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Tools & Surprises For a Tech Book Author?

Posted by kdawson on from the chisel-and-clay-tablet dept.

Fubari writes "I have questions for those of you who have written books: what writing tools have you found helpful? I want to start my book off right (so I'm pretty sure I don't want to write it in MS Word). What has and has not worked well for you? So far I have thought of needs like chapter/section management, easy references to figures (charts, diagrams, source code), version control (check in/check out parts like chapters, figures, etc.), and index generation. I would also welcome advice about what I don't know enough to ask about. Did you encounter any surprises that you wish you had known about back when you started out?"

9 of 325 comments (clear)

  1. Publishers provide this information by Noodles · · Score: 5, Informative

    Check out the O'Reilly website:

    http://oreilly.com/oreilly/author/ch02.html#tools

  2. If you have a publisher, ask them. by Web-o-matic · · Score: 5, Informative

    If you have a publisher already lined up, ask them what they want. Most publishers already have copy editing / print production processes in place, and are very specific about what they want from authors (e.g. what formats for images and graphics, templates for your chapters (often Word), and a style guide for writing, how figures should be referenced, etc. You can then use whatever tools you want, provided they deliver what the publisher wants.

    If you don't have a publisher lined up, try and keep your materials in generic and easy-to-changes formats, so you can pour them into whatever format your publisher wants.

    Remember, production is all about the publisher - it is not about you.

    If you are self publishing, there are lots of web-based self-publishing companies - and they too describe what you need to feed them.

    1. Re:If you have a publisher, ask them. by clintp · · Score: 5, Informative

      I've written (and edited) tech books for major publishers (SAMS, Addison/Wesley, Pearson). I have to agree with the parent: it's not your call.

      While you can write your book in anything you want be prepared to use THEIR tools for going back-and-forth with their copy editors, tech editors, and typesetters.

      If you're comfortable in vi and using markup, that's great. However, don't be surprised when a publisher insists you use a Microsoft Word template and turn on document revision control for your chapter submissions. You may wind up taking your beautiful markup and mashing it into Word before sending it. Your proofs may come back as really awful Adobe Acrobat PDF files that make Foxit crash. Tough. Suck it up.

      Producing ideas and words is your problem. Figuring out how to pass them between multiple people/departments/companies to get a book printed is theirs.

      --
      Get off my lawn.
    2. Re:If you have a publisher, ask them. by happyemoticon · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You're also getting at something important: the process of copy editing/production is completely separate from actual writing. While it's entirely possible to just pull up a vi/emacs and write straight Docbook or LaTeX - and I've done it for some documents - I find it tends to have a chilling effect on both my creativity and my attention to content detail if I'm trying to think about content and presentation/formatting at the same time.

      It's the same reason that brainstorming should be a totally separate process from welding your fleshed-out thoughts into professional writing. If you try and force your thoughts to be concise and professional too quickly - unless it's something you're really good at - usually you'll be filtering yourself too much to produce ANYTHING good. If you're thinking about formatting when you're editing the content, your mind is trying to do too much at once and so it does both things badly. Try to do all three at once and you'll probably be horrible at all three. Of course, there are jobs which require you to integrate several processes into one, but integration is itself a wholly separate task, and, again, it should be dealt with separately from each constituent process.

      When I am responsible for the whole thing, from beginning to end, I generally only do one activity (writing a rough draft, editing the draft, and finally formatting it) on any given day, as much as time allows. And if I don't have that luxury, I run around the block or lift weights between tasks to clear my head. This singlemindedness might just be my personal quirks, but I have a job where I wear about fifteen different hats and am constantly pulled in different directions - the kind of job where "strong multitasker" would be in the requirements - and I manage it by organizing my deadlines, planning, and doing one thing at a time. Since I don't believe in multitasking (at least as most people do it - doing ten things in parallel and accomplishing little in any one area), I can't decide if this makes me a great multitasker or a horrible multitasker, but I seem to be doing alright.

  3. My own experiences writing a tech book by bbutton · · Score: 5, Informative

    I'd have to say that there were a few surprises I learned along the way :)

    First, expect it to be another full-time job. It takes up as much time as you have, and even more, and forget about having a personal life while you're writing it. The people I know who've done the best job writing a tech book are those who are independent consultants who have non-billable time or employees where their employer supports their writing a book. The extra time each of those kind of people can get to write during working hours is a huge help.

