I wrote a kids programming book.
£1.5k advance and 8% royalties if I remember correctly.
My biggest takeaway, is forget your tool chain. I wrote it in org mode, and exported to Libre Office and then Word. As soon as the first draft was returned I ended up battling with Word the whole time, for edits and redrafts.
Also, designers don't read code like programmers. Indentation was often messed up, incorrect quotes used and line breaks added to suit formatting. One particularly badly formatted piece of code had me ripping my hair out. Everything beneath the first line was messed up. The designer came back to me a bit confused, saying the only problem he could see was the first line of code was 4 spaces too far to the left. Being accustomed to an absolute left limit on code, defined by the first line, it hadn't occurred to me to view it like this.
I've heard (but can't verify) that the Pragmatic Programmers have their own tool chain, and that it's quite good. It will, for example, check that code snippets are syntactically correct.
I have a few of their books, and they're pretty good. Their store is also very straightforward and friendly.
>My biggest takeaway, is forget your tool chain. I wrote it in org mode, and exported to Libre Office and then Word. As soon as the first draft was returned I ended up battling with Word the whole time, for edits and redrafts.
Ah yes, this is another part of the negotiation that I would have re-done, had I to negotiate again. Publishers will accommodate you if you push hard enough.
I'm starting a self-publish project, and am looking at using Pollen[1] along with some CSS based on Edward Tufte's ideas[2].
I'm not a designer by any means, but I'm having fun with this, and the result is looking pretty reasonable so far. (And learning one programming language while writing a book on another is kind of cool)
My biggest takeaway, is forget your tool chain. I wrote it in org mode, and exported to Libre Office and then Word. As soon as the first draft was returned I ended up battling with Word the whole time, for edits and redrafts.
Also, designers don't read code like programmers. Indentation was often messed up, incorrect quotes used and line breaks added to suit formatting. One particularly badly formatted piece of code had me ripping my hair out. Everything beneath the first line was messed up. The designer came back to me a bit confused, saying the only problem he could see was the first line of code was 4 spaces too far to the left. Being accustomed to an absolute left limit on code, defined by the first line, it hadn't occurred to me to view it like this.