We are writing a technical book
It so happened that over the past five years I, to a varying degree, in goodwill and not always goodwill, participated in the creation of almost a dozen technical books. In the light of the release of the last book in collaboration with the ASP.NET MVC Framework , XaocCPS , I was asked to describe the experience of creating books from beginning to end. I described the process in this post.
Why do I use the word “creation” rather than “writing” when talking about books? The fact is that writing a book is only part of a big job, the result of which is a small paper brick on the shelf of a bookstore. The manuscript needs to be written, decorated, folded, corrected, decorated, and then published. Let's talk about each of these stages.
The very first step is to understand why you want to write a book. Perhaps this is the most important step, because it is not as difficult to start writing as to continue and bring the matter to the result. Therefore, you must immediately understand the motivation and assure yourself that the motivation will not run out in the process.
I will note right away that making money on technical literature is difficult - the author receives a percentage of the selling price of a publishing house (from 5 to 15% usually) from the sold copies, therefore, in order for the money to be paid off, the sales should be very good, and the book either expensive or released in large quantities. In fact, a good prerequisite for the monetization of the book is its uniqueness and the ability to spread - either the name of the author or the topic should be sought after by a wide audience.
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If, however, to conduct a simple estimated calculation for a certain average situation, a circulation of 2 thousand copies and the cost of a book is 300 rubles, it turns out with a copyright fee of 10%:
2,000 x 300 x 10% = 60,000 rubles.
Given that it takes 2-3 months to write a book in an amicable way for the author’s life, investing this time in a book can be commercially unprofitable.
Another motivation may be fame and, possibly, in the future, additional opportunities for career development. In this case, it is worthwhile to think about making the book as accessible as possible for the very audience among whom you want to get fame.
You can come up with different motivating factors like the mother-in-law standing above the soul and demanding that your son-in-law write a book or grandparents who dream of seeing a writer in their grandson or granddaughter, but it is important to understand whether this motivation is enough to bring the draft project to the final. Believe me, it's much more offensive not to finish the book than to not start it.
For my part, anticipating questions, I will answer that for me working on books is an opportunity to look at this or that topic from another point of view, to practice the skill of “simplifying the complicated” and the opportunity to free my head from the widespread desire to share with the world information about technologies, which I myself really like.
Before you start writing a book, you need to prepare several important materials that will be needed when searching for a publisher and, in fact, will be invaluable in the creation of a manuscript:
Before you begin work on the manuscript, you should decide on the publisher. Of course, you can publish a book at your own expense if your goal is notoriety, but the publisher has a significant advantage, in addition to the layout, proofreading, printing and distribution, namely the assessment of the "vitality" of your idea.
Publishers are watching the market and the needs of the audience, and if you offer a deliberately unpopular topic, you will be offered to correct it or justify why it may become popular. In this communication, you can get valuable feedback and clarify your own plans for the book.
After you have “sold” the idea to the publisher, you enter into a contract that specifies the deadlines for creating the manuscript, describes the approximate volume and content, and also specifies the author's fee. At this stage, the materials created in the previous step in the preparation of the “sale” of ideas to the publisher will be used.
The publisher will provide the author with guidance on the design of the manuscript in the form of documents describing the design of the text, the preparation of illustrations and general recommendations on the text and the placement of elements in it. Particularly caring publishers will provide a sample document with styles that the author can use in a text editor and see a manuscript view that is close to the final result.
In order to save time, it is advisable to apply appropriate styles as soon as a manuscript is written, which allows evaluating a purely aesthetic display of the manuscript.
The approaches to writing a manuscript can be different and depend on the author. If more than one person is working on a book, then “pair programming” may be a good idea - work on each of the chapters in turn. One of the authors writes the manuscript of the chapter, the second checks, suggests revisions, appends his parts and iteratively brings the manuscript to readiness.
After the manuscript is ready, a good idea is to put it off for some long time, then to go over the text with a fresh look. During the "otlezhivaniya" manuscript, you can turn away a little and look at the manuscript as if it was written by another person. The main thing here is to overcome the desire to rewrite everything anew (although, sometimes it can be the right decision), because it is common for authors to find insurmountable shortcomings in their texts.
Another good idea is to show the manuscript to the expert on the topic being described and to receive advice and comments from him on the necessary revisions. However, in practice it is very difficult to get another person to read a large amount of text and get comments from him, so it’s more efficient to share large finished blocks - one or several chapters. However, it should be remembered that an external expert is an external expert and you should not offer him to comment on the dirty draft, out of respect for the person who agreed to help, should show the manuscript already prepared from the point of view of the author.
