http://www.perlmonks.org?node_id=947927


in reply to New Beginning Perl book due out in August

I agree this is really confusing. This book has a long and slightly sordid history. Despite considerable googling, I'm still feeling bewildered.

The first edition, written by Simon Cozens "with" Peter Wainwright, was originally published by Wrox Press on May 25 2000. This edition is now also available as a free download.

Apparently, Wiley acquired Wrox Press in April 2003 and all Wrox books were then transferred to Apress (?).

The second edition, published by Apress in 2004, was written by James Lee "with" Simon Cozens and Peter Wainwright. According to a slashdot comment:

The second edition was written by James Lee. He was not involved with the first edition, so he had the choice of reusing the original material, or rewriting/augmenting where he felt that was more appropriate. In the end, James ended up rewriting far more often than not
This Simon Cozens blog, however, claims that more than 25 percent of the original text was used in the second edition, which led to a dispute between Simon and Apress about royalty payments.

The third edition was written by James Lee and published by Apress in 2010. No mention of Simon Cozens or Peter Wainwright this time. Though there were some complaints about the publisher blazoning "covers Perl 5.10" on the front cover (apparently without consulting the author) even though the book does not cover key Perl 5.10 features.

Finally, last week, Perl Weekly reported that Ovid is writing a new Wrox book "Beginning Perl". So Wrox seems to be still in business. Is this the fourth edition of the same "Beginning Perl" book? Or a new one with same title? Will the author be Ovid "with" James Lee, Simon Cozens and Peter Wainwright? Who are Michalski and Payne? And will there be another skirmish over royalties? This book has a really complicated lineage. :)