Erik's making a change and
mostly going solo ... mostly. That's awesome. Best of luck! <cough>Erik ... Use
blojsom</cough>.
Again, best of luck.
Further to his suggestion to those out there thinking you can write a book (
Buy Erik's book) and live the phat (oh, that's fat with ph folks) life drinking Kristal by the case and basically doing what you want to do on a daily basis ... well, you can ... it just has to be a best selling book about a
wizard kid with an evil archnemesis.
But seriously, you should not go into the book writing "thing" without accepting the fact that writing a best selling
technology book is a hard thing to do. Hell, Andy and I wrote what I consider to be a good technology book (Buy
"Java Internationalization") about an area of software development that most developers treat as an afterthought. And this is still the only comprehensive reference about developing internationalized software in Java available. Collation, formatting, searching and sorting, UIs, input methods, and yes, resource bundles ... <prego>It's in there</prego>.
Write a book because it will make you a better writer. Write a book because when it's translated into Japanese, for example, you'll pimp it around the office going, "I can't read a word, but look ... it's in Japanese!" Write a book for professional development because you're an expert on the subject. Write a book because after the first, you learn what works and what doesn't in the writing process and the second one isn't that bad and is usally a chapter in a collected work (Buy
"Java Enterprise Best Practices"). Write a book because that new 1GHz Powerbook you buy to work on the book becomes a tax writeoff. Write a book to make your parent's proud. Write a book because it will make you think long and hard about that first dedication. I reproduce the dedication from our first book here:
Finally, I am dedicating this book to my sister, Pam Czarnecki. You wrote your first book, My Pet, while in the first grade. It contained six sentences and three illustrations. It also contained the following dedication: "I dedicate this book to my brother, David." I am sorry it has taken me so long to do the same for you.
