Thoughts on a Manning Publications Subscription
An honest, unsolicited, partial review
It’s been a few months since my last post. Life got busy with a few more courses in my data science certificate program, summer travels to finally meet the new niece, and wrapping up a 5-year work project to then get involved with a new project.
I don’t have any new projects to share, but I did want to share my experience with a subscription service I have been very happy with and found quite useful. While I call it a review, I simply share my thoughts and experiences without trying to be completely thorough regarding full functionality and offerings.
This review is completely unsolicited, but it’s the type of post I couldn’t find before I decided to take a chance on the subscription. Note, the review is also not complete, as I have not taken advantage of all of what the subscription gives access to.
Executive Summary: I have found the subscription to be a great deal, with access to a large catalog of books and one free ebook a month to easily justify the cost. The subscription has allowed me instant access to texts which have supplemented (replaced) the suggested texts for courses in my certificate program. If you’re already buying even one technical book a month, consider this subscription.
(Edit 13 October 2024: Since originally publishing this post, I discovered that the monthly subscription credit can also be used for Live Projects. See my post, on the same date as this edit, regarding Manning’s Live Project offering.)
Books, books, books!
To start off, I should let you know that I love books! Ever since I picked up my first chapter book in third grade (Eyes of the Killer Robot) I’ve been an avid reader. My book collection is primarily fiction (science fiction, fantasy, cosmic horror, and a smattering of other genres) with some non-fiction and a good number of text books.
It should be no surprise that, as part of my effort to transition into data science, I have purchased a growing number of books to help me along the way.
I’ll admit, I purchase most of my books online now, and though I try to be careful by reading reviews and look at ‘samples’, sometimes what I purchase turns out not to be as useful as I had hoped.
About five months back, I was listening to the episde of The Artists of Data Science podcast with Emily Robinson and Jacqueline Nolis, discussing their careers and their book, Build a Career in Data Science (from Manning Publications). I really enjoyed the episode (and highly recommend it) and decided to check out their book (I just had to use the url that Jacqueline suggest, bestbook.cool)
It was here I discovered that Manning had a subscription program. After mulling things over a bit, I decided to give it a try, even though I couldn’t find any blog posts or other reviews for the service (which was the motivation for this post)
Subscription Overview
You can find details on the subscription plans on the website. I’ll give a brief rundown:
- two personal tiers: lite & pro
— lite gives you online access to “all Manning books including MEAPs”
— pro gives you online access to “all Manning books, MEAPs, liveVideos, liveProjects, and audiobooks”, you can choose one free ebook a month, share the subscription with one other person, and get a discount on all purchases - monthly and yearly subscriptions:
— the monthly price difference for lite & pro is only $5
— the annual price is (essentially) 10 * monthly - team subscription plan:
— see the previous link for details, my review will only focus on the personal tiers
I chose the pro plan among the personal tier. Why? The price is only $24.99 a month (I may upgrade to an annual subscription soon), which is easily less than the typical cost of a good data science text. When you consider the vast library you have access to, covering a wide array of topics, and you get a free ebook each month, it’s a great deal!
To date, I have only taken advantage of the access to all Manning books and the monthly free ebook, which is why I categorize what follows as a “partial review”. I hope to explore the liveVideos and liveProjects at some point in the future, and I’ll post my experiences with those once I do.
Access to An Entire Library
I don’t know exactly how large the Manning book catalog is, but it’s pretty big. When I read a few medium posts about the julia programming language and wanted an ‘intro’ book, it was easy to find a worthwile text and just start reading.
The search function is fairly useful, but to get the most out of it, I found it is good to type in the search term and then click the icon in the upper left of the search results (a ‘bookmark’-type symbol) to get some advanced options.
After clicking on a book search result, you’ll get info about the book and purchase options, and a read now button. This last button will take you to the liveBook version of the text where you can easily navigate through the book, add notes and highlights, and interact with the code blocks in the text.
You get your own “desktop” where you can create collections of books to read and otherwise manage your library.
My only suggestion for the liveBooks is that it would be nice to have an app to access the content instead of just through the web. The site feels a bit awkward on my iPad (which would otherwise be a great reading experience. For instance, the liveBook has a zen mode (you’ll find this by clicking on the person image and then looking under reading options) that provides a distraction free reading experience. However, I constantly end up dismissing zen mode by trying to scroll up and doing so sends me back to the start of the chapter.
Supplementing Course Texts
One huge benefit, to me, has been the ability to find supplemental texts for courses I’ve been taking for my certificate program. For instance, the particular ‘certificate flavor’ I signed up for is focused on Python, but the time series forecasting course text only had XLMiner and R variants, with course details saying we could use Python but not to expect instructor or TA help with any Python issues (a bit ridiculous, right?).
Luckily, I found this book in Manning’s catalog. The text not only helped me understand the availble Python libraries for forecasting but also took a different approach to the topic, which I appreciated.
I had a similar experience for my recent natural language processing (NLP) course. That course was geared for Python, but much of the code was out of date and, personally, I found the presentation geared towards a ‘plug-and-play’ approach which is a bit too pandering.
As a supplement for my NLP course, I found this book which is part of the Manning Early Access Program (the MEAP acronym from earlier). Grabbing this work in progress also gave me a digital copy of the first edition of the text!
Trying before buying
I really like that I can get access to the entire book before committing to buying it (or using my one-per-month freebie). I have a side project which involves building a recommender system. We talked about this briefly in once course for my certificate, but it the topic was shoved in for ‘completeness’ and not given a proper treatment.
I found one book on this topic in the Manning catalog, spent some time with it, and found that it wasn’t to my liking. With other methods to purchase the text, I might have a short window to return it, but that requires a rush decision, something I don’t have to do with this subscription.
I should note that what I described above has not been the norm for me, the majority of other Manning books I’ve dug into I have really enjoyed and eagerly snagged with the freebie each new month of subscription brings me.
As I understand it, you can get a look at any liveBook without having a subscriptions. Some chapters are free, serving as a better sample than what you might get looking to purchase ebooks elsewhere. Manning also has a system where you can purchase tokens and use these to unlock specific sections of a liveBook. I haven’t used that myself, but you can read more about their token system here.
Final Thoughts
I have been very pleased with my Manning subscription, and would definitely recommend it to anyone in a technical field who finds themselves regularly purchasing new books in related subject areas. If your budget is a little tight, the Manning token system might be more appealing.
I find that the free ebook a month easily makes up for the cost of the pro tier, but you can save a little with the lite tier. The great thing about the ebooks is that you have access to the full liveBook version, even if you eventually cancel your membership, as well as the ability to download the ebook in multiple formats (for offline access).
Side note: I resisted ebooks for a long time, but I have come to enjoy how easy it is to carry many, many books in my pocket. I still love finding a good used bookstore and purchase physical products for books I really enjoy.
I enjoy the liveBook format, but an app to streamline the experience on non-laptop/desktop devices would be appreciated (even if it still required an internet connection, for understandable reasons).
This posts relates my personal experience and thoughts. There are several aspects of the subscription I have not yet explored and, thus, did not comment on.
I’m curious if others have tried this subscription or can recommend others. Drop your thoughts in the comments.
