James Bennett is the *release manager* for Django. He’s also the author of the book in question. That means that a) he probably sees every new feature and feature change that comes down the pike, and b) he was probably kinda pissed the the publisher didn’t give him the time to revise his copy.

I saw in a forum where the author actually began to acknowledge that the book was going to be outdated before it got on the shelves. He didn’t seem pleased about it, but another thing you can’t do is badmouth your publisher in public venues, owing in part to the contractual relationship you have with them.

As an author of a book myself (for O’Reilly, not Apress), I can say that there are surprises that sometimes pop up, and it’s out of your hands. The timing of the book, and the decision to release the book at all is also out of your hands. As an author, you sign your rights to make these decisions away in the contract. It’s worth noting that writing for magazines and many online outlets is generally a very different story; books are a special case.

http://blog.martinaclausen.com/2008/08/18/practical-django-projects-w-django-trunk/

The author and publisher should be ashamed of themselves.

http://code.djangoproject.com/browser/django/tags/notable_moments/pre-newforms-admin