Category: Nonfiction Books

I find myself with an extremely publishing-wonky moral dilemma, and want my readers’ opinions. My apologies for the length of this post.

Tech and academic publishers will frequently release a new and updated edition of a book simply to goose sales of the book. In college I bought three different versions of the same calculus book because they changed constants in the exercises. Calculus hadn’t changed, but the publisher gouged my wallet because they could. I had better use for that money, like getting desperately needed dental care.

Today I have my college degree, a bridge, and an assortment of fillings that rivals Jaws from 70s Bond flicks.

Second editions for the sake of second editions have a special place in my heart. A place with lots of flames, pitchforks, and high-power belt sanders applied to really delicate locations.

Second editions can be worthwhile and necessary, though.

I recently released a second edition of SSH Mastery. Unlike calculus, tech changes. The first edition contained actively incorrect information that would hurt people and dozens of minor flaws. It needed a polish. I’ve openly declared, repeatedly, that if you bought the first edition and kept up on changes in SSH, you don’t need to buy the second edition. Absolute FreeBSD is getting a new edition, eleven years after the previous edition. That’s too long, but life happens.

Similarly, TCP/IP Illustrated got a second edition. It needed one.

I’m finding myself in a moral quandry, though. One driven by publishing business.

My Tilted Windmill Press print books are available exclusively through Amazon’s CreateSpace print-on-demand program. This has been a potential problem for quite a while. I’m not a fan of monopoly or monopsony in my business dealings. The other major print on demand provider, IngramSpark, requires a publisher provide ISBNs. I deferred this purchase for several years, because ISBN pricing for US citizens is absurd.

Last December, I finally purchased a block of one thousand ISBNs so that I could use non-CreateSpace printers.

Ed Mastery and the new SSH Mastery were released on both CreateSpace and IngramSpark. FreeBSD Mastery: ZFS and FreeBSD Mastery: Advanced ZFS were re-issued under my own ISBNs and channeled through both printing services.

After a few months of sales data, I’m confident in saying that adding IngramSpark has increased book sales. I’m selling print books in Asia and Australia, which I’ve never done before. I expect to recoup my investment in ISBNs entirely in 2018, which is far ahead of my predictions. Cool.

Why did those sales increase? I’m considering this experimental evidence that CreateSpace’s non-Amazon distribution is not as good as one would hope. This is utterly unsurprising, as Amazon has repeatedly shown that they’re not interested in playing nicely with competitors.

The problem comes with changes in CreateSpace. Amazon is merging CS into their pure Amazon program, Kindle Desktop Publishing. Creditable industry scuttlebutt says that non-Amazon distribution will only get worse. It’s time to re-release all of the Tilted Windmill Press titles under new ISBNs. For most of the books, this only requires I take the time to assign ISBNs and make a couple minor changes in the

Some titles are troublesome, though. Specifically Networking for System Administrators, Tarsnap Mastery, Sudo Mastery, and DNSSEC Mastery.

I outsourced the design of these books. I used old ebook layout methods. The smart thing for me to do is insource all of them, redo the print layouts and covers, re-convert them to ebook, and reissue under new ISBNs.

But… all of these books contain nits.

DNSSEC Mastery covers DLV, which is no longer a thing, and the recommend algorithms have changed. Sudo development isn’t exactly breakneck, but there’s a couple new features that merit a nod in Sudo Mastery. Tarsnap Mastery specifically declares that there is no Tarsnap GUI. In the best tradition of tech publishing, the GUI came out right after I released the book. Networking for System Administrators, though… surely network principles are timeless? There’s stuff I would alter, add, and update. There’s always more to say about networking.

As long as I’m doing these reissues, shouldn’t I take a little time and update the text? It wouldn’t take terribly long, right?

Those updates would make the books second editions, though.

DNSSEC Mastery specifically says that DLV is going away, and to check for the current recommended algorithms. The Tarsnap GUI–well, frankly, who cares about that kind of error? “Oh, a GUI came out after the book was released? Cool, cool.” New sudo features? Sure, that’s life.

When I write my tech books, I do my best to future-proof them.

But if I don’t release second editions, then I’m reissuing books with known fixable warts.

I could put on the back cover: If you’ve read the first edition, and kept up with changes, you don’t need this second edition. My gut not only calls that lame, it does so in a loud taunting voice.

And I always try to play straight with my readers. Y’all bought me that bridge and those fillings.

