An Eclectic Mind

My first full-length, destined for electronic publication ebook.

In the spring, I was approached by one of my regular publishers to do a new title for them. This was a surprise. After all, as the computer user base is getting ever more sophisticated, sales of print computer how-to books for the beginner to intermediate market I write for are getting ever smaller. I honestly don’t expect to sell titles on new computer topics anymore.

But this book was different in two respects:

• It would be published as an ebook only.
• It would be handled as a work for hire.

An Ebook only in Publication

I should start by saying that everything about the book would be handled just like any other book I wrote for that publisher. I’d have to use a special Word template that I don’t particularly care for but have plenty of practice using. The book would go through the usual collection of editors and production staff: tech editor, copy editor, production editor, proofreader. I’d review the manuscript after each editor was finished with it and mark up my comments and corrections. I still had to get the book done more than a month before it was due to be released.

It was just like writing any other book.

The only difference is, at the end of the process, a case of books didn’t arrive on my doorstep. In fact, it wasn’t until yesterday — nearly two months after the book’s release — that I finally tracked down and downloaded my own copy.

The book, which is titled QuickBooks Accounting 2009: The Official Guide for Mac Users, looks good. It’s in standard page size and orientation (which is something I don’t agree with for ebooks, as I discuss in “Thinking Outside the Book“), with a very pleasant layout and design.

The book is an easy onscreen read on my 24″ iMac monitor, but I suspect it might be a little tougher on a smaller monitor if the reader can’t see a full page at a time. It looks to me like they thought readers might want to print it out. (I hope they don’t. It would be a terrible waste of paper.) There are plenty of color screenshots (they got that right) although for some reason they didn’t use color graphic elements, as they do in my other books, which are printed. (Still can’t figure that one out.)

The book uses Adobe Reader’s Bookmarks feature to link to headings from a sidebar and the index’s page number references link back to individual pages. There aren’t any in-text cross-reference links, but part of the reason for that is that I couldn’t use page references as I wrote, so I never referred to specific pages in the text. (FrameMaker was an excellent publishing tool for this sort of thing.)

Distribution of the book is apparently limited to folks who buy QuickBooks 2009 for Mac and somehow get a special code with a Web address. They go to the URL, enter their name, e-mail address, and the code, and the book is downloaded. It opens right up in Acrobat, without the need to enter any special codes, but the word SECURED appears in parentheses in the title bar. A peek at the Security settings for the document shows that certain actions are not allowed, but they aren’t the kind of actions that would prevent anyone from getting the most of the book. In fact, they’re the same settings I would have used if I’d released the book as a PDF.

So I’d venture to say that anyone who downloaded the book would be satisfied with the way it was published. Sure, it’s not in print, but at the same time, it’s also not costing them a penny to obtain.

Thoughts on Piracy

Of course, limited distribution of this ebook will not remain limited. In fact, I’m sure it’s already out there on pirate sites, like all other ebooks eventually are.

It may seem odd to readers to learn that I really don’t care how this book is distributed or who “steals” it. But that’s got to do with the way I was paid for it. I wrote it as a work for hire. That means I got paid a flat fee and handed over all rights to the work. There are no royalties to worry about, so sales is not an issue. I negotiated a price I could live with up front, got my money, and did my job. Even though the book has my name on the cover, it’s not really something I have any kind of ownership of.

I’m pretty sure my publisher had the same deal for the book, but their number was bigger. So they may not care about this book hitting the pirate sites, either.

Lessons Learned

The goal of the publishing project was to create a user guide for QuickBooks 2009 for Mac. To keep costs down and prevent readers from having to buy a printed book, the powers that be decided to go with an ebook. This may reduce revenues all around, but it also saves a lot of money and the bother that goes with print publishing.

I think that’s what ebooks should do: put quality information into the hands of the folks that need it without wasting resources while sufficiently compensating authors for their knowledge and efforts.

I look forward to the next edition of this book.

I still can’t understand it.

The other day, one of my editors told me that the book I’m currently writing will be laid out in India. As a matter of fact, last year’s edition of the same book was also laid out in India.

She went on to tell me that the production department for the company had been downsized from 168 people to less than 20, with the majority of those jobs going to India.

What followed was a discussion of what the company could possibly be saving by making such a change. Sure, the Indian workforce is probably making a lot less per hour. And there’s a huge reduction in other payroll costs for things like vacation pay and health care and employer taxes.

But don’t they consider the cost to the U.S. Economy of putting 148+ people out of work? People who may not get jobs? People who may contribute to the home mortgage crisis by failing to pay their mortgages? Who may need to burden the country by requiring economic assistance to live and get healthcare? People who are a lot less likely to spend disposable income on things like books simply because they don’t have disposable income?

