| Re: IDL books for beginners [message #74568 is a reply to message #74566] |
Tue, 25 January 2011 10:58   |
David Fanning
Messages: 11724
Registered: August 2001
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Senior Member |
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Paul van Delst writes:
> Is your new book available for pre-order? Tell your wife I'm quite willing to plonk down the $$ now and wait for it's
> publication. :o)
What!? I assumed you were an IDL-8-ophile. :-)
> FWIW, there are a couple of technical bookstores I subscribe to[*] that do this sort of thing as part of their regular
> business. I.e. they release "beta" or "early access" electronic copies and then you re-download as new versions arrive
> (e.g. final "printing", or typo-corrections, etc).
>
> Are you going to release an electronic version?
As I have been telling my credit card company (to deaf
ears!) I am *very* close to having a book available for
pre-order. I am doing what I hope is the penultimate
read through the entire book now, searching for those
ever illusive typos and trying to make the style and
tone consistent throughout.
When I am finished, I am going to turn off the phone,
disconnect from the Internet, and take 3-4 days to
write an index. If this is not done all at once, in
a concerted effort, the index is a dog's dish. :-(
If the cover art is finished by then (I expect it to
be), I will produce a number of books, from different
printers, to judge printer quality. I'll sell these
as pre-orders. I'm also going to make the book available
to a few select people who's opinion I value and/or who's
proofreading skills are extraordinary. (My wife falls into
the latter category.) The book will be available in
several electronic formats (if I can figure out how to
avoid getting the hundreds of figures completely mashed).
I've put it on my Kindle, and it looks great!
Then, I'll make the final round of corrections, read the
whole mess one more time, fixing bad page breaks as I go,
and toss the damn thing out onto the street, hoping I
NEVER have to read it again!
You know a book is "finished" when you really can't stand to
look at it any more. :-)
Anyway, I'm sure this newsgroup will be the first to know
about any developments. It will not, however, be available
for free. :-)
I don't know how much the book will cost yet, because I am
just in the process of talking to printers. It will be produced
entirely in color and printed digitally. I was talking to my son,
who just got an MBA degree, about pricing the book. I told him
I had about $50K of my time into it, and... He stopped me cold.
"Dad, how much it cost you to produce has NOTHING to do with
how you price the book. You price it according to what you can
sell it for." I just looked at him in dismay. I'm afraid I am
going to be making about five cents on the dollar. :-(
Cheers,
David
--
David Fanning, Ph.D.
Fanning Software Consulting, Inc.
Coyote's Guide to IDL Programming: http://www.idlcoyote.com/
Sepore ma de ni thui. ("Perhaps thou speakest truth.")
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