Folks are asking when this book will be available to the general public. Fair question. The short answer is, “it depends on UPS.”
I want my Patronizers, sponsors, and Kickstarter backers to have a reasonable chance of getting the book within a day or two of release. I’ve ordered a stack of print books. When the printer approves the backers-only edition, I’ll be ordering those. They will arrive here when UPS decides they will arrive.
Once they arrive, all other work stops. I start signing. Patronizers and sponsors get personalized signatures; the rest, I’m just signing my name. Personalized signatures add a layer of complexity to shipping, because I have to make sure the name I sign to matches the name on the shipping label and I am easily confused. Patronizers and sponsors get signed and shipped first because of that special care, then the rest will be handled in assembly-line style.
Once USPS picks up the books, I will open orders at my bookstore. That happens immediately. For the first time, I’ll be offering direct sales of print/ebook combos.
I’ll then open sales for bookstores and other, lesser venues, like Amazon. Note that while I’ll have Kindle-friendly versions in various stores, they won’t be in Amazon’s Kindle store for the same reasons OpenBSD Mastery: Filesystems isn’t there. An SEO-optimized post on that will appear in my Copious Free Time(tm).
I’m hoping to get all the books in my hands by the end of August. That’s up to the shipping companies and the printers, though.