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Things I learned writing my first technical book
31–34 of 34 posts
Re: Things I learned writing my first technical book
#32The articles says: "Writing my first technical book without a publisher would have been a MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE!" But why? Does a publisher provide more than some seed money and motivation? What else am I missing by not using a publisher?
I don't think it's mission:impossible for some people...but for people such as myself, my editor really gave a sense of external accountability + pressure to finish. If I didn't have an editor, I'm 90% sure I would have stopped around 2 chapters in and tabled it for some other time (read as: never touched it again). Also, there are perks to having a formal publisher: you have reviewers, copy editors, and formatters who really make sure that things are really standardized. That really allowed me to focus on writing.
Re: Things I learned writing my first technical book
#33That’s a good list! My fave: > An average writer makes the reader think the author is smart. A good writer makes the reader think the reader is smart. I am quite surprised to see no mention of the importance of an editor. I have to assume that they are no longer as important, these days, as they once were. My mother was a scientific editor, and she was brutal . I once wrote a 400-page book (that was never published).…
> I have to assume that they are no longer as important, these days, as they once were.
They are, but just that folks (in tech?) are losing sight of what good editors would bring to the table: https://apenwarr.ca/log/20060721 (grand old unified relational documentation) | https://apenwarr.ca/log/20090506 (the value of professional copy-editing)
Re: Things I learned writing my first technical book
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
Author here: In my book, I used mind maps to let the readers visualize a high level summary of a chapter. Here is an example of such a mind map: https://twitter.com/viebel/status/1469187345580793860
What software did you use to create the mindmap?
Lucidchart