My next book: The cat's out of the bag

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I didn't think they'd start marketing it this early. After all, it's not due out until March and I'm still in the middle of writing the thing. Well, if Sybex thinks it's time to market it on Amazon, who am I to argue.

Link to "mystery book"

 

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woohoo, way to go. One question though. If your only half way though, how do they know how many pages it is going to be?

 

It looks like it's going to be available 1 week later in the UK.

 

Does this mean that you will be going after the MCTS cert then Trip?

 

I've thought about it, Si. In fact, I probably should, if only to validate the information in the book (if I know enough to pass the thing, I should know enough to write about it). Frankly though, I'm so busy, I don't know when I'd have the time to actually sit the exam. Maybe when the book is a bit further along.

Mitzs, I have no idea how they figure out page counts. I can "guesstimate", but I never know for sure. Plus, the page count isn't really the number of pages I produce since between the manuscript pages and the final published pages, all kinds of transformations occur. Oh well...another mystery of life.

 

I looked at the link looks alright good luck with that..

 

So my question is this...

...was it more difficult getting the cat in the bag, or letting it out again afterwards?

 

Putting it in, of course. The critter fought "tooth and nail" to keep from being incarcerated (and I've got the scratches to prove it). When I opened the bag, it shot out of there at the speed of light so no worries on that end.

 

You dont want to be the one letting the cat out of the bag. Thats going to be one pissed off kitty.

 

How long do you get to work on it from start to finish then Trip?

 

About five months for the original chapters but then there's going over all of the editorial corrections and such, then finally reviewing the PDFs of the actual pages for corrections. Lots of little bits of work at the end. Seems like a long time, but when writing a technical book, it's a rather breakneck pace.

 

Sorry for being nosey... so, how soon before the product goes live do you get to 'play' with it? Alpha, Beta or Delta version? Or do you get it when it hits the streets?

 

If his experience was like mine with the Vista book, we're able to play with it as soon as we can rake and scrape a version for ourselves. For me, I believe I got hold of Vista RC1 through my MSDN subscription.

 

So, like Trip, did you get asked to write the Vista book, or do you sometimes do it because you just feel that you want to?

To me this is very interesting. I don't believe that I could ever write a book on IT myself, albeit I have written guidance for laptop users in the past. That 'near killed' me, with trying to put onto the page something I knew like the back of my hand. To put in 500 or so pages on something like Vista or SharePoint beggars belief... power to you both.

 

As far as software goes, I wrote both SharePoint books using evaluation software for SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows Server 2003. Unfortunately, no one is going to give authors the full-fledged version to play with.

As far as which books to write, you have to convince a publisher that it's in their best interest to publish the book you want to write. I have a literary agent who scouts book length writing jobs for me. If I want to write a book that no one has approached me about, I'd have to create a proposal, send it to my agent, and have her circle it around the different publishers to see if anyone's interested.

The advantage (for me, anyway) in using an agent is that she knows everyone in the business including their personalities, so she can advise me of what situations are likely and unlikely to happen. She also can go through all of the contract stuff and separate the chaff from the wheat, so I don't have to try and bend my brain around all of that language.

 

Unlike Trip, I don't have an agent. But I was asked to write the Vista book by James Chellis, who wrote the XP Professional book. I recruited Josh to assist, and he and I (majorly) updated what he and Lisa Donald had previously written for XP.

Sometimes, writing doesn't come easy... other times, the words flow straight from brain to hands. In all cases, though, I have to try to explain myself as clearly as possible.

It was more difficult to write the book than it is for me to do practice exam questions and explanations. With questions, there's a start, a middle, and an end... with a book, it's very "free-form". How much do I say? How far in detail should I explain something? What if I leave something important out?

 

That was extremely interesting. Thanks very much guys.