Download any ebook free from Packt Publishing (through the end of the month) | Hacker News Reader

Download any ebook free from Packt Publishing (through the end of the month)

packtpub.com

133 pointsjontas44 comments

To clarify the title, the site says you can download one free ebook. So a more accurate title would be "Download any one ebook free from Packt Publishing (through the end of the month)"

Reposting a dead (no idea why) comment:

decriddle 1 hour ago

I work for Packt and this campaign has caused huge traffic surges for us. Please be patient as we are working on the issues and the sign up is running until 8am Monday GMT. The offer is for one of any eBooks for free, and can use the library PacktLib to browse and review books before choose. You only need to login/register before Monday but have a week to choose your book.

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also, if you follow the blue "yes please" link on the front page, you can register via a page that is much more responsive than the rest of the site. that appears to guarantee your participation in the scheme (they say they will email you when the site is back to normal).

I've had some bad experiences with Packt's books.

Choose very carefully.

This comment [1] summed the one book I read quite well:

  This book is so badly written that reading it will 
  give you a very good appreciation as to what it must
  feel like to be dyslexic, the words just come at you
  in a random order.

[1] http://www.amazon.co.uk/product-reviews/1849511446/ref=cm_cr...

I've had some great experiences, e.g. Gregory Smith's PostgreSQL 9.0 High Performance. When considering purchasing a book on a niche topic like Magneto or PostgreSQL, I think it's worth waiting for prominent community members to get review copies and write about their impression, e.g. http://www.postgresonline.com/journal/archives/192-PostgreSQ...

Very true; I was trying to avoid Packt for the same reason. Recently, friend of mine shown two books that changed my perception. They're really good (IMHO):

1. http://www.packtpub.com/play-framework-cookbook/book 2. http://www.packtpub.com/php-ajax-for-web-2-0-cookbook/book

By the way, any good book for Rust available?

Can anybody recommend some books put out by Packt? I've looked at quite a few of their books over the years, and they have been, without exception, dreadful (not quite a tutorial, but also not a reference, lacking in detail, and usually behind the curve technology-wise). They appear to have several hundred books so there must be some hidden gems.

538 of em have 4-star+ on amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=sr_nr_p_72_0?rh=n%3A283155%2Cp_3...

Good call, thanks. I think I might look at the one on PostgreSQL optimization.

I'd highly recommend Object-Oriented JavaScript by Stoyan Stefanov. Really any JS book by Stoyan is pretty high quality.

http://www.amazon.com/Object-Oriented-JavaScript-high-qualit...

WebGL Beginner's Guide seems good, although the subject is fairly niche.

I have got the "NHibernate 3.0 Cookbook" and it is really nice. Well it has many solutions and best practices. The print is not top notch - but the content is great.

I found the FreeSWITCH book very helpful.

"Expert Python Programming" by Tarek Ziade (http://www.packtpub.com/expert-python-programming/book)

I would strongly recommend against giving these guys your email address.

I once bought a book from them and have had to ask them to take me off their mailing list 8 times now over a 3-year period.

Got all the way through finding a book I was interested in (whoever said check the reviews, thank you, a couple I was interested in were slated), then clicking for the download link and then...502 Bad Gateway.

Possibly demand has exceeded expectation.

(As a footnote I picked the Node Cookbook, as I was interested in either an Obj-C, a Node or a RoR book but the RoR stuff was published 2008, so maybe outdate somewhat)

If their website is down you can browse their books on amazon ...

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=sr_st?keywords=packt+publishing&...

(sorted by publication date)

So it seems that in 2 days time their's entire catalog will be downloadable for free on the torrent sites :)

What makes you think it's not there already?

Yup, one can already see some of the books appearing on the cove of men that love to say Arrr a lot ;) But not the one I'm looking for ;(

A shame that Packt's goodwill is repaid like this. It drives me nuts.

the free offer is for any ebook in packt or only selected ebooks?

Any good recommendations for a book to choose? I browsed the 'new eBooks' section, and the only one that looked any interesting was on balsamiq mockups...

I don't know much about ebooks and I don't have a mobile device. Does this include something like a PDF I can read on a computer?

I believe they let you download in a number of formats, including PDF, epub, mobi, etc.

They offer downloads in the major formats (open epub, Amazon's mobi, and regular pdf). Also, you can read and convert ebooks in pretty much any format using Calibre http://calibre-ebook.com/

I can't edit my previous post, but it looks like they've started getting on top of their network issues.

Site down?

Yep. If this was some sort of marketing stunt. It worked.

It appears to be up now, but I would expect they got a surge of traffic that might've knocked them out when you were trying.

search not working. will try again later.

Site's crawling for me and registration seems to be down. People like free stuff.

I work for Packt and this campaign has caused huge traffic surges for us. Please be patient as we are working on the issues and the sign up is running until 8am Monday GMT.

The offer is for one of any eBooks for free, and can use the library PacktLib to browse and review books before choose. You only need to login/register before Monday but have a week to choose your book.

tried ordering an e-book & it asked for payment. i assume there a special promo code that needs to applied?

Offer is valid starting tomorrow (between the 28th and the 30th)

Where I am, its already 28th(GMT+5.30). what timezone?

GMT-5, though I guess it actually is 28th at GMT+0.. Point was just that it still says "Return between the 28th and 30th September to claim your gift", so whoever is supposed to activate the deal hasn't done so yet (and since their office is in England they are probably still asleep)

It is working for me right now--I already downloaded my book free of charge.

Yep working here too. Except for the occasional 502 Bad Gateway that keeps popping up.

You need to first create an account (if you dont already have one).

Trying to 'checkout' the book doesn't seem to be supported for this offer. Instead the splash on the front page points to http://packtlib.packtpub.com/library