he still hadn’t learned how to send “Hello world” from Flash to a MySQL database. I have some sympathy for the first criticism. When the book was first conceived, my editor, Steve Rycroft, and I wanted a book that didn’t settle for trivial examples. So I devised full-blown projects for each chapter, each one designed to demonstrate a particular aspect of PHP. After four chapters, I realized the book was in danger of turning into a massive brick. Steve and I discussed the direction the book was taking, and he was adamant that I should stick to the original plan - projects that you can really get your teeth into. Although Steve left friends of ED, his successor Chris Mills agreed that the book was on the right track.

The popularity of Foundation PHP 5 for Flash shows we probably made the right decision. Nevertheless, different people do learn at different paces, so I think that a future edition will probably be a slimmer volume and include some shorter examples. The other change will be my approach to ActionScript. The book was designed to teach experienced ActionScripters to use PHP, but it turns out that quite a few readers want a book that teaches both languages together. Lots to think about for a new edition. I’ve no plan to write one just yet, but it’s definitely on the cards for Flash 9.

By the way, you can see my reply to Seattle Biker in my Amazon author’s blog.

7 comments March 8th, 2006