Book Happy
Jan. 15th, 2002 02:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
progUpdates with The Book:
Yet another thing I did last Friday involved mailing thank-you notes to all the book's tech reviewers, since I wouldn't get a chance to study their critiques in-depth for several more days. One of them wrote back to make sure I knew that, even though he wrote a long critique (I think it may have been the longest), he still found the book a winning introduction to the topic. Bonus points come from the fact that this particular person was the fellow from whom we stole the book's authoring priveleges.
Then yesterday Tim stopped Erik in the hall to tell him that he gave the book a once-over and thought it was great. !! This has significance on a practical level, since books are receiving a lot more scrutiny in the latter stages of their respective pipelines -- bad economy means less willingness to spend money printing a book that isn't a sure win. Though it's always been a contractual option, only recently have books been under real threat of getting killed right when they're about to go out the door -- it happened for the first time, I think, right when I left the company in October. So, apparently ours officially fails to suck enough to trip this switch.
Needless to say, I am now entirely optimistic and charged about the project, and fairly certain I will remain so through the end of the month, when the magic To-Production date passes.
Even though the cover design's been known for months, I finally started showing it off to Internet friends en masse yesterday. The reaction made me puff up and also step back, as I explained severally that, no, it's not on the shelves yet. Now I am pondering my original notion of hyping it up a little bit on my own website. I think what I'll do is hold off until the second draft is done... that's only two more weeks. Letting hype and reality fall out of synch on any level is something best avoided.
But, as a special to my bloggy friends: lookit.
Yet another thing I did last Friday involved mailing thank-you notes to all the book's tech reviewers, since I wouldn't get a chance to study their critiques in-depth for several more days. One of them wrote back to make sure I knew that, even though he wrote a long critique (I think it may have been the longest), he still found the book a winning introduction to the topic. Bonus points come from the fact that this particular person was the fellow from whom we stole the book's authoring priveleges.
Then yesterday Tim stopped Erik in the hall to tell him that he gave the book a once-over and thought it was great. !! This has significance on a practical level, since books are receiving a lot more scrutiny in the latter stages of their respective pipelines -- bad economy means less willingness to spend money printing a book that isn't a sure win. Though it's always been a contractual option, only recently have books been under real threat of getting killed right when they're about to go out the door -- it happened for the first time, I think, right when I left the company in October. So, apparently ours officially fails to suck enough to trip this switch.
Needless to say, I am now entirely optimistic and charged about the project, and fairly certain I will remain so through the end of the month, when the magic To-Production date passes.
Even though the cover design's been known for months, I finally started showing it off to Internet friends en masse yesterday. The reaction made me puff up and also step back, as I explained severally that, no, it's not on the shelves yet. Now I am pondering my original notion of hyping it up a little bit on my own website. I think what I'll do is hold off until the second draft is done... that's only two more weeks. Letting hype and reality fall out of synch on any level is something best avoided.
But, as a special to my bloggy friends: lookit.
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is your name spelled correctly on the mock-up?
Date: 2002-01-15 12:06 pm (UTC)have I been misspelling your name all this time?
Re: is your name spelled correctly on the mock-up?
Date: 2002-01-15 12:07 pm (UTC)Re: is your name spelled correctly on the mock-up?
Date: 2002-01-15 12:51 pm (UTC)OK, I just did a google search, and quoting from this page:
And this page agrees that 'Mc' is an abbreviation, adding that it should never be used. Oops?
Spelling my name
Date: 2002-01-15 01:03 pm (UTC)It's worth noting that 'jmac' does not represent a misspelling, because it's actually a two-letter interleaving of my first and last names. :)
no subject
Date: 2002-01-15 01:45 pm (UTC)Congrats on all the good news so far and good luck!