{"id":143,"date":"2009-09-23T18:58:31","date_gmt":"2009-09-24T00:58:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/?p=143"},"modified":"2010-09-19T09:42:07","modified_gmt":"2010-09-19T15:42:07","slug":"978-1-849680-16-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/978-1-849680-16-5\/","title":{"rendered":"978-1-849680-16-5"},"content":{"rendered":"

For U.S. bands, the traditional way they would know they had ‘made it’ was when they were featured on the cover of Rolling Stone (witness Cover of the Rolling Stone<\/em>, by Dr. Hook – yes, I’m embarrassed I know it, too…). For UK bands, it was when they performed on the now defunct Top Of The Pops<\/em>. For me, I always thought that the pinnacle of achievement was getting a book published. Or, more specifically, getting a real<\/em> book with an actual ISBN<\/em> published. Many years ago, I worked on the Torchum Never Stops<\/em> books, but these were self-published [by Reinhard Preuss, the man with the plan] and didn’t have an ISBN so they don’t really count. And an article I wrote was quoted in Ben Watson’s The Negative Dialectics of Poodle-Play<\/em>, which does<\/em> have an ISBN, but I didn’t write that book, so that’s a tenuous claim to fame, too. But today, my first, self-penned, honest-to-goodness, ISBN-carrying book is published. So, by my own criteria, I’ve finally ‘made it’. (For whatever that’s worth – it doesn’t feel a whole lot different from having not<\/em> made it…)<\/p>\n

Yes, I know some regular readers have kids<\/em> who are onto their second or third published book already, but this is me<\/em>. Me, me, me, me, me. It’s all about me. Actually, if I’d wanted a vanity project I would have done a Jim Morrison and had my 6th-form poetry hand-printed and lavishly bound, or written an autobiography, or something. Certainly, I wouldn’t have chosen this particular avenue…<\/p>\n

I should point out at this stage that this isn’t the Great American (or even British) Novel. It’s a technical reference book on a little-used software application called Oracle User Productivity Kit (previously known as Global Knowledge OnDemand). I’ve been using the software for a while, and have been called upon a few times to train other people at my current client on it. One of the things I’m always asked is if I can recommend a good book on UPK\/OnDemand, and my answer is always the same: there just aren’t any<\/em> books on UPK\/OnDemand, good or bad. So eventually I gave up and decided to write my own. (Whether it falls into the ‘good’ or ‘bad’ camps remains to be seen…)<\/p>\n

\"Buy<\/a><\/p>\n

For a while now, I’ve been proofreading books for Packt Publishing, a publisher of technical books. Doing so taught me two things: (1) I can write a lot better than most of their ‘authors’, and (2) my book would fit well within the Packt oevre. So I finished the book in early July, and then contacted them to see what they could do with it.<\/p>\n

Given that I had gone to the trouble of writing the entire book before approaching the publisher (foregoing a possible advance), I na\u00c3\u00afvely thought I could just punt it to them, and then sit back and wait for the royalty checks to start pouring in. But I rapidly learnt that there is apparently a lot more to publishing than just clicking on the print button. Firstly, I was assigned an Editor whose job it was to make sure that my book made sense (like, hello<\/em>, I’ve only been writing documentation for 20 years!). He then handed me off to a Production Coordinator, who would be responsible for making sure that the book was published according to plan. I was then asked to send my text and images (separately, although I’d combined them in Word) to a Technical Editor, who would be doing something else with them before passing them on to a Technical Reviewer (the very knowledgeable Sjoerd de Vries) who checked that I wasn’t lying about the application’s (in)capabilities. And on top of this, there was still a proofreader as, for obvious reasons, I’m not allowed to proofread my own book – although the assigned proofreaders (it took three of them to wade through my 540 pages) were basically getting money for nothing as I’d pretty much proofed the whole book myself before submission, anyway. Occupational hazard (or control freakery…).<\/p>\n

Anyway, after a couple of months of reviews and edits, the book was finally declared done last week and sent to press. Or whatever they use these days. Probably just a really big laser printer – Packt is a ‘print on demand’ operation (although I’m assuming they’re not hand-collating and binding, which is what we did for the Torchum<\/em> books…). Either way, it is now available for your pleasure from the Packt<\/a> website, as well as from Amazon<\/a> and all other discerning booksellers.<\/p>\n

It’s taken a huge chunk of time (hence the dearth of posts to this blog), and isn’t exactly going to sell in the millions, but at the end of the day, it’s a book what I wrote (sic), and it will look good on my r\u00c3\u00a9sum\u00c3\u00a9, if nothing else. It’s also been interesting to see more of the publication process, and I now have a greater appreciation for the amount of behind-the-scenes work that goes into writing and publishing a book. Or at least enough to make me think twice before embarking on another one.<\/p>\n

I probably shouldn’t say this, but I wouldn’t necessarily recommend that you (readers of this blog) buy this book. (Unless, of course, you are a UPK developer, in which case I’d say it is absolutely essential!) It’s not exactly ‘classic Dirk’. It’s not humorous – or even entertaining – and contains none of my usual flair and wit (some would argue that none of my writing contains flair or wit anyway!). That said, if you are<\/em> a UPK developer and do want to buy a copy, then do me a favor and click on the links in this post to pass through to the Amazon site and buy it from there, as I get kickbacks from Amazon on click-throughs, and given the couple of dozen copies this book will sell (unless I can get it on Oprah’s Book Club…), I need every penny I can get.<\/p>\n

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go and pick up my smoking jacket from the dry cleaner’s in preparation for the inevitable call for a book-signing at my local Barnes and Noble<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Reviews:<\/strong><\/p>\n