Professional ASP.NET 3.5 Book (only $16 on Amazon for a short time)

One of the things I like to track are book sales on Amazon.com, which provides a useful data point to monitor what developers are interested in on any given day.  I use the www.TitleZ.com site (which is built using ASP.NET) to track specific titles I want to watch - it then generates a report showing real-time Amazon sales ranking data, as well as 7 day, 30 day and 90 day sales ranking averages.

This morning I pulled up my report and saw the usual books near the top of my list, and was about to navigate away when I noticed the eye-popping amazon ranking of the top book -"Professional ASP.NET 3.5: In C# and VB" by Bill Evjen, Scott Hanselman and Devin Rader.  Its Amazon sales rank was a stunning #95 (of all books on Amazon), which meant it was outselling even Harry Potter (which is pretty much unheard of for any technology book).

It turns out that Amazon is holding a special price promotion for a short time on a few books - and this was one that was selected.  Instead of the usual $54 price, you can buy it for a short time for a ridiculous $16.49.  I'm not sure how long this promotion will last - but if you are looking for a great ASP.NET 3.5 book this might be something you might want to take advantage of:

The book is a great ASP.NET 3.5 book and an excellent end to end resource.  It has been on the best seller list for programming books since it came out in March (usually in the top 5 of all programming titles), and has received glowing reviews (I posted a review of it on Amazon a few weeks ago and gave it 5 stars).

If you are in the market for a good ASP.NET book, you might want to consider taking Amazon up on this offer before it closes (and apologies in advance if the price changes before you read this).

Hope this helps,

Scott

P.S. If you are looking for other good .NET 3.5 and VS 2008 books - I also recommend: C# 3.0 In a Nutshell, LINQ in Action, and Pro LINQ: Language Integrated Query in C# 2008 (all of which average a 5 star rating on Amazon).

52 Comments

  • I'd argue that $54 is the ridiculous price, not $16.49

  • well when Scott Hanselman posted on Twitter last night that the book was going for so cheap I had to try and order it and to my surprise, Amazon are shipping to South Africa again so I'm stoked! Can't wait for it to arrive!

  • Cant wait to grab the offer :-)

  • Thanks to the Euro/Dollar exchange rate, it's even cheaper for us Europeans...
    Thanks for this tip, Scott!

  • Damn.. I got this book a few weeks ago. Great book! but it would have been better had the price been lower ;)

  • Hi
    ASP.NET 3.5 Book is very good book
    But i think ASP.Net 3.5 Unleashed is the King :-)
    Thank you

  • Hey Scott,

    Are there any VB books that you would recommend (with regards to ASP.NET)?

  • This looks like it has everything but the kitchen sink. Nice. I just ordered a copy. Thanks for the info!

  • It's at #41 as I write this. Too good a price for me to pass up. Thanks for the heads-up and the shout out Scott.

  • its now at #14 !!!!!!!!!!

    bought this this morning for £8, thanks scott you are king!

  • ORDERED

  • http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/books/ref=pd_ts_h?pf_rd_p=221129101&pf_rd_s=center-1&pf_rd_t=2101&pf_rd_i=home&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=0A3TYJQ2J19KS0TZBVRV

    Scott's Book Club is almost outselling Oprah's Book Club. Developers Unite!

  • Thanks for the heads up. Not quite the same sale at Amazon.ca ($37.79 CAD) but good enough! :)

  • This book is now up to #8 WOW. Thanks for letting us know Scott. Ordered mine today, the reviews are great and should be a keeper for all .NET developers!

  • Now on #8. Incredible!

    Thanks for the info, Scott!

  • Read "Pro LINQ: Language Integrated Query in C# 2008". Great book. One of the best explanations of Lamba.

  • Book ordered. Can't wait to read it.

  • The price just went up from $16 to $27 while I was looking at it! Maybe they'll discount it again. Good book.

  • Looks like the price just rose. I got it before it went to $27.49 and even that is still a great deal.

