Windows Phone Secrets

As of just a few moments ago, I finished the PDF review of Windows Phone 7 Secrets. This is the phase of the process where the publisher sends me PDF-based proofs of each chapter that I need to review for accuracy. It was surprisingly clean, and the last-minute changes Microsoft made for the RTM version of Windows Phone 7 didn’t impact things very much at all, as expected.

This pretty much concludes my work on the book. I have to submit a signature for the cover and a few other small things, but nothing dramatic.

I guess I’m done. :)

Wiley sent me a first pass at the book’s cover design today. I had a surprising number of corrections, and they actually want my real signature for the cover too, presumably for easier identity theft purposes. :)

They’ll send a second version once they’ve implemented the changes I’ve requested, which apply mostly to the text on the back cover. I guess this is technically part of the final PDF review stage, which is still underway.

Since this is an excellent preview of what the final book is going to look like, I thought you might be interested in seeing what the some PDF review pages look like. The template for the Secrets series changed this year, so this is the first time I’ve worked with this look and feel, which includes new callout types (previously, they were just “Secret,” “Note,” and a few others) a new way to laying out images, and so on. Here’s the beginning of Chapter 1.

Because we’re still editing the book, some pages have some (light) edits. For example, in this next shot, it’s a bit hard to see, but a letter “s” was left out at the end of a word. As I read through this, I can point out other errors I see, or make very light corrections and additions that don’t impact the layout.

Here’s another page that, like the previous one, shows a little bit of new figure layout. In previous Secrets books, it either wasn’t possible (or certainly wasn’t common) to have two images side-by-side. But in a book like this, where the phone display is generally in portrait mode, this makes some sense. (We can also put smaller images inline in the text, and have the text wrap around them as you’d see in a magazine, which looks nice.) This page has a bit of the “no auto display of images in emails” text that I previously quoted from as well. Plus a great picture of my friend John. :)

Anyway, that’s the gist of it. I don’t have all the PDF pages in yet since some chapters literally just got returned as part of the AR process, so I may be going over these here and there for the next week or so. This part represents the final actual work I’ll do on the book before it’s printed and released.

And, from Wiley’s perspective, by handing in my final AR/FM/intro submissions, I’ve just completed my portion of our agreement, so they’ve released my final advance payment. As with other aspects of the publishing business, that process is more modern now as well, so instead of having to wait on a check, it’s direct-deposited. Again, I’ll discuss the money aspect of book writing (more accurately, the lack of money) at a future time.

Today, I completed the two final bits of actual writing on Windows Phone Secrets, the Front Matter (FM) and the Introduction.

Both contain boilerplate text provided by the publishing company that must appear in the beginning of a book. The FM consists of copyright information and the like. I supplied an “about the author” section, a dedication, and some acknowledgements.

The Introduction includes a few pages of background material about why I wrote the book and why I feel Windows Phone is important (this was mostly written some time ago), and then sections like Who This Book Is For, What This Book Covers, How This Book Is Structured, What You Need to Use This Book, Web Site Supporting the Book (pointing to this blog), and Features and Icons Used In This Book (the latter of which I didn’t need to write).

Put simply, this was the easiest part of the whole endeavor. :)

Next: Reviewing the final book pages in PDF format. And, since I’ve pretty much completed the book, a mind-numbing series of Windows Phone announcements from Microsoft that will render half of what I’ve written obsolete. I know how the world works. :)

Well, it took a few days longer than I’d have liked, but the Author Review (AR) for Windows Phone Secrets is complete. I still have to finish up the front matter/introduction, and then review final page PDFs. I’ll describe those items soon, but given the tightness of the schedule, it’s probably best that I actually do them first.

As noted previously, AR is a tough slog. And while the worst is now behind me, the real nail-biting stuff comes next, since Microsoft can (and no doubt will, given my past experiences) surprise me with last-second silliness that will make parts of the book somewhat obsolete. Which, when you think about it, is the really aggravating part of paper-based publishing.

I’ve had a few questions about the schedule. The plan for some time now has been to get Windows Phone Secrets in book stores in time for the Windows Phone 7 launch in October. So unless something has changed, the book should be out in early October. I’ll update you if/when I find out something more specific, including info around Kindle/eBook versions.

The current page count is somewhere in the 450-470 page range, depending on where the front matter/intro falls. This is less than half the size of Windows 7 Secrets which, you may recall, was always my plan. I can write a lot, too much, arguably, but I don’t like the notion of a book that could kill you if you fell asleep reading it, let alone a book about a phone that is 16 times the size and weight of the actual phone. :) So I tried to keep this one reasonable.