Quick Book Update

Couple quick things while I have a minute...

• Just turned in Chapter 10 (of 16) of the Rails book. Still mostly on schedule for a turn in on October 26, not quite sure what that implies for a print date

• As I write this, the wxPython book is at 11 thousand and change on Amazon, the highest I've seen in months, which is probably a fluke. Weirdly Amazon says it's the #15 book on "Website Architecture & Usability", which would be great if it was, you know, actually about website architecture usability...

• New article up on the Pathfinder blog. This one is about Rails RJS templates and how to test them. It's partially a book preview, but really only an overlap of subject mat

There's more, but I'll get it when I have a chance.

Book Update

Here's a couple notes on the current status of the Rails book and life in general.

• The Rails book is presently just about 30% done -- first payment triggered (yay!). I'm reasonably happy about it so far, though definitely too close to it at the moment to have a clear sense of its quality. I do like the way the test integration is working out -- it seems to help my descriptions of functionality to have the tests there.



• The book is now available for preorder on Amazon. Here's the 10 print "hello" affiliate link, which will conveniently linger in the sidebar of this blog forever.



• I don't think I ever mentioned this, but the last results I got on the wxPython book (for Q1 2007), showed that sales were starting to slump. Although the data was weird -- US sales were down to about 1/3 of the previous quarter, and US returns were way up, such that net sales were almost zero. At the same time, international sales were way up, with the total affect being a drop to about 1/2 or slightly less from the previous quarter. We've now passed the 6700 mark in total sales.



• Apple fanboy stuff: One of the nice features of my new job is that my work computer is now a MacBook Pro. Very nice machine, well designed, very fast. Battery life is decent. Lots of the little design details you've come to expect -- I particularly like the magnetic power cord. Now if only I could use the thing without wearing oven mitts, I think I'd be in business.

Fame and Fortune 2

To continue on the fame and fortune theme, I just got the first part of the statement wrapping up the first year of the wxPython book. (Since the book came out at the end of March, we got a first quarter statement which covered the first 10 days of the release). Anyway, I'm pleased. The fourth quarter statement was only about 5% down from the third quarter (I don't have the exact numbers). This is rather amazing to me, since the Jython book dropped about 50% from quarter to quarter over its first year. I think, but am not 100% sure, that the wx book has now outsold the Jython book. If it hasn't now, it will next quarter.

Which makes this a good place to again thank all the people who have bought the book, read the book, and said nice things about the book. It's all appreciated.

Playing in the Sandbox

This message showed up in the Manning Sandbox forum for wxPython In Action.  After saying some nice things about the book, the poster has some suggestions:

I would love to see an advanced volume covering topics such as XRC, using XML to define a screen layout; creating custom widgets...  internationalization, and a full chapter or more expanding on chapter 5 "Creating your blueprint." I find that... program organization is most important yet little seems to be written about it, for any programming language.... A book that illustrates solutions to design problems using patterns, Python, and wxPython will help many people...

Thanks for the kind words.  I'm thrilled that you found the book helpful.

There are about three or four things that I regret not being able to include in the book.  XRC is definitely on that list -- I think that XML or other GUI description languages are going to be increasingly important.  (Also on the list: multimedia and how to distribute your finished program).

These all got pushed out of the book over space considerations.  We were something like 75 pages over budget as it was.  Owing to some communication issues, nobody realized that we were that far over our page count until the pages were already written, and while it wasn't a problem to get them approved, it did mean that we didn't push forward into other topics.

There are no current plans for a second book, although it's not out of the question that we'd fill a gap or two with an article on line somewhere.  (To be clear, there are no current plans for that, either).  Frankly, sales are not high enough for a publisher to seek us out for a second book at this point, especially since an advanced book would, almost by definition, sell fewer copies than the original.  That's not a knock on the sales, which seem to be roughly in line with publisher expectations, just a comment on the size of the potential market.