148 people, you say. That’s nothing. How is that going to affect the U.S. economy?

Well, it’s not just one company shipping jobs overseas. It’s hundreds or thousands of them. That equates to thousands of people out of work, many of whom may become unable to afford the goods or services offered by the companies that let them go.

How ironic. By acting in such an idiotic, short-sighted way, these companies are actually reducing their customer base. So while their costs are lower, their sales are likely to be lower, too. Net effect? Zero change in the bottom line!

When I was a kid, we called that “cutting off your nose to spite your face.” Wikipedia has this to say about this particular phrase: “Cutting off the nose to spite the face is an expression used to describe a needlessly self-destructive overreaction to a problem.” Although it usually refers to an act of revenge, I think it could apply to this situation, too.

How can companies reduce their bottom line without shipping jobs overseas? It’s pretty simple: use freelancers.

One of my other publishers has a very small in-house production staff. But it also utilizes a number of freelance production people all over the U.S. When the in-house staff is busy putting books together, it turns to its freelancers and assigns books to them. They get the job done right in a timely manner. They have to — if they don’t do the job satisfactorily, there’s another freelancer waiting in line behind them to do that job or the next one.

Freelancers might get a higher wage than in-house people, and they surely get a higher hourly wage than overseas workers, but they only get paid when they work. So you’re not paying them to hang around the office during slow spells, when there’s no work to do. And, if you pay by the job, rather than by the hour, you only pay for the work done — not time hanging around the water cooler or spending a few extra minutes at lunch.

Employers don’t have to pay taxes for contract labor like freelancers. They also don’t have to offer benefits like vacation time or healthcare. There’s no need to send them for training or to maintain a big human resources department to keep track of them.

And since many freelancers work from their homes, they’re not commuting to and from work. That means they don’t contribute to traffic, pollution, or greenhouse gases.

And since they do work and they do get paid, they have disposable income to buy consumer goods and services. (I’ve been freelance for 18 years now and I can assure you that I’m quite a consumer of goods.)

So my question is this: why don’t more companies explore the possibilities of using freelancers instead of shipping jobs overseas?

Comments? Use the Comments link or form below to share your thoughts.

Related Posts:

As the following post list illustrates, I’ve been writing about this issue on and off for some time now. I used to use the word outsourcing to refer to sending jobs overseas. I later learned that was really called offshoring. But if you do read any of these, understand when I say outsourcing, I mean sending jobs overseas — not just sending jobs out of company.

• Outsourcing Blues
• Just Say No to Outsourcing
• Outsourcing, Continued
• Outsourcing — or “Offshoring” — Revisited (Again)

Thoughts and insights on a tough revision and the computer book publishing industry.

My last entry was pretty depressing. I was under a lot of stress to get the book done. Now that it’s done and the stress is gone, I’m feeling much better. The book is nothing short of a masterpiece, if I do say so myself, and I’m extremely pleased with it. We (Peachpit Press and I) got a lot of feedback from readers about previous editions. It seemed that my VQS wasn’t considered “good value for the money” because it didn’t have as many pages as other competing books. What most people didn’t consider was that VQSes are traditionally short (around 300 pages). Mine was actually long at about 400 pages. And it was considerably cheaper than the other books. But I guess if you calculated price per page, I probably fell a bit short of the competition. And I can’t deny that buying two books (a VQS and a VQP) does cost readers more money. In defense of Peachpit, the idea behind that strategy is that not all readers need all that information and we could provide affordable books tailored to two markets. But that’s not how reviewers saw the situation.

That said, we decided to combine the two books into one title. The resulting “Mac OS X 10.3 Panther: Visual QuickStart Guide” is about 670 pages long and features 20 chapters and over 2,000 screen shots. Topic range from the most basic basics (like how to point and click) to Unix commands. The price tag is an extremely competitive $29.95 US, making it a very good value. If this book doesn’t please readers, I don’t think any book will.

Writing the book was a bit of a challenge. First, there was the merging of the content from two books. What do we include? What do we exclude? Not much. The biggest casualty was the AppleScript chapter written by Ethan Wilde, which was replaced by an AppleScript basics section in the Applications chapter. (Those interested in AppleScript really ought to buy Ethan’s book!) Almost everything else that was in my Mac OS X 10.2 VQS and VQP remained in this edition.

Of course, everything has been updated for Mac OS X 10.3 Panther. That was the second challenge. Not just the update, but merging information about new features into existing chapters. Where do we discuss each new feature? Chapter 4, which is available as an excerpt from my Web site , got quite a few new pages. So did the i-Applications chapter, which was expanded to cover iCal and iSync (neither of which was available when I wrote the Mac OS X 10.2 VQS last year). The only chapter that got trimmed down a bit was the installation chapter. I cut out the info about installing Mac OS 9.2, since that information appears in the Classic Environment chapter.

