I’ve been sitting on this for a little while, and a couple of people I’ve met in the flesh have heard about it, but I think the time is right to start talking about it more in public. A little while ago Apress asked me if I would be interested in writing a book on ImageMagick, presumably based on my having written two articles on ImageMagick for IBM DeveloperWorks. You can find those articles here and here. The book is a complete re-implementation of that content, despite my contract with IBM allowing for reuse, because that basically has to be done to make the book coherent and flow.
Anyway, the contract has now been signed by myself and Gary Cornell (recent interview). The first three chapters have been written and are currently undergoing review. I have a table of contents and a schedule, so I know what else I’m going to cover.
Why Apress? Well, apart from the fact that they approached me, which is flattering, they’re also a pretty awesome technical publisher. They’re the publisher of Nick Weinholt‘s .NET books, Joel Spolsky‘s software development books, and heaps of other stuff. Checkout they’re site for more information.
I’ve got a bunch of notes on the whole book process which I am going to write up and post over the next few months until the book is released for Christmas. You’ll see them here when they’re ready. Let me know if you have questions about what it’s like to be a first time book author for an open source project when working full time, studying and having a family, and I’ll see what I can do.
Aren’t I doing a PhD? Well, yes. Then again, the book hasn’t actually distracted from that much at all, because of the massive amount of time freed up by the end of linux.conf.au 2005. The PhD is meant to consume 20 hours per week, which it still is.
Got questions? Comments? Let me know in the comments to this post… Oh, and no, the book wont make me rich. Unless you buy a copy…
Update: I should make it more clear that the book covers a lot more than those articles did. What I was trying to say here is that the content of the articles wont just be reprinted, but has been reworked, and woven in with the rest of the content. The book should be around 350 pages, so you can see that I need to write a whole bunch of other content too.
Update: Oh, and there is another interview with Gary here.
[tags: open source apress]