So, what would you rather see? What makes sense to you?

Yesterday I released #mwlSecretBook: Ed Mastery.

April first is the perfect day to release such a book. I wrote a nice release announcement and everything.

Now that April Fool’s is over I should probably say: this is a real book. It exists. You can buy it.

The Manly McManface edition? Yep, that exists. It is a real thing. To my surprise, people have bought it.

The release announcement? Completely sincere.

While I normally don’t solicit release day reviews, this time I did. Because if I’m releasing a book on ed, on 1 April, I want it to make a splash. There’s a lovely review from NixCraft. Peter Hansteen and Justin Sherrill gave their thoughts. Print sponsor Stefan Johnson also wrote a review, but I didn’t arrange that in advance; he just liked the book. In the interest of fairness, I should also point out this scathing review that appeared as a guest post on Dan Langille’s blog. (I know that last guy. He’s been trying to get me to play in freeway traffic for years.)

Since releasing that book, a few men have contacted me saying that while they usually like my work, the existence of the Manly McManface edition has prompted them to donate to men’s rights organizations. A few have declared that they pirated the book and then donated to said MRA organizations. To them I say:

Thank you for demonstrating my point. The Manly McManface edition was created just for you.

So, I wrote a book. And I didn’t tell people what it is.

The book is now out. You can buy it.

And it has an authentic, legit blurb from Ken Thompson, co-creator of Unix.

Explaining why I did it this way takes a little bit of context.

First:

People have sent me all kinds of guesses for the book topic. Some of you have guessed correctly. I haven’t told anyone that they’re correct, though. You people are perfectly capable of launching a dictionary attack on me, so the only answer I could give is “no.”

Mind you, some of those “nos” have been carefully phrased so that you’d interpret them as a “no,” when really they’re a “maaaaybe” or even a “yes, but I’m not going to admit it.” If someone guessed correctly I used answers like “I wish,” the unspoken second half is “and I’m self-publishing, so I have the power to make my wishes come true.” Or perhaps “I long to one day be sufficiently knowledgeable to write this book.” Technically accurate but certainly misleading statements.

I’m prepared to hide wildly behind those technicalities.

Second:

I’ve thought for a while that there’s space in the market for even smaller books than my usual Mastery titles. This is a test run of producing such a book. It’s half the size of my sudo, Tarsnap, and DNSSEC books for a reason. It’s also less expensive.

Third:

As I was writing up my 2017 year-end review I realized that the next book I wrote would be the 13th Mastery book. 13 is my lucky number, because what other number could be? I’d like to write four tech books this year, so that’s one every three months.

Looking at the calendar, I realized that quarterly releases would put me at April First.

Could I write and release the 13th Mastery book as an April Fool’s prank?

Except have it not be a prank? Have it be a serious tech book, on a real program, that solves actual problems in the real world?

Maybe.

Maybe I could. Three months for writing, tech review, copyedit, and production is danged aggressive, but it should be doable. And nothing concentrates my mind like an unbreakable deadline and the looming possibility of public humiliation.

I warned the sponsors. Dozens of you sponsored anyway. I’m torn between apologizing and posting an “I told you so” GIF.

Fourth:

Every so often, I get a cluster of emails complaining about my using both male and female third person pronouns in my tech books. Either women don’t belong in tech, or shouldn’t be in tech. A few offer arguments that “he” is gender-neutral in English. All of these emails include misogynistic statements of one form or another.

These emails arrive in groups. I hear nothing for months, and then four or five appear in the space of twenty-four hours. I suspect that my work comes up on some MRA message board or IRC channel and a few of the people hanging out there decide to present their case.

Overwhelmingly, these messages display the combination of sloppy logic and total lack of understanding of human nature that seems to be a hallmark of a certain fringe of techies. Indeed, they show a failure to understand what it means to be human, or what it means to live in a liberal society.

I delete these messages as soon as I realize what they’re about. Most often, I don’t make it past the first paragraph. (Many times the email is thousands of words in a single paragraph, and I wouldn’t finish reading that anyway.) I do offer an answer in my blog, but this project game me an opportunity to respond more… usefully.

So, for the record: I mix male and female pronouns for a reason. Women are a thing.

I also use the singular they. It’s been valid since Shakespeare’s day, and it’s a pronoun for some people. If you think the singular they is ruining our language, you’re wrong; English was ruined long before you or I got here. (It’s fine for you to not like that pronoun, but that’s your taste. I write my books to my taste. My taste includes the panoramic, painful panoply of our abominable tongue.)

