Category: Nonfiction Books

[posted for later reference]

In the first eleven days of December 2013, I have received eight requests for me to write for a periodical such as a web site or a magazine. This is nice. I struggled for many years to get published. To have publishers knock on my door and ask for my work gives me a certain warm fuzzy feeling. They’re trying to fill in their 2014 editorial calendars, and want me to be part of it? That’s kind of cool.

There’s only one problem: they want to pay me with a subscription. The more generous ones offer advertising space. I address this in my FAQ, but it seems these people either don’t read the answer, don’t comprehend the answer, or think the answer doesn’t apply to them.

Here’s an explanation with more detail.

My writing time is completely occupied, either with work that I expect will return financial rewards or “writing of the heart” — projects that I really want to do, but that I accept will not pay.

Generally speaking, if you’re contacting me with a request to write for you, you expect to make money off of my writing. That makes this a business transaction. This means I expect to get paid an amount that is roughly equivalent to the amount I would make if I expend that amount of effort on other paying channels. A thousand-word article is almost certainly more than $50 of my time.

But it’s also important to not be a jerk. The world is a small place.

From now on, I’ll answer these requests with a form letter.

Hi,

Regards,
==ml

I’m not a total mercenary. I put a fair amount of technology content up in this blog, free for anyone who can use a search engine. But: I have a day job. My writing time is taken away from family and friends. I might choose to give up some of that time for someone. But that “someone” will be a person, not a business.

I know other people will write for these periodicals. Someone always will. But that’s their choice. I choose otherwise.

I just shipped the tech-reviewed copy of Sudo Mastery off to the copyeditor. She’ll have it back to me in a few days, and the book will move into production immediately thereafter.

This means that the pre-order discount will expire soon. How soon is soon? It’s soon.

Now I’m off to work on one of my other 2013 goals. Thanks to my appendix’s untimely detonation at the beginning of the year and my Europe trip I won’t accomplish everything on that list, but that’s no reason to not get as many of them finished as possible.

I just typed the last words of the first draft of Sudo Mastery.

The completed first draft is available for early purchasers. As it’s no longer an incomplete draft, I’ve raised the early purchase price to $8.99. That’s more than the really early buyers paid, but less than the final price. (Selling the early drafts from my own bookstore lets me experiment, so I’m ratcheting up the price to see what happens.)

What happens now?

First, I take a couple days and do something else. Anything else. This is vital, as I need some distance from the manuscript. I know it’s a big steaming pile of bodily waste, sure. But I need to be able to see the details of how, exactly, that pile is arranged.

Then: go over the manuscript from beginning to end, looking for obvious technical and writing problems.

Then spellcheck the book. (The purpose of an as-you-type spellchecker is to slow down the writing process. Note that a grammar checker never enters into this process.)

Then solicit technical reviewers. (Don’t volunteer yet: if you do, I’ll put you on my list of people who can’t follow directions.)

Then I go to EuroBSDCon. When I return, I integrate the comments into the book in another round of testing and fact-checking and rewriting.

Off to copyeditor.

Fix what the copyeditor finds.

Then the book comes out.