I found this comment in the Amazon.com listing for the HPPE3 book:

"Richard Lynch, the author, states in the Introduction that "One of the most important parts of this book is the collection of Hidden Power tools provided on the CD. *** These Hidden Power tools will enable you to access additional tools for elements such as Curves or Color Balance, and they will condense some of the longer step-by-step procedures you learn in the book to clicks of the mouse. On May 31, John Wiley has acquired Sybex, the publisher of the book. Sybex apparently no longer supports The Hidden Powers CD on its website. I bought the book because of the CD. I will now buy Scott Kelby's recent book on Elements 3 and return this one. Amazon should warn its customers of this problem instead of letting them find out themselves and going to the trouble and cost of returning it."

It's the most recent review/comment. Is this guy complaining about something that can be done through the HiddenElements support site? I can't say as I expected to really expected support from the book vendor, although I would expect it from Richard here and/or on his site.

Gary...don't know exactly what that complaint is. Temporarily, when Sybex sold to Wiley, the tools were not available on the Sybex site. However, they were available on mine. In either case, if the person bought the book, the tools were ON THE CD. If the person were to have read the book, all of the directions say to come to ME for support, NOT the publisher. The publisher's support is well-intended, but certainly does not account for anything much beyond replacing a broken/missing CD. Every other question they come to me with anyway.

One of the bad things about Amazon reviews is, most people only post when they have something bad to say. Some reviews are posted by people wanting to shift sales to their own products. Kelby's book is not a competing title...in fact I don't know of a competing title as no other book provides tools that increase the power of Elements (the new book will be out in about February: http://www.aps8.com/hppe4.html ). The Hidden Power tools will be available sometime in January (http://hiddenelements.com/downloads.html), now with over 100 tools in the set (66% more tools)...and you can get Curves for Elements 4 now: http://hiddenelements.com/downloads.html (get the Hidden Power Booster Elements is the first plugin on the list).

Does that help?

Real readers should post reviews here:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/write-a-review.html/104-5077248-8622326?%5Fencoding=UTF8&asin=0782143857&store=books