If we had different pronouns for different races, I’d use them.

If we had different pronouns for different faiths, I’d use them too.

Tech is a diverse field and needs to become more diverse. Doing otherwise is disrespectful, dehumanizing, and a shameful waste of human potential. (Go read your Adam Smith, and not just the libertarian-friendly bits about the awesomeness of the free market.)

Everyone deserves to see themselves reflected in books. When writing fiction I work to make my female characters just as utterly screwed-up or as completely pig-headed and smart as my male characters. I can’t imagine doing otherwise in nonfiction.

Does this make me a feminist? To the people who write these emails, certainly. But a proper feminist would hear me saying “women are a thing” and tell me that “women are not things.” Like “firewall,” I’m not sure what the word “feminist” means today. I want to see female schmucks promoted just as quickly as male schmucks. I want everybody, including women, to no longer need to fear verbal or physical assault. If that’s your definition of feminist, fine, slap it on me. I’m gonna keep doing my thing.

Fifth:

Writing is a business.

I’m a businessman.

And if there’s a market, I should serve it.

#mwlSecretBook comes in two editions. They’re differentiated by third person singular pronouns. Any third person singular pronouns that appear in the standard edition, for normal people, are feminine. Any third person singular pronouns in the special “Manly McManface” edition are masculine. That’s a much smaller market, however, so the Manly McManface edition is much more expensive, because economics.

(Remember, book 13. 1 April. When else could I do this?)

Sixth:

Soroptimist International of Grosse Pointe does a lot of work in the Detroit area. They raise money for women’s scholarships. They fight human trafficking. They support domestic violence shelters that help hundreds of women a year. My wife is a member. These ladies work damn hard.

For each copy of the Manly McManface edition sold, print or ebook, I will donate one dollar to SIGP.

Should you buy that expensive edition to make me donate money? Nah. It’s more effective for you to donate directly. You should only buy that edition if you’re too weak to tolerate women existing in your life.

Seventh:

Presented for your consideration, at long last: (drum roll) (more drum roll) (eye roll) (blare of trumpets) #mwlSecretBook! (fireworks) (children’s chorus) (shrieks of disappointment)

It’s available in ebook as I publish this blog post. Print will be coming in the next couple of days.

PS: I moderate comments with a heavy hand. If you’re offended that I created a book just for you, chances are I’ll either delete your comment or mock you.

(Posted so I can refer to it later.)

Last week, Liz and I converted this:

into this:

Note the little stack of customs forms off to the side. It’s like I’ve learned a lesson from standing at the post office counter filling out those stupid forms. Sponsors should get their books soon.

This seems like an apropos moment to talk about what I do for print sponsors. I say I send them “a gift,” but what does that really mean? The obvious thing to ship them is a copy of the book I’ve written. Flat-out selling print books online has tax implications, though.

Sponsors might have guessed that they’d get a copy of the book. But I shipped them the hardcover, which isn’t my usual practice.

That’s because I send sponsors a gift. As it’s a gift, I get to choose what I send. I want to send them something nice, to encourage them to sponsor another book. It makes no sense for me to send a sponsor a Singing Wedgie-O-Gram. (Well, maybe a couple sponsors. You know who you are.)

The poor bastards who bought into my scam–er, sponsored my untitled book–have no idea what’s coming. As of right now, their sensible guesses are woefully incomplete.

Future books? They might get a copy of the book. They might get book plus something. They might just get the something. Folks who sponsor the jails book might get a cake with a file in it. Who knows?

It’s a gift. It’s my job to make that gift worthwhile.

And to amuse myself. Because otherwise, what’s the point?

On 10 April 2018, I’ll be giving speaking at mug.org. Each MUG meeting has two presentations, one long and one short. Somehow, they’ve given me both of them.

My first, longer talk will be on ZFS, including some newer developments.

The second talk? I’m not saying.

The MUG talks coordinator, JM, agreed to let me present on the topic of my next book, the one with the undisclosed topic, without knowing what that topic is.

This gives me a hard deadline; either I’m in a position to announce the book by then, or the project fails. But hey. No pressure.

So, if you want to know the topic of #mwlSecretBook, show up at mug.org on 10 April.

In unrelated news, MUG is a great group that can always use volunteers. For example, I suspect they might desperately need a new talks coordinator on 11 April…