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February 05, 2004
Schedule
One of the questions I often get about book writing is how long it takes. This cookbook is a little atypical, since it's very modular-- each recipe stands more-or-less on its own, so it's possible to write several recipes in parallel. Which, as it turns out, is exactly what we're going to do. Devin, Missy, and I have committed to average five recipes per person per week, giving us an aggregate total of 15/week. Right now there are about 240 recipes, so figuring in a 10% fudge factor means that we need about 18 weeks. So, the schedule we agreed to with O'Reilly calls for us to turn in two complete chaptes on 16 February, followed by turning in 50% of the manuscript (and that's by chapter, not by recipe-- no half-chapters allowed!) on 12 April. Our 100% complete date is 6/28.
The money question: when does the book get on the shelf? Not until about 12 October. Why the delay? Well, O'Reilly allows for about four weeks of technical review (and if you're interested in being a tech reviewer, contact our editor at rallen AT rallenhome DOT com). The book should go to production about 26 July, and the entire time between then and October is required to design the cover; index, print, bind, and ship the books, and get them into the distribution system. You'd think that a smaller, more nimble publisher like O'Reilly would have a time advantage over behemoths like MS Press, but they don't. You might also think that technological advances would have shortened this time since the mid-1990s-- but they haven't, at least not so far as I can tell.
Posted by Paul at February 5, 2004 12:01 PM