Re: Robots and search engines technical information.

joseph williams (drj@lamar.ColoState.EDU)
Sat, 17 Feb 1996 07:36:12 -0700

Sams.Net used a standard "call for authors" approach for the
book. Virtually all edited books use this format. Only about
a third of the authors who responded had their work accepted.
The decisions regarding whose works were accepted were mine, not
the publishers, and I think you'll find that "low standards" is
an inappropriate assessment of the contributions made by the 20
international authors. I only posted the "call for authors" to
Infosys, comp.ai, and Ray Johnson's Software Agents listserv, so
the author base was tightly and appropriately focused.

There are several chapters that deal with robots per se, but
the book itself is not targeted specifically for the "robots"
audience (for example, the designer of the Savvy Search engine
wrote the core robots chapters). Rather, the focus is more
broadly on the general topics of agents. The target reader
is a beginner, although the last fifth of the book is for
more advanced readers.

I think you'll find the overall depth and quality of the book
will be pleasantly surprising.

Joseph Williams, Ph.D.
Colorado State University
CIS Department

At 10:54 AM 2/16/96 PST, you wrote:
>> Bots and Other Internet Beasties
>> Joseph Williams
>> Sams Net
>> 1-57521-016-9
>> Published in April
>
>Just an aside: the publisher of this book was sending out pretty broad
>"Please write this book!" messages to lots of people on various
>mailing lists and Web sites. Both Oren and I received one, as well as
>most of the rest of the UW Softbots group. Needless to say, while I
>don't want to say anything about Mr. Williams or his writing, I did
>want to mention that the publisher's standards for authors seemed
>quite low.
>
>-Erik
>