If you need expert advice to create a manuscript of a chapter, you can provide a detailed 1-2 page plan in which to describe the topics covered, examples that will be used and the main ideas proposed in the text.
In the manuscript, even a very accurate and consistent author can have annoying errors: from trivial typos to mismatching of times and incorrect use of terms. Correct such flaws allows the proofreader, which reads the text and offers edits to the author. In our fast age of iterations on proofreading, there is rarely more than one — the corrector sends a file with comments, and the author accepts or does not accept these edits.
In cases where the corrector asks to rewrite the sentence or paragraph, you should carefully consider the quality of the received text, since it is likely that the corrector will not recheck these corrections, relying on the literacy and care of the author.
In the course of proofreading, a situation may arise that in different chapters of the book the same terms are used differently or the same ideas are controversially described. In this case, the compilation of a small glossary containing the basic terms used in the text, as well as the vision of the basic ideas, can help.
The manuscript is written, everything is ready and the last step remains - to issue the cover of the book and here the author needs to put a lot of effort into influencing what he gets on this very cover. Therefore, you need to pre-negotiate the process of coordinating the design of the cover.
The book came out, you can buy it in the store - here it is the joy of the author. It remains to provide the publisher with bank account details and periodically receive fees. In order to avoid problems with tax it is necessary to clarify whether the publishing company is a tax agent.
Everything, the book is ready and you can enjoy life. There will be questions - write comments.
Why do I use the word “creation” rather than “writing” when talking about books? The fact is that writing a book is only part of a big job, the result of which is a small paper brick on the shelf of a bookstore. The manuscript needs to be written, decorated, folded, corrected, decorated, and then published. Let's talk about each of these stages.
We decide to write a book
The very first step is to understand why you want to write a book. Perhaps this is the most important step, because it is not as difficult to start writing as to continue and bring the matter to the result. Therefore, you must immediately understand the motivation and assure yourself that the motivation will not run out in the process.
I will note right away that making money on technical literature is difficult - the author receives a percentage of the selling price of a publishing house (from 5 to 15% usually) from the sold copies, therefore, in order for the money to be paid off, the sales should be very good, and the book either expensive or released in large quantities. In fact, a good prerequisite for the monetization of the book is its uniqueness and the ability to spread - either the name of the author or the topic should be sought after by a wide audience.
')
If, however, to conduct a simple estimated calculation for a certain average situation, a circulation of 2 thousand copies and the cost of a book is 300 rubles, it turns out with a copyright fee of 10%:
2,000 x 300 x 10% = 60,000 rubles.
Given that it takes 2-3 months to write a book in an amicable way for the author’s life, investing this time in a book can be commercially unprofitable.
Another motivation may be fame and, possibly, in the future, additional opportunities for career development. In this case, it is worthwhile to think about making the book as accessible as possible for the very audience among whom you want to get fame.
You can come up with different motivating factors like the mother-in-law standing above the soul and demanding that your son-in-law write a book or grandparents who dream of seeing a writer in their grandson or granddaughter, but it is important to understand whether this motivation is enough to bring the draft project to the final. Believe me, it's much more offensive not to finish the book than to not start it.
For my part, anticipating questions, I will answer that for me working on books is an opportunity to look at this or that topic from another point of view, to practice the skill of “simplifying the complicated” and the opportunity to free my head from the widespread desire to share with the world information about technologies, which I myself really like.
Determine the topic
Before you start writing a book, you need to prepare several important materials that will be needed when searching for a publisher and, in fact, will be invaluable in the creation of a manuscript:
- Confirmation of the relevance of the topic is a brief description of the current situation in the market and the significance of the topic being opened for several paragraphs. Often ideas to write a book were closed at the stage of creating this particular artifact, because creating a previously unclaimed book does not make sense. However, if the topic is not in demand now, it may become relevant in the future, so you should carefully consider the research of the situation.
- A brief description of the content and portrait of the reader of the book on 1-2 pages - in a free style, the described description of what topics will be covered in the book, what technologies are covered and what ideas are presented, what book the audience is directed to and what tasks it solves. Very good in this description to show the profile of the potential reader and the size of the audience, which the book may be interesting. This will help you to clearly keep in mind the image of the person for whom you are writing a book, and the publisher will be able to estimate how much such a project will be beneficial.