    As far as using Word goes, it works well enough for this stuff. Expect to use a separate file for each chapter. I used a subversion repository to check everything into and out of, just to be safe.

    Make writing a habit. Set a production schedule and stick to it -- its too easy to take a day off, which then turns into two days, into a week, and then just gets worse and worse. Set out a plan, both long term and short term, track your progress, update the plan as you go, and keep writing.

    Finally, using a continuing example throughout the book might be nice for readers, to give them a continuing context, but it greatly increases the risk of a lot of rework on your part if you change your mind about something halfway through writing. You'll have to go back and re-edit everything that depends on the decision you changed. It does make it nice for the reader but much harder for you.

    Good luck! Its a great learning experience, whether you finish the book or not.

    -- bab

  4. Just remember to.. by contra_mundi · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Save often!

  5. OO works just fine by nikolag · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I have written one book (over 750 pages), entirely in OpenOffice.

    I found it very well equipped for all the tasks I needed, plus export to PDF worked like charm. As a metter of fact it was also edited in OO, and pdf was sent straight to printing.

    It can make index, table of contents, and some other things You will find usable. For example I linked over 200 images in text and not once did OO lose track of size, position or other thing in entire book.

    On the other hand, I could not hold the document in MS Word to have same number of pages on several computers, it just re-numerated pages each time differently, moved images and did other nasty things, especially after thing got bigger (over 80 pages).

    Besides LaTeX, I really can't think of something better than OpenOffice.

    --
    Doing a good job is like spilling coffee on a dark suit, you feel warm all over, but nobody notices.
  6. Advice from an Editor and Writer by paddbear · · Score: 5, Informative

    I've worked for a number of publishers, such as O'Reilly, QUE, Dummies, as both an author and editor.

    Don't use Framemaker, InDesign, Pagemaker, LaTex, or any esoteric format UNLESS THE PUBLISHER TELLS YOU.

    Every place I worked for/at took WORD (MAC or Windows). They also gave you a DOT (template) to use.

    As for other tools, I like Zotero instead of EndNote.

    Bottom line is your publisher will TELL you what to use. If you don't have a publisher yet, Word is your best choice to start with. O'Reilly has a good DOT available to use if you don't want to roll your own.

    Oh--and no matter what people tell you, OO is not Word to the publishers.

  7. The most important thing: who to work with? by James+Youngman · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I wish I'd known I had chosen the wrong publisher.

    I published a book with SAMS (an imprint of Macmillan Computer Publishing, which is not related to the British publisher called Macmillan). I was working with some half a dozen other authors and only needed to complete a couple of chapters (the page production rate that Que require from authors is so huge that I'm sure I could not have achieved that as a sole author, at least not if I wanted to take the time to check the copy I was submitting).

    The basic problem was that MCP's editors (I guess copy editors initially) loaded the text I gave them into Microsoft Word (I assume, I can't remember if they confirmed this). It immediately "corrected" all the punctuation. Since the book was about Unix, there was an abundance of single and double quotes, backticks, and so forth. They all got totally screwed up. On proof reading, I spotted these, fixed them and sent the corrected text back. Then of course they loaded the text into Word again and broke everything a second time.

    The whole experience was frustrating and I was left with an author credit on a portion of a book that was riddled with stupid errors. I am embarrassed to have been associated with such a farce of an attempt at a technical book. I will never again work with any publisher in that group.

    I should disclose that following publication, I had other difficulties with MCP in that they published the text a second time in another book under their Que imprint, without consulting me or paying me. They rectified that when I complained, though I didn't know to do so until I noticed my text in a book I browsed in a bookshop. So there is some subsequent bad feeling on my part, so take it as read that you're not getting a dispassionate report here. Mind you, the book was published ten years ago this year, so I've calmed down a bit now.

    The list of publishers I'd consider collaborating with now is much, much shorter - only about four publishers (plus any others I don't know about - and I'm sure there are many - who will accept camera-ready copy).