Message-ID: <20040716035214.23814.qmail@plover.com> To: mjd-book@plover.com Subject: "Higher Order Perl" production schedule Organization: Plover Systems Date: Thu, 15 Jul 2004 23:52:14 -0400 From: Mark Jason Dominus If you forgot what this list is about, or you don't know why you're getting this message, please see http://perl.plover.com/book/ To unsubscribe, send a blank message to mjd-book-unsubscribe@plover.com. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Everything about this book seems to take longer than expected. I thought the delays would be over once I got my delaying self out of the process. Nope! I sent in the manuscript on 17 May and I just got the production schedule yesterday. Here's what Troy Lilly, the project manager, says will happen: COPYEDITING * The book is currently being copyedited. We expect the copyediting to be finished by tomorrow, 16 July. * Troy will review the copy edits and then send them to me for my review on 20 July. (That will be my seventh wedding anniversary. Whee!) * I answer the copyeditor's questions and un-correct anything that needs un-correcting, by 12 August. It might be a little later, since I will be at OSCON briefly during this time. I think I'm also allowed to make minor insertions and deletions in this stage. My recollection is that Richard Camp, my editor's assistant, told me that it was OK to add paragraphs but not sections. That suits me fine. ILLUSTRATIONS * Meanwhile, my awful ASCII-art diagrams, and some others I doodled on the back of napkins, are being redrawn by professional illustrators. * Troy will deliver these to me around 12 August. Then I get to review them and return them around 19 August. COMPOSITION * After I return the reviewed, copy-edited manuscript, it goes to the compositor for typesetting. The compositor will apparently work from my HTML files and turn them into LaTeX. Eventually I will get possession of the LaTeX files; maybe I will make them available on my web site. (But only if I can figure out how to get LaTeX to generate something other than Computer Modern fonts. Last week Richard asked me if there was anything I wanted to specify about the interior design, and the only thing I had to say was "No Computer Modern". The little curvy foot on the capital 'R' makes me gag whenever I look at it.) * The publisher folks will decide on an internal layout and design. The compositor will make some sample pages for us all to admire. * Around 13 September, I get the complete page proofs, which are the pages laid out and composed pretty much as they will be in the final product. I go over them, check them, and return them by 1 October. INDEXING * The freelance indexer gets the page proofs at the same time and makes an index. She also merges in the index requests I will supply. * Late in the process, I get the index to check over. PROOFREADING * The page proofs also go to a proofreader, who makes sure that the manuscript was properly turned into proofs, including all the copy edits. * Troy gets the marked page proofs back from me, from Tim (the editor) and Richard, from the proofreader, and from the indexer, and collates them into a master copy. The master copy is sent back to the compositor, who makes a new set. Troy then checks these to make sure that all the corrections were properly incorporated. PRINTING AND MANUFACTURING * Around 22 October, the final proofs are sent to the printer. Printing and binding takes about four weeks, so the books will be ready for buying around 22 November. I get a copy a week earlier than that. Then I have a big party. BUYING * Troy says "we expect books will be in our warehouse and available to buyers on 11/22/04." I assume that by "buyers" he means book distributors, not ordinary slobs like you or me. So it will be some time after that that the book actually appears in stores. But maybe it will be available for web ordering around then. In other news, the Morgan Kaufmann folks asked me to write up the preface. I had been planning this for a long time, and I had written a lot of stuff that I thought would go in somewhere, but I ended up not using most of it. The preface is actually about 1640 words, including the acknowledgements section. I have about 9000 words of stuff written that I thought might make it in that didn't. If you're interested in reading the preface, it's at [ Sorry, advance chapters are available only to mailing list subscribers. Send mail to mjd-book-subscribe@plover.com to subscribe. ] Some of the draft stuff is at [ Omitted - MJD ] if you care to see it. Some of it is only peripherally related to the book. For example, there are about four half-finished articles in there about Lisp, at least one of which is about how screwed up the Lisp user community is. Some of it does relate to Perl, though, and I never know what people will find interesting. And now the usual reminders: a. Please do not distribute these URLs. They are for you mailing list folks only. If people want to see these drafts and stuff, please encourage them to join this mailing list. To subscribe, send email to mjd-book-subscribe@plover.com or visit the subscription form at http://perl.plover.com/book/#mlist People who subscribe will receive an automatic message directing them to whatever secret goodies are presently available. b. Do not distribute the documents either. I might some day want to write a real article about the failure of the internet Lisp user community, and I don't want them to see me coming. (The real reason is that I harbor a ridiculous fantasy that if I hit them with all my carefully researched observations at once, they will be shocked into changing their ways, but if they get wind of it in advance, they wil have time to build up their mental defenses. They are amazingly defensive.) Also, the preface has the acknowledgements section in it, and there's a real chance that I will remember to thank someone else between now and September that I forgot to mention in the draft. It would be a real shame if there were a draft floating around that failed to thank Crapulenza Squamuglia for her contributions, and it would bother me a lot. Thanks to everyone for your interest. I'll try to send another message around the time I return the copy edits.