How To Get Free Programming Books

The other day I was browsing through books on amazon.com looking for a few programming titles to purchase. Megg was going to make an order for herself and we were going to split the shipping costs to South Africa. While looking through the books I had a brainwave. Surely, these publishing companies would send me a free book if I did a review for them on my blog?

So I went to a few publishers websites looking for some info on doing book reviews. Sure enough, I found a publisher (Packt Publishing) that sends you free books in exchange for a review or a technical article. Two or three emails later, they sent off a Django book for me to review. Simple as that.

The Review Process

The book was just put in the mail today, so I only expect to receive it in 7 days but Packt Publishing did send me some info about how the review process works and what I am required to do.

The most important thing is to be honest in your review. Don’t write a great review if the book is crap just because it was given to you free and you feel you have to be nice.

Packt did ask me to include a link to the books page on PacktPub.com in my review and they also asked to post the review to sites like Amazon.com etc. They sent me a nice image of the book I am going to review that I will be able to use on my blog.

And lastly, Packt also sent a document to me on how to structure my review and what to write about. This document will definitely help when I am constructing my review.

Oh and btw, Packt did not require me to write this post Just thought I would share a way to get free books for other broke college students/programmers like myself. I am also pretty sure that other publishers will do the same thing. The key is to just ask. The worst that can happen is they say no

I am really looking forward to doing the review and hopefully I will be able to do a couple more in the future. The review should be posted on here in 2-3 weeks time.

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