Add Python books to the merchandise section

[pydanny]

Disclaimer: I have a stake in this as I am an author of a Python-related book.

It's incredibly frequent on social media and IRC to see requests for book tutorials and resources, but python.org doesn't list them. I suggest that they be included on this page, and link to Amazon and other online sellers.

Since most booksellers have referral systems, python.org could use them in order to generate additional finances for the PSF.

[pydanny]

On https://www.python.org/about/apps, under education, there is a link to the commercial book, Practical Programming at http://pragprog.com/book/gwpy2/practical-programming. Either more commercial efforts should be added or no commercial should be allowed except in dedicated sections.

[malemburg]

On 26.03.2014 23:13, Daniel Greenfeld wrote:

It's incredibly frequent on social media and IRC to see requests for book tutorials and resources, but python.org doesn't list them. I suggest that they be included on this page, and link to Amazon and other online sellers.

We have a long list of books in the Python wiki:

https://wiki.python.org/moin/PythonBooks

We could link there from the documentation menu/page.

The merchandise page is really just meant for Python merchandise.

Since most booksellers have referral systems, python.org could use them in order to generate additional finances for the PSF.

We've done this in the past, but it's not really worth the effort.

On https://www.python.org/about/apps, under education, there is a link to the commercial book, Practical Programming at http://pragprog.com/book/gwpy2/practical-programming. Either more commercial efforts should be added or no commercial should be allowed except in dedicated sections.

There's nothing wrong with linking to commercial resources, as long
as there's a focus on Python. In general we have always worked to
support both the open source and the commercial Python community.

Marc-Andre Lemburg

[ncoghlan]

+1 from me for making it easier to find books related to Python, and participate in online vendor affiliate programs.

I'd like to see the regressions from the site transition addressed before this is prioritised for PSF funded development, though. (We're still serving too much current content from "legacy.python.org")

[malemburg]

I've added a link to the documentation menu. It should be live after
the caches have updated.

Marc-Andre Lemburg

[pydanny]

I'm against linking to the wiki. Sure, that should happen, but it should not be the primary source of lookups.

I think I speak for the majority of authors or would-be authors when I say that Python books should be a top level item. If not in the merchandise section then in their own section. Nothing against the wiki, but it's a different site and a wiki, the sort of thing that is simply not as good for sales conversions.

As for whether or not affiliate links worked in the past, I must say that I'm pretty certain traffic to python.org has increased over the past few years. It might have not been worth it now, but considering what I earn off just my blog justifies spending a couple hours doing the affiliate links.

Finally, in regards to Practical Programming, since it's okay to list commercial books anywhere on the site I will begin submitting issues to add books to relevant sections. I invite other readers of the site to submit similar issues.

[malemburg]

On 26.03.2014 23:46, Daniel Greenfeld wrote:

I'm against linking to the wiki. Sure, that should happen, but it should not be the primary source of lookups.

Until we have a more advanced page permission system setup for the website
(see #329), the wiki still
provides easiest way of getting people to add content, so for the time
being, I think it's a good compromise.

Marc-Andre Lemburg

[malemburg]

BTW: We already a link to the Python books on the documentation page:

https://www.python.org/doc/

(a bit hard to find under "Moderate")

Marc-Andre Lemburg

[ncoghlan]

Danny, please keep in mind the PSF is still primarily a volunteer based organisation. This is a good idea, but there are a lot of practical barriers in the way of making it happen - I would love it if you were able to spare some time to help knock down those barriers (like the permissions issue MAL linked above, or the fact PEPs and downloads are still being served from the legacy site), but would also understand completely if that isn't possible for you.

In the meantime, the revamped site currently still has issues with not meeting the immediate needs of the PSF board and the CPython core development team, so other enhancements like this are going to be low on the todo list, regardless of their merit in absolute terms.

[scottilee]

@berkerpeksag or @ewdurbin can this be closed? I see the "Python Books" link under the 'Documentation' menu at https://www.python.org.

[berkerpeksag]

The link goes to wiki.p.o and Packt is still spamming those pages with their content. I don't think we can consider those lists accurate. It would be much better if we list good Python books on the main site.

I can create the page on python.org once we have a list, but we need a list of good books first :) I don't know how we can collect books for such list.

The only Python books I've recently read are Effective Python and Fluent Python. I can definitely vouch for adding them to the list.

[ncoghlan]

@berkerpeksag I'd be surprised if we can do better than Amazon's listing of "Python books that already sell well": https://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Books-Python-Programming/zgbs/books/285856

So I wonder if it may be worth reframing the problem from "List Python books directly on python.org" to "Help Python users effectively search book retailer databases for Python books". That way the heavy lifting of actually compiling the book lists and implementing a quality assessment system relatively free from publisher gaming is offloaded to the book retailers.

It won't be perfect (since even the largest online book retailers have problems with counterfeiting), but the status quo is also far from perfect.

(cc @ejodlowska @VanL, since this is something I think the staff and/or Board would need to have a say in to ensure it isn't inadvertently exposing the PSF to unexpected legal risks)