- Content in the table of contents format - a list of chapters of the book, with a brief description of each chapter and the estimated amount of text. Having a ready and, most importantly, thoughtful structure, it will be easier for you to write a manuscript, knowing the sequence of presentation there, and the publisher will be able to roughly estimate the volume of the manuscript and decide on the format of the book.
- Brief biography of the author - this text is needed by the publisher to understand how you have experience in the field in which you want to write a book, and this text will be used in the book to tell the reader about you. It is important in this text to explain why the book of your authorship on this topic is useful to read.
- Description of attached materials - if materials with demonstrations are attached to the book, you should describe in advance what you would like to distribute among these materials and decide whether a CD is needed for the book or whether you need to create a website to keep the materials up to date.
We are looking for a publisher
Before you begin work on the manuscript, you should decide on the publisher. Of course, you can publish a book at your own expense if your goal is notoriety, but the publisher has a significant advantage, in addition to the layout, proofreading, printing and distribution, namely the assessment of the "vitality" of your idea.
Publishers are watching the market and the needs of the audience, and if you offer a deliberately unpopular topic, you will be offered to correct it or justify why it may become popular. In this communication, you can get valuable feedback and clarify your own plans for the book.
After you have “sold” the idea to the publisher, you enter into a contract that specifies the deadlines for creating the manuscript, describes the approximate volume and content, and also specifies the author's fee. At this stage, the materials created in the previous step in the preparation of the “sale” of ideas to the publisher will be used.
We write the manuscript
The publisher will provide the author with guidance on the design of the manuscript in the form of documents describing the design of the text, the preparation of illustrations and general recommendations on the text and the placement of elements in it. Particularly caring publishers will provide a sample document with styles that the author can use in a text editor and see a manuscript view that is close to the final result.
In order to save time, it is advisable to apply appropriate styles as soon as a manuscript is written, which allows evaluating a purely aesthetic display of the manuscript.
The approaches to writing a manuscript can be different and depend on the author. If more than one person is working on a book, then “pair programming” may be a good idea - work on each of the chapters in turn. One of the authors writes the manuscript of the chapter, the second checks, suggests revisions, appends his parts and iteratively brings the manuscript to readiness.
After the manuscript is ready, a good idea is to put it off for some long time, then to go over the text with a fresh look. During the "otlezhivaniya" manuscript, you can turn away a little and look at the manuscript as if it was written by another person. The main thing here is to overcome the desire to rewrite everything anew (although, sometimes it can be the right decision), because it is common for authors to find insurmountable shortcomings in their texts.
Another good idea is to show the manuscript to the expert on the topic being described and to receive advice and comments from him on the necessary revisions. However, in practice it is very difficult to get another person to read a large amount of text and get comments from him, so it’s more efficient to share large finished blocks - one or several chapters. However, it should be remembered that an external expert is an external expert and you should not offer him to comment on the dirty draft, out of respect for the person who agreed to help, should show the manuscript already prepared from the point of view of the author.
If you need expert advice to create a manuscript of a chapter, you can provide a detailed 1-2 page plan in which to describe the topics covered, examples that will be used and the main ideas proposed in the text.
Rule errors and typos
In the manuscript, even a very accurate and consistent author can have annoying errors: from trivial typos to mismatching of times and incorrect use of terms. Correct such flaws allows the proofreader, which reads the text and offers edits to the author. In our fast age of iterations on proofreading, there is rarely more than one — the corrector sends a file with comments, and the author accepts or does not accept these edits.
In cases where the corrector asks to rewrite the sentence or paragraph, you should carefully consider the quality of the received text, since it is likely that the corrector will not recheck these corrections, relying on the literacy and care of the author.
In the course of proofreading, a situation may arise that in different chapters of the book the same terms are used differently or the same ideas are controversially described. In this case, the compilation of a small glossary containing the basic terms used in the text, as well as the vision of the basic ideas, can help.
We make a cover
The manuscript is written, everything is ready and the last step remains - to issue the cover of the book and here the author needs to put a lot of effort into influencing what he gets on this very cover. Therefore, you need to pre-negotiate the process of coordinating the design of the cover.
Enjoy the product
The book came out, you can buy it in the store - here it is the joy of the author. It remains to provide the publisher with bank account details and periodically receive fees. In order to avoid problems with tax it is necessary to clarify whether the publishing company is a tax agent.
Everything, the book is ready and you can enjoy life. There will be questions - write comments.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/99186/
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