I'd better update this thing

It's been ages since I've been here and written a few ditties. The last few weeks have still been as busy as I've ever been over the last few months. The book finally went to print, so it's really really, really, finished this time (no really). There were many stages in the whole process, and I've always said that it's "almost" done. Here is a rough outline of how things went:

So, you've got an idea huh?
This is where everyone comes up with "a really great idea for *mumble* best seller book". Here is where you go on a hunt to a publisher and sell your soul in exchange for the privilege of seeing your name in print. I'm sure this is the case for 90% of new writers. The exception seems to be the techhie types because this part of the process was the easiest. Write a few pages about what the book is going to be about and voila, we had Addison Wesley chomping at the bit to sign us on. So a word of advice for would-be writers. Say it's a technical treatise before pulling the bait and switch with your romance and/or pornographic best seller.

You need to write stuff
Because nothing's for free, you need to write the stuff, unless you try and rip off some dead guy's work as your own who wasn't originally able to get his stuff published in the first place. This isn't too taxing as long as you spend about an hour a night, every night for about a year. That's a bit of a drag in itself but still a lot less work than an MBA (Marriage Breakup Association). So those in relationships can expect to escape with probably some bruising, but not the full monty of deciding custody rights for the offspring.


Reviews and critiques
Here's where people go through your stuff and draw big red marks through your work (in an electronic sense), but this is a pretty helpful process because you can get an idea if you've been writing complete twaddle; useful but unreadable ruminations; or it's a shakespeare and you might as well wait for the royalty cheques to come rolling on in. This part is where the pace starts heating up. You've got about 6 months till ink starts getting put in to dead trees and you go on your book signing, groupie road trip, so the pace starts heating up and the publisher scheduling machine gets in to gear.

There is a semi-formal process and a formal process. The first is where you get your mates and collegues to have a read and see what they think. The second part is where the reviewer is paid some coin and gets a book for their hard work. Ideally you need to get people who are as ruthless with their opinions as possible because they're the best guys who will make sure you don't look like a technical ignoramus in the final book. You need an open mind with these guys and they'll be a real asset to your review coterie. This is where the three of us busted our guts over the new years to get the corrected drafts to the publisher. It was a busy holiday but nice to be working somewhere like Queenstown and Kerikeri. Lovely backdrop.

Production

Production is about 6-8 weeks and is the last step before it goes to print. In our publisher's case, they had a separate department that did all the production work. They have a couple of people who go through your corrected drafts again and fix grammar, layout and spelling. This part is really hectic because the first parse takes a week per chapter (with you having to fix three chapters at once) with you correcting their word versions of the stuff. Then they send you the PDFs, which are as close to the final thing as you'd find. These are supposed to take a day to check through and fix things as necessary. Doing this with and a day job is pretty hectic. I think it's all worth it in the end?!

????
In here goes x weeks while it gets printed and distributed to the shops (both electronic and bricks and mortar). I get the feeling is probably 4 weeks if the release date on amazon is anything to go for; I'm sure there'll be delays, but only a couple of weeks.

Groupie road trips and rolling stone interviews
You've all seen Almost Famous. Well, I'm sure mine will be just the same, except a all around europe, and probably on bikes (see: Kraftwerk and their album Tour de France for Eurospiration). At 80 cents a copy to me, minus applicable taxes (probably doubly counted in the UK and the US) and being in such a niche market, I won't be topping the Fortune 500 rich list until at least the second print run. Be patient my parents told me!

Next blog update are my trips to Pakistan around the time new zealand used to be doing well at the world cup.