IT AS IS

Hi, Habr!
I am the author of several stories, the most famous of which is “Non-Volatile Solution” . I was asked many times when I would write a book ( one , two , three , etc.). So, I wrote it. Under the cut will be the history of creation, thanks and competition. And at the very end - links for the purchase of a paper version and the announcement of a free e-version.

How it all began

I am an applied mathematician by education (although I didn’t put any math on it at all), but by occupation I am a programmer. Once I wrote an article for Habr about how bad development turns out to be more economical than good. Fortunately for everyone, before I published it, I re-read it and realized that the article is dull, and the world without it will become a little better. But I didn’t want to throw out the text just like that, and I reworked it into an artistic story, richly diluting it with images from one little-known work and observations from life. What happened was greeted unexpectedly well.
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Inspired by the result, I wrote another story about the same topic. I received even more positive responses (yes, what to say, when I read comments to the story and personal messages, I had endorphins pouring out of my ears), and along with them - several suggestions from publishers. Of course, there was no talk about the millions of fees (there was no talk about fees at all, lol), but there was an opportunity to publish a book with little or no investment on my part. And more importantly, there are people who want to read it.

The case remained for the small - actually write a book.

Process

I must say, problems with ideas I have never had. Every day, two or three absolutely new ones are born in my head, displacing those who were there before. And I began to write for myself. Almost like Lebedev . For drafts and notes, the Evernote program was very useful, and I keep the Pure Players in the Ubuntu One cloud in the LibreOffice Writer format. Somehow another story was written imperceptibly (by the way, Olga Kochanova's song , heard in Grushensky, inspired me), and in parallel with it several chapters from the story “STARTUP”.

Then, under the influence of the mood wandering on Habré, this is how it turned out . I decided not to lay out the rest of the written stories, so that more new things would fall into the book.

And all this time in the background was written the story "The Council of Paris." I do not know how others write, but for me it turned out to be almost impossible to sit down and write the text from beginning to end. Therefore, at each moment I wrote only what I wanted to write about, and then, when fragments accumulated quite a lot, I combined them into one whole.

Somewhere in November I had a cunning plan. Slightly ahead of events, I will say that the cunning plan was implemented on January 1 at seven in the morning in full accordance with the plan. Well, so that the picture was complete, I note that the cunning plan fits in organically with the plot of the book.

File processing

When the manuscript (I write “manuscript everywhere”, although, of course, I did not write a single letter) was almost ready, three questions arose: illustrations, editing and layout.

I accidentally found the artist in a strange forum. What is especially important, we have coincided with his vision of the world and the love of graphics (my favorite artist, as it is difficult to guess, Asher ). Therefore, there was almost no disagreement. The mistake was the incorrect setting of goals - initially I wanted every story and every chapter to have its own picture, such a picture book. That didn't work out. The lesson I learned is that the number and size of images should be set on the basis of the layout, in order to reduce the number of “hanging” lines and “empty” pages. Creating illustrations took more than a month. In this place, I should have given a link to the artist's portfolio, but he wished to remain anonymous. So just say “thank you” to him. You are really great to work with.

It’s pretty hard to edit your own text. After writing, it should take several days, and better weeks, otherwise the eye is “washed out” and does not see any obvious jambs. My good friend, a journalist Sofia Zilina, was involved in editing. It was caught just a roll of typos and extra commas. It's like checking essays at school, only more fun. It took three weeks to edit and correct errors. The lesson is to give the most verified text for editing and always read what is written out loud.

I did the layout myself. I didn’t meet any special difficulties and managed a total of ten hours, including fitting the pictures in size and arranging the inseparable gaps.

Publisher

Of all the offers I received, I chose the publisher at the request of the Prostobook and did not regret it. “On Demand” means that they print a book only when there is an order for it. If the circulation is large, then the price of one copy is higher than in the usual publishing house, but for small circulation the most. At the entrance to the publisher comes the layout of the book and payment for the publication of the author's copy, and at the exit we get the author's copy in the mailbox and the sale of the book in the online store with the payment of fees for each completed order. Prostobook works quickly and clearly, support promptly answers all questions, product quality at the level of typographic printing. In general, if someone has a need to publish a book in this way - I recommend.

My layout was moderated the first time in just a few hours. A couple of days later, the booklet with a printed book went on a journey. It would seem the most difficult thing behind. But then it took over ...

Post of Russia

It is a pity that the UFO has removed the blog "I resent." But I will still write an article about how the package went to me and what feelings I had when trying to get it. Now I will only say that by dividing the distance in a straight line from the point of departure to the point of destination for the time from the moment of dispatch to the moment of receipt, I counted 1.5 km / h. This is a little less than the speed of a grasshopper’s flight and inspires . But everything ended well, good brought evil to its knees and shot in the back of the head , I wrote a total of four complaints, made three phone calls and took my package.

Competition

Initially, I wanted to give books to those who will complete the New Year's quest , but, firstly, the collective consciousness does not have an email address, and secondly, nobody has completely guessed it.

Therefore, the book “IT AS IS” with the author's autograph will receive:

• the one who comes up with the best decoding of the abbreviation STARTUP (or S.......). The degree of "goodness" will be determined by the number of advantages and in my subjective opinion;
• the one who will guess what the telephone number and text of the SMS from the “Internet Device” means ;
• the one whose comment to this post will score the maximum number of pluses.

Please write your options in the comments. I will send the books to the winners by the Post of Russia as soon as the Post of Russia delivers the ordered circulation to me.

Thank you for scrolling down to read to the end. Now the most important thing. Promised link: Dmitry Lipkind IT AS IS to buy . Free download without SMS will be exactly one week, at the same time with the results of the competition.

Well, thanks to Habrayuzer, who pointed to typos, cheered and helped with advice. Sorry if you forgot someone.

Adrior , Atv , boh , d43 , Deeman , Denkol , DraX , ertaquo , grimich , jorikburlakov , ks_ks , Kumarunster , Lorien_Elf , MaGIc2laNTern , Malerok , micbsv , multik , nepx , obiwanus , Ramires , Saska , å , å , å , å , å , å , å , î , î , î , micbsv , multik , nepx , obiwanus , Ramies , Saska , å , å , î , î , î , î , micbsv , multik , nepx ; zenon

Thanks you!

UPD.
Forgot to mention, the book is distributed under the license CC-BY-NC-ND . If you like it, you can support the author by transferring money to one of the following accounts:

• WebMoney (WMZ) Z308373224874
• WebMoney (WMR) R316631716963
• Yandex Money 41001416912882

If you donate more than 600 rubles or more than $ 20, I will send you a book with an autograph as a gift. To do this, specify in the commentary on the translation of your email address. If you made a transfer for the specified amount and want to receive a book, but forgot to enter your email - contact me .

UPD2
The results of the competition are here . Download free here .