Packt Publishing's Christmas 2014 $5 Ebook and Video Bonanza Sale

Packt Publishing is once again offering any of their e-books or videos for $5 (USD) as part of their $5 eBook Bonanza holiday promotion. This $5 price on any e-book or video is available until 6 January 2015. Their main promotion page features their 20 best-selling titles, but any book is covered by this deal.

I have reviewed numerous Packt Publishing titles on this blog and provide links to those reviews below. I am currently reading Mastering JavaServer Faces 2.2 and hope to post a review of it before this promotion ends. I've read about half of the book so far and have found it to be a useful reference on JSF 2.0 and JSF 2.2.

My Reviews of Packt Publishing Titles

These are some of my prior reviews of Packt Publishing e-books and videos:

E-books

• Puppet Essentials
• Mastering JavaServer Faces 2.2
• RESTful Java Patterns and Best Practices
• JavaScript Promises Essentials
• Play Framework Essentials
• Learning AngularJS for .NET Developers
• AngularJS Essentials
• Java EE 7 Performance Tuning and Optimization
• Arduino Home Automation Projects
• Spring MVC Beginner's Guide
• Creating Flat Design Websites
• WildFly Performance Tuning
• Penetration Testing with the Bash Shell
• Web Development with Jade
• Backbone.js Patterns and Best Practices
• Test-Driven Development with Mockito
• Mastering HTML5 Forms
• Groovy 2 Cookbook
• Java EE 7 First Look
• HTML5 Data and Services Cookbook
• JavaScript and JSON Essentials
• Developing RESTful Services with JAX-RS 2.0, WebSockets, and JSON
• Developing Windows Store Apps with HTML5 and JavaScript
• JBoss Weld CDI for Java Platform
• TestNG Beginner's Guide
• Learning JavaScriptMVC
• GateIn Cookbook
• Java EE 6 Cookbook for Securing, Tuning, and Extending Enterprise Applications
• JBoss AS 7: Configuration, Deployment, and Administration
• Java EE 6 Development with NetBeans 7

Videos

• Building an Application with CoffeeScript
• jQuery UI Development
• JBoss EAP Configuration, Deployment, and Administration
• HTML5 Game Development

Pre-Orders Included

Packt Publishing is also including pre-orders in the Christmas 2014 $5 Bonanza deal. This means books that are "coming soon" are included. These titles can be found by searching all ebooks on their site and selecting "Coming soon" as the "Release date" filter. Titles in this category include Node.js Design Patterns (expected December 2014), IntelliJ IDEA Essentials (expected December 2014), Puppet Cookbook: Third Edition (expected February 2015), Scala Object-Oriented Programming (expected February 2015), Learning Chef (expected February 2015), and SoapUI Cookbook (expected March 2015).

Conclusion

There is always some risk when purchasing a book or video of that title not meeting one's needs or not providing enough value for a particular reader/viewer to justify the cost. The beauty of Packt Publishing's $5 per ebook or video Christmas Bonanza sale is that the risk is greatly reduced. Also, at $5 per title, books on completely new subjects unrelated to my current work appear more attractive to me.