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Announcing ... iPhone in Action
May. 30th, 2008 01:42 pmI've been writing for a couple of months that I've been working on a book on the iPhone. I actually started it on or around March 31st, which means I'm 9 weeks into it (whew).
If there's one thing I've learned through my years of writing it's set a schedule and keep it when working professionally. My schedule for this book has been 15 pages a week, which is a modest amount, but an amount that gives me time to also write the code needed for the book and generally keep on top of everything else. At 9*15 I should be at 135 pages, and my current page count seems to be 140, so I'm happy with my current speed.
Today my publisher, Manning, announced the book through their early readers program. After some back and forth we've decided on the title iPhone in Action, and their page on the book is now here:
http://www.manning.com/callen/
They don't have the cover up yet, alas.
I have to say working with a truly professional company like Manning is a totally different experience from working with even a theoretically top-end game company. I'm used to game companies pretty much ignoring me until the manuscript is done, then handing it off to an editor, and I never hear from them again until I see a book at my local game store and have to query about where my money and author's copies are. Mongoose did me a little better than that last year, because I got to briefly see the manuscript in laid-out form before it went to press, but that was by far the exception.
Conversely, I've talked with folks over at Manning frequently via email and a couple of times via phone, and that web page marks the start of their marketing for the book, which is currently scheduled for February.
A game company actively marketing a book 9 months before its release and when they had only 40% of the manuscript in hand? Ha! It would be to laugh.
If there's one thing I've learned through my years of writing it's set a schedule and keep it when working professionally. My schedule for this book has been 15 pages a week, which is a modest amount, but an amount that gives me time to also write the code needed for the book and generally keep on top of everything else. At 9*15 I should be at 135 pages, and my current page count seems to be 140, so I'm happy with my current speed.
Today my publisher, Manning, announced the book through their early readers program. After some back and forth we've decided on the title iPhone in Action, and their page on the book is now here:
http://www.manning.com/callen/
They don't have the cover up yet, alas.
I have to say working with a truly professional company like Manning is a totally different experience from working with even a theoretically top-end game company. I'm used to game companies pretty much ignoring me until the manuscript is done, then handing it off to an editor, and I never hear from them again until I see a book at my local game store and have to query about where my money and author's copies are. Mongoose did me a little better than that last year, because I got to briefly see the manuscript in laid-out form before it went to press, but that was by far the exception.
Conversely, I've talked with folks over at Manning frequently via email and a couple of times via phone, and that web page marks the start of their marketing for the book, which is currently scheduled for February.
A game company actively marketing a book 9 months before its release and when they had only 40% of the manuscript in hand? Ha! It would be to laugh.