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I self-published a programming book, here's my story

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Re: I self-published a programming book, here's my story

#11

Post by _delirium »

jpallen wrote: post #3

As soon as I read his opening piece I thought 'this guy needs to use LaTeX', so I'm glad that he did in the end. I've benefited a lot from the stories and comments here at HN, so I'd like to offer my help in getting you started with LaTeX if you'd like to do something similar. I'd say that the major of downside of LaTeX is that it's not very accessible. One of my goals at the moment is to improve that, and that's par…

The biggest accessibility problem I have with LaTeX for bookwriting is that the stylesheet language is very strange by modern standards. You can ignore it if you're writing academic papers with a provided stylesheet (or with one of the default ones), but you often will want to do some custom formatting if you're writing a book. I've heard ConTeXt might be an improvement, though.

Re: I self-published a programming book, here's my story

#12

Post by jpallen »

_delirium wrote: post #11
jpallen wrote: post #3

As soon as I read his opening piece I thought 'this guy needs to use LaTeX', so I'm glad that he did in the end. I've benefited a lot from the stories and comments here at HN, so I'd like to offer my help in getting you started with LaTeX if you'd like to do something similar. I'd say that the major of downside of LaTeX is that it's not very accessible. One of my goals at the moment is to improve that, and that's par…

The biggest accessibility problem I have with LaTeX for bookwriting is that the stylesheet language is very strange by modern standards. You can ignore it if you're writing academic papers with a provided stylesheet (or with one of the default ones), but you often will want to do some custom formatting if you're writing a book. I've heard ConTeXt might be an improvement, though.

You have a good point there. The problem is that LaTeX doesn't have a fundamental distinction between 'style' and 'commands'. Everything is really just a command, but by convention some of them are wrappers around predefined styles, like \section and \chapter for example. If you want to change the style of these yourself then you have to dive into the internals of LaTeX where things get messy.

Re: I self-published a programming book, here's my story

#13

Post by davidw »

ayi wrote: post #10

My only concern about all this Markdown, Latex etc. is "spell checking". I'm Turkish and written several books (jQuery, php, javascript) but all of them were written in Microsoft Word because only Word has the most comprehensive spell checking for Turkish. Can someone suggest me a good Latex editor with good spell-checking (other than English)?

Emacs is a great editor for LaTeX and also has spell checking. I don't know what open source Turkish spell checking is available, though.

Re: I self-published a programming book, here's my story

#15

Post by marios »

ayi wrote: post #10

My only concern about all this Markdown, Latex etc. is "spell checking". I'm Turkish and written several books (jQuery, php, javascript) but all of them were written in Microsoft Word because only Word has the most comprehensive spell checking for Turkish. Can someone suggest me a good Latex editor with good spell-checking (other than English)?

Since someone mentionned emacs, I feel obligated to mention vim :)

Much like emacs, a great editor. I have used it alongide the LanguageTool[1] plugin for the spell checking part. I didn't like the fact it required Java (the plugin, not vim) to do it's job, but having spell/grammar checking within vim without having to resort to dirty tricks with Word / LibreOffice was well worth it. [1]http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=3223

Re: I self-published a programming book, here's my story

#16

Post by petercooper »

cristianpascu wrote: post #2

Just curious here: Are all publishers interested in proposals from first time authors? How hard it is to get a publisher interested in promoting your book?

Can't drop names as they might not like it but in my experience knowing and talking with several major tech publishers, yes - publishers are more desperate for authors than ever before, thanks to both the loss of stigma with regards to self publishing and the relative loss of cachet of going with a mainstream publishing.

If you clearly know your stuff and can convince a publisher you'll deliver a book in an area that isn't entirely moribund, your odds of even landing a major publisher are not insignificant.

One thing that even happens from time to time nowadays is publishers will approach successful self published authors to offer them distribution, editing, and similar services, just to get their books under their umbrella. (Pragmatic Bookshelf did this a few times last year with people I know.)

Note: I'm only talking non-fiction tech books here.

Re: I self-published a programming book, here's my story

#17

Post by cristianpascu »

fekberg wrote: post #9
cristianpascu wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I was mainly interested in the promotion part. For instance, if I want to target US market, but I'm not from US. I realize that there are many factors, like for instance you background, qualifications, etc. But I was particularly interested in this aspect. Every author publishes their first book at one point, right?

Right! As far as I know either you go all-in with a publisher or you don't go with them at all. So they won't help you promote the book if they haven't helped you published it. However, CreateSpace that I've used to self-publish the book has options for expanding distribution to other channels such as book stores in U.S. That requires that the book store buys the books, so you're still back to square one; getting the…

I did. Thanks a lot!

Re: I self-published a programming book, here's my story

#18

Post by orangeduck »

ayi wrote: post #10

My only concern about all this Markdown, Latex etc. is "spell checking". I'm Turkish and written several books (jQuery, php, javascript) but all of them were written in Microsoft Word because only Word has the most comprehensive spell checking for Turkish. Can someone suggest me a good Latex editor with good spell-checking (other than English)?

Notepad++ also has a spell checker which is pretty decent and afaik supports other languages.

Re: I self-published a programming book, here's my story

#19

Post by tjic »

> They said "This is the worst type-setting I’ve ever seen"...This got me thinking, if the first reactions are not even constructive

Uh, actually, I think that that's wonderfully constructive advice: if someone says that, then you immediately know that your graphic design is such a big problem that nothing else you're doing is even getting through.

I'd LOVE to get advice that's that clear, pointed, and actionable!

Re: I self-published a programming book, here's my story

#20

Post by arooaroo »

marios wrote: post #15
ayi wrote: post #10

My only concern about all this Markdown, Latex etc. is "spell checking". I'm Turkish and written several books (jQuery, php, javascript) but all of them were written in Microsoft Word because only Word has the most comprehensive spell checking for Turkish. Can someone suggest me a good Latex editor with good spell-checking (other than English)?

Since someone mentionned emacs, I feel obligated to mention vim :) Much like emacs, a great editor. I have used it alongide the LanguageTool[1] plugin for the spell checking part. I didn't like the fact it required Java (the plugin, not vim) to do it's job, but having spell/grammar checking within vim without having to resort to dirty tricks with Word / LibreOffice was well worth it. [1] http://www.vim.org/scripts/sc…

Just to be clear, Vim has had built-in spelling checker since v7.0 (released 2006). The LanguageTool plugin may be handy for spelling and other grammar checking issues but users requiring straight-forward spelling functionality will most likely have essential spell-checking features available out-of-the-box.
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