IT AS IS

Hello, Habr!
I am the author of several stories, the most famous of which is “Non-Volatile Solution” . I have been asked many times when will I write a book ( one , two , three , etc.). So, I wrote it. Under the cut will be