As for a patterns/program organization book for Python, I'd love to write one.  For one thing, it'd give me a chance to rant at length about the finer points of architecture and class structure.  I've been known to have an opinion or two on the topic.  The main problem would be selling it.  My sense is that it's rather hard to sell a general-topic programming book compared to one that's tied to a specific tool or product.  This would especially be true for a relatively small market like Python. 

Still, that's what blogs are for, so hopefully I'll be able to get some interesting thoughts on those lines here.

Now with sound

Robin Dunn and I were interviewed for Ron Stevens' excellent Python 411 podcast -- you can download and listen to the .mp3 file here. It's about 45 minutes long, which should mean that Ron used nearly all of the interview. Hope you like it. It was a lot of fun to do. Thanks again to Ron for having us on, and also for the very nice review of the book he wrote on Slashdot. Haven't listened to the podcast myself yet, so I hope I don't sound like a gibbering idiot.

wxWorld

I'm pleased to be able to link to a new article: Build cross-platform GUIs using wxWidgets available on the IBM developerWorks site. The original title was "wxWorld", and it's a quick look at wxPython, the wxWidgets toolkit, and some of the other wxWidgets language bindings. I had some fun digging through the different language tools trying to create short wx programs in each. Hope you like it.

Occasionally Asked Questions

I wouldn't say it happens often, but I do sometimes get asked some questions about being a technical author. Seemed like a good place to start.

For a long time, the most common question was Did you pick the animal on the cover of the Jython book? The answer is no. The cover animals are picked by the O'Reilly production team, and the mechanism they use for assigning animals to books is somewhat mystical. I think we could have rejected it had we had a really strong reason (I know of at least one other book that has). For the wxPython book, Manning offered us a selection of a few different art figures, and we also picked the color of the spine.

The other most common question is something like Can you make a living at this? or more generally, how publishing finances work. I'm not a complete expert, but I suspect my experiences generalize. Tech books are generally sold on the basis of a proposal (in contrast to fiction novels from new authors, which are usually not sold until the book is complete). Publishers generally describe their proposal formats on their websites -- I can't talk as much about that part of the process because I came in after the proposal phase in both cases.

The contract specifies payment as an advance and a royalty rate. The advance is paid up front in stages as the book is completed. There's room for negotiation on this, but it's typically something like 1/3 on signing, 1/3 at the halfway point, and 1/3 when the final manuscript is approved. My sense is that newbie authors can expect an advance in the mid to high four digit range. The royalty rate the amount of each books sale that goes to the author (the amount is based on what the publisher is paid by the store, not on the cover price of the book). However, the amount of the advance is subtracted from the royalties -- the author does not see additional payment until the total royalty amount exceeds the initial advance. At this point, the book is said to have "earned out". In case you are wondering, the author does not have to return the advance if the book never earns out -- the advance is a gamble by the publisher. A typical royalty rate is about 10%, but some publishers (notably Pragmatic) offer more. If there is more than one author, than the authors decide how the money will be split among them, and that split is also enshrined in the contract.

Oh, and if you have an agent, then the agent typically takes %15 percent off the top. Typically, they earn it, too, either by getting the contract in the first place, or by dealing with the publisher when you don't want to.

Tim O'Reilly said on his blog some time ago that the typical O'Reilly book earns about $15,000 for it's author. In my case, however, we earned less than that, since the Jython book has yet to earn out. In fact, it will probably never earn out -- in fact, based on the figures O'Reilly gave in his post, it's probably among the lowest selling O'Reilly books ever (at around 6000 copies or so), so I've got that going for me. I haven't gotten sales figures on the wxPython book yet, but it's Amazon ranking has been pretty good, so I'm hopeful.

I've just started writing some articles for sites like IBM developer works, which is more lucrative on a per-word basis, but I'm not planning on quitting my day job anytime soon.

That'll do for now. As I think of some other questions of interest, I'll post them here.