There was a lot of pressure to finish the book on a timely basis. Timing is everything in the computer book publishing world and when a hot new product hits the market, publishers want their books out first. Trouble is, authors have to work with beta software, which often changes on a weekly (if not daily) basis to get the book done timely. Mac OS X 10.3’s beta software was available for about two months before the software was finally released. But the beta software changed. Any author who wrote about early versions of the beta wrote some stuff that isn’t right.

Want some examples? The first beta or two included a Print command under the Finder’s File menu. That command disappeared before I could try it out. Those first betas excluded a Favorites folder in the Sidebar. Sometime in the middle of the beta process, the Favorites folder reappeared. Then, near the end, it disappeared again. It was almost as if Apple wanted to kill favorites, thought they would get a lot of negative feedback, and then decided “to hell with the bad feedback” and killed it. (But favorites aren’t really gone, as you’ll discover when you read my book.) Icons changed, too. Internet Connect’s new icon didn’t appear until halfway through the beta process. Any screenshot of that icon taken before the beginning of October will be wrong.

So here’s the situation: publishers want the book written quickly. Once the book is written, it has to be laid out, proofed, edited, and printed. For most publishers, this is where time is lost. From the moment the author hands over the last manuscript chapter and TIFF files to the time the book appears in print, two or more months may have gone by. So do the calendar math: if the author waits until Gold Master of the software — on or around October 15 in this case — to finalize the draft manuscript, the book can’t possibly appear in stores until December 15. So what do authors do? Under pressure from publishers, they finalize before Gold Master. As a result, their books contain inaccuracies.

Peachpit and I don’t work this way. We have a remarkable arrangement. I do layout as I write, so I submit fully laid out pages as I work. My editors mark up this draft manuscript and I update pages as the software is changed and I get edits. As a result, when the software went Gold Master, we already had fully laid out pages for about 3/4 of the book. I wrote and laid out the rest the following week. This made it possible to send our completely accurate 650+ page book to the printer only three days after the software’s release date. I expect to hold a copy of the finished book in my hands by November 14 — just three weeks after the software’s release.

Any book that makes it to stores before mine can’t possibly be based on final Mac OS X 10.3 software. It’s just impossible. And that’s not an author’s fault. It’s the fault of publishers who don’t trust their authors to do layout. Peachpit trusts me and I don’t let them down.

Next on the agenda, Excel 2003 for Windows: Visual QuickStart Guide. Another revision — but this one should be a piece of cake.

Sometimes I feel like a machine.

Pardon me, but I’m about 2/3 of the way through the largest Visual QuickStart Guide I’ve ever written. This is book #55 and the sixth or seventh (I’ve lost count) edition of my bestselling Mac OS VQS for Peachpit Press.

The first edition covered Mac OS 8, years ago, and it was an instant bestseller. People were hungry for books about the new Mac OS software and mine was the only book available at Macworld Expo (although in limited quantities) when the software went on sale. It was three weeks before the second book came out. That was a nice competitive advantage.

The book went through some changes throughout the year. It got fatter and fatter with every edition until we decided to split it into two books, a Visual QuickStart Guide (VQS) and a Visual QuickPro Guide (VQP). The VQS got skinny all of a sudden, then started to fatten up again. The Mac OS X 10.2 edition is about 370 pages and the corresponding VQP is about 350.

Simple math should have told me that when we recombined the two books into one big fat VQS, the resulting book would be VERY FAT. I’m estimating about 650 pages right now. I was wondering a while ago why this book was taking me so long. It’s because I’m really writing two books that’ll fit between one set of covers.

And I do feel like a machine. I have the VQS thing down to a science. Two computers, one to work with the software on (an eMac “test mule”) and one to write on (a G4 “production machine”). A network connection dumping screenshots into my production machine. InDesign and Photoshop running all the time. Templates, libraries, style sheets. I can produce a page from scratch in about 30 minutes (if I don’t have to take time to figure out what I’m doing) and can revise a page in about 15. I’m a machine.

And I’m very tired. Burned out. Sick of taking screenshots and laying out captions and callouts.

I start work at 6 or 7 AM and work until I’m done with whatever I’m working on. Sometimes that means working until 6 or 7 PM. That’s a long day. But most days, I quit by 4 PM. Then I go home and try not to think about computers.

But I do admit that I still get a thrill out of seeing a good book in print. A “good book” is a book that I feel that I’ve done my best on. This book will be a good book. Well, at 650+ pages, it’ll probably be a GREAT book. And a real bargain for readers.

More another time. I’m going home.