About Mike Murach & Associates, Inc.
by Mike Murach
If you haven’t heard of us before, you may be
surprised to learn that we’ve been publishing books
for professional programmers since 1974. In fact, our
books on IBM mainframe subjects like COBOL, CICS, DB2,
and JCL have been the best sellers in that field since
the mid-1980s.
And today, the current generation of programmers is
discovering our books on web, desktop, and database
programming. That includes books on subjects like C#,
Visual Basic, Java, C++, ASP.NET, JSP, PHP, JavaScript,
HTML, and SQL.
When people discover our books, they are often so delighted
by the experience that they take the time to let me
know. Here are just a few of the comments I’ve
received:
“Great book! My co-workers
won’t let me have it back.”
“If I’d seen your Java book first,
I wouldn’t have wasted my money (and time) on 6 other books!”
“Simply put, I'm stunned with the quality of your product. I am currently buying every one of your books that is pertinent to my current situation.”
“I recently purchased your SQL, VB, and ADO.NET texts. Geesh.
I wish I would have found you a long time ago. Your books
are the best learning method I have ever come across.”
And:
“How is it that a small company in Fresno of all places can
make books that are so much better than the competing books?”
What makes our books “so much better than the competing books”
Whenever I get an email like that last one, I’m tempted to list all of
the features in our books that no other books have. Like our
“paired pages” format that lets you learn faster by reading
less. Like the dozen or more complete business applications
in every book that show you how all of the components of an
application work together. Like the carefully selected sets
of the skills, classes, and methods that you’ll use 90% of the
time. Like our subset/expansion approach that gets you started
doing real work fast and lets you learn additional skills whenever
you need them.
But it isn’t just these features that make our
books better, because these could be copied (although it would
take more time and training than most authors have). The real
difference between our books and the competing books is that
no other publisher works the way we do.
- Instead of using freelance
writers with no training who get a 10% royalty and write their
books in their spare time, our books are written by a full-time
staff of paid programmers and writers who are trained in our
proven presentation methods.
- Instead of using copy editors who don’t understand
the subject matter, our editors are technically competent,
with the programming skills they need to insure the
accuracy of the text and code.
- Instead of publishing 40 or
50 books a year, we focus our skills on publishing just a few
titles that we know developers will use.
- And instead of rushing
out an 800-page book in 3 months with 4 co-authors who’ve never
met, we never let schedule or budget interfere with quality.
We’ve been working that way for 35 years now because
that’s the only way to make sure that every book
we publish is the best one on its subject. Although
that may not be the quickest or best way to get rich,
it sure is satisfying. And it feels so good when a customer
writes to say: “I got your book yesterday afternoon
and stayed up half the night reading it.” Or,
“What a tremendous resource your book is.”
Or, “I feel like I’ve found some saints
in the corporate world.”
So, if you haven’t ever tried one of our books,
I hope you’ll try one soon. If you’re like
most of our customers, that will make you one of the
thousands of developers who look for the Murach book
first whenever they need to learn a new subject. Then,
if you have a minute or two, I would enjoy hearing from
you because that means so much to all of us.
Have a great day!
Mike Murach
murachbooks@murach.com
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