Saturday, November 22, 2008

2nd AgileMan Book Nearing Completion

I'm now into the home stretch on More Real-Life Adventures of AgileMan (Year 2: Easier Said Than Done), as I'm about to embark on a final read-through before beginning the self-publishing process. I'm still awaiting feedback from one of my reviewers, but that seems to be par for the course in this sort of arrangement (the same thing happened with the first book, even though the set of reviewers this time is completely different). Depending upon when it arrives, this final array of comments may - or may not! - end up being reflected in the finished product. As tempting as it might be to hold things up and wait, I'm keenly aware (after 22 years of doing various types of projects) that it could end up being a long delay. So onward and upward we go!

Vicki and I spent some time toward the end of the week (after we'd concluded our Project Management guest lectures) designing the covers for the 2nd book and the collected edition. The former will use a standard Lulu cover image, just like the 1st AgileMan book did, but I'm doing something special for The Complete Real-Life Adventures of AgileMan (Two Years of Lessons Learned in Going Agile). And yes, that means I finally decided on a name for the collection! I've had 5 pre-orders placed for the bigger volume so far, and I think those generous souls will be amused, and maybe even pleased, to see what their book's cover looks like! I still have one more extra in mind for that edition that I'll probably take care of tomorrow.

If things go well this weekend, I hope to be placing an order for one copy of each of the two new books sometime very early in the week. With the American Thanksgiving holiday looming on the horizon, I imagine it may take more than the (now) standard two-week turnaround to get them, but I'll optimistically say that we might have the first proof copies in hand toward the end of the week of December 8th. If so, that would work out well for having the first big shipment arrive in time for early January distribution (an even luckier outcome would have the books show up before Christmas, but I don't see that as likely at this point).

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