To give you some of the backstory about what happened: Nathan had been working on the book for awhile, and he and the publisher agreed to bring on James to speed up the production of the book. James' role was to handle a great deal of the revision work by rewriting and improving chapters to make them flow better and have more impact. He was not responsible for new content, theory, or the overall structure of the book.
Before bringing on James, the publisher agreed with Nathan that our names would be displayed differently to reflect our unequal contributions. They did not, however, inform James of this when signing him onto the team. In fact, Manning told James that we would receive equal attribution. They literally lied to us from the beginning. As attribution is about the only thing an author gets from writing a technical book (the pay is pitiful), we find this shocking. That said, we both agree that the updated cover fairly represents our contributions to the book.
When the book was released, the publisher misprinted the cover in violation of their agreement with Nathan. They then initiated this exchange program – all on their own – in an attempt to "fix" their mistake. Manning's poorly written message gave many readers the impression that Nathan had demanded they go through an annoying exchange program just so his name would appear differently on their books, but nothing could be further from the truth.
Worst of all, perhaps to avoid embarrassment with their customers, they have refused to let us communicate with our readers to clear up the situation. Manning is aware Nathan was receiving what is essentially hate mail due to their actions, and they still refused to let us send a message to our readers. We view this as extremely unethical behavior and decided instead to reach our readers via this public post.
We hope this has clarified the situation for you, and we thank you for reading our book.
Best,
James Warren and Nathan Marz
