How would you change things? Fewer authors would mean more pages per author. With schedules shortening, that does not seem likely. Publishers want the authors to do more work for less money. That doesn't seem fair. 14 is probably too many, but 2 would be too few. Must be a happy medium somwhere.....

Wally

I was always a big Wrox fan until they started having the "author per chapter: books. There was no flow at all, it was like reading a bunch of magaine articles bound in book form.

I guess you would need a team coordinator with that many authors and editors...That many authors would seem like it would create a very difficult to read book unless the editors did a very good job.

It's not the number of authors that bothers me but the number of pages. The best books I have seem to cover their subject in a couple of hundred. But publishers appear to like 800+ page blockbusters. Perhaps it's the need for so many pages that requires so many authors.

I have Wrox's Prof XML (2nd Ed) that I picked up from Borders for a dollar (clearance sale) - the book has 13 authors! I wonder why Wrox went out of business..

Definitely over kill! In fact the book prolly wont be much fun to read as it wont have any style of its own.

Nish

I think it'd be great if someone actually editted the books before publication. Lots of recent books have had sloppy editting.

Precisely the reason I stopped buying Wrox books or those huge Unleashed/Special Edition/Bible things. The problem with having so many authors is that the core substance of the book becomes diluted and confused. You also stand in the bookshop thinking..."if I could just tear out this chapter because thats all I need".

Before the demise of Wrox they started to bring out their 'Handbook' series on specific topics - Code Security, Data Security etc. I thought this was a cracking idea. No more 1200 page(/Lb) bricks of paper to plough through to collate the knowledge I required to do a specific task - it was all gathered together in a single pocket sized (almost) format.

Big chunky books are fine if they're single topic but when they try to appeal to all and sundry and have a busload of authors then I just won't buy them.

How the hell am I going to collect FOURTEEN autographs!?!

I agree about the editing -- I was a tech ed for Wrox and couldn't get past the atrocious grammar to the technology!

Multi-author books would be fine assuming that the "team coordinator" was an actual professional *writer*.

That way the book would have a more consistent approach and readability.