  • I had already added it to my cart, and by the time I got to checkout (shopped for something else), they'd changed the price. Luckily for me, a co-worker was already checking out and was able to add a second one without his price changing.

  • Don't forget "ASP.NET 3.5 For Dummies" a really well written book on the same subject that is very "entertaining". I had a chance to meet the author at the MVP Summit and he is a great guy.

  • Promotion over already? Dang, it's back up to $27.49.

  • It seems that they've stopped selling the book for the $16.00... It now is $27... Dang it!

  • 27. I should get it before they rise the price again.

  • It looks like the price just went up to $27 (still 50% off though).

    The book is currently ranked #5 for *all* items on Amazon. I suspect they raised the price since it is burning up the charts and selling a bit better than they origionally planned. :-)

    Here are a few other .NET books still on the list:

    C# 2008: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0470191376/002-5242737-1614454?ie=UTF8&tag=scoblo04-20&linkCode=xm2&camp=1789&creativeASIN=0470191376

    VB 2008: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0470182628/002-5242737-1614454?ie=UTF8&tag=scoblo04-20&linkCode=xm2&camp=1789&creativeASIN=0470182628

    Hope this helps,

    Scott

  • Price is up, but it's at #5 now.

  • Some1 please tell Amazon to make it USD 16.49 again, pls :)

    I was about to order, and prices shot up, like Gas!!

  • Actually the price has gone up by $7.49. Details:--
    Original Price:- $16 + $4 (shipping) = $20
    Current Price:- $27.49 (Free Shipping) = $27.49.

    It is still a pretty good deal, and knowledge contained in it.

  • Thanks for the info!

  • I can't wait for Scott's book on Silverlight :-)

    ..Ben

  • I bought the book just because it was $16 and full of information. However, in general I do not buy Wrox series books as I don't find them useful at all. I couldn't beat this price though.

  • Scott,
    How do you compare this book "Professional ASP.NET 3.5: In C# and VB" with
    "ASP.NET 3.5 Unleashed by Stephen Walther"
    which one is the best.

    Any comments??

    Thanks

  • Can't i use LINQ with Oracle have been playing around with linq thinking of adopting it for a new project with oracle database.

  • I agree with Billkamm. Wrox series books are not that great. Most of Wrox books contain unnecessary information, like how to navigate visual studio. Who has time to read 1600 pages. I think they are getting good but not best yet. However, you can not beat this price. Basically, it’s not programmer to programmer. It is cr*p to programmer.

  • It looks like the price went up to $27.50 which is still better than $54.99!

  • Does it have a chapter on how to use MasterPages without name/ID mangling in the generated HTML? It still grinds my gears that I cannot use MasterPages... :(

  • What are the other books on Asp.net 3.5 that you would recommend (other then worx series)

  • its a whopping £85 on Amazon UK.
    if that's not a ridiculous price i don't know what is...

  • The price is something That made me order this book.

  • Hopefully it's decent. First time I've ever bought a book based soley on price. Although these epic 1600-page programming books have always seemed silly to me. I mean who really sits down reads on of these all the way through?

  • Price is 27.49 now.

  • The Amazon.UK price in the UK was just £14.0. So really tempted, but at 1600 pages I find this rather daunting to me. As a RAILS fan, I have only just become interested in ASP.MVC which does not seem to be covered :(

    Waiting for a great Silverlight 2.0 book (on ASP, MVC and SharePoint) AJAX is RIP ASAIK

  • Hi,
    There is no way to contact you or to add comments in old posts, so I am adding one here.
    This is for http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2007/02/26/tip-trick-url-rewriting-with-asp-net.aspx

    Please move it there.
    I have run into issues because of the wrong C# code that was posted in the comments of the page and I wanted to contribute with a corrected version so others will not go through this problem again. But it's difficult to contribute in this Blog or contact you.

    Comment for other blog post:
    Hi,
    Do not use the C# code someone posted above or you will run into problems, use this fixed version:

    using System.Web;
    using System.Web.UI;

    public class FormRewriterControlAdapter : System.Web.UI.Adapters.ControlAdapter
    {

    protected override void Render(System.Web.UI.HtmlTextWriter writer)
    {
    base.Render(new RewriteFormHtmlTextWriter(writer));
    }

    }

    public class RewriteFormHtmlTextWriter : HtmlTextWriter
    {

    public RewriteFormHtmlTextWriter(HtmlTextWriter writer)
    : base(writer)
    {
    this.InnerWriter = writer.InnerWriter;
    }

    public RewriteFormHtmlTextWriter(System.IO.TextWriter writer)
    : base(writer)
    {
    base.InnerWriter = writer;
    }

    public override void WriteAttribute(string name, string value, bool fEncode)
    {

    // If the attribute we are writing is the "action" attribute, and we are not on a sub-control,
    // then replace the value to write with the raw URL of the request - which ensures that we'll
    // preserve the PathInfo value on postback scenarios

    if (name == "action")
    {

    HttpContext Context = null;
    Context = HttpContext.Current;

    if (Context.Items["ActionAlreadyWritten"] == null)
    {

    // Because we are using the UrlRewriting.net HttpModule, we will use the
    // Request.RawUrl property within ASP.NET to retrieve the origional URL
    // before it was re-written. You'll want to change the line of code below
    // if you use a different URL rewriting implementation.

    value = Context.Request.RawUrl;

    // Indicate that we've already rewritten the 's action attribute to prevent
    // us from rewriting a sub-control under the control

    Context.Items["ActionAlreadyWritten"] = true;

    }

    }

    base.WriteAttribute(name, value, fEncode);

    }

    }

  • Can we expect that silverlight will be integrated with new version of IE or with vista? so when any end user upgrades browser(IE) or OS(vista) then by default it will support XAML and people don't have to download it separately.

    Regards,

    Hardik Joshi(tech2hard@hotmail.com)

  • There's actually a way to do URL rewriting without having to modify the action attribute or anything - it involves multiple RewritePath calls. I'll try to post it on nathanaeljones.com as soon as I can.

    The book price is back at $27, btw.

  • Just wanted to point out that some images are not showing up (the ones with URLs pointing to http://www.scottgu.com). The ones in the sidebar are one example, but what's worse is the ones in the tutorials are missing, making it much harder to understand them (for example, the articles about MVC).

    Is it possible to make those images available?

    Other than that, great blog, and thanks for all the expertise shared here.


    PS: Posted this here and not on the articles I mentioned because comments were disabled on those articles.

  • I'm in the middle of reading this book and must say - unfortunately a lot of annoyning mistakes/typos. At least too many for a book of such a caliber.

    Another thing. I have to back "asrfarinha" (post above) - images from excellent past tutorials (e.g. Linq to SQL series) have dissapeared effectively making these tutorials useless. Can this please be restored.

    Regards,
    Evgeny

  • $16 USD? $27 USD?? Where? Its $35 USD now! At that price I go to Bookpool.com because I have never, ever, ever had a good experience with Amazon. More like Amadont for me... $16 would have been worth the trouble.

  • Is there anyway I could get the hardcopy for free? I think I overspent on books (amazon should be happy!) lately. Any good samaritan out there?

  • Mine just arrived today. Save your money. 1500 pages of bad. I think this is just a case of Scott helping Scott with some shameless promoting.

  • Well I know why it's so cheap now.

    Great book so far, BUT the paper is dirt cheap. Feels like those copies you see for sale everyonce in a while of cheap text books where they tell you it's made with cheap paper. Seems like they would have told ya.

  • Rick,

    Your comment is in a very poor taste. If you don't like the book, that's fine but don't you bad mouth Scott Guthrie. Do you even know what it takes to be that man?
    Keep your stupid comments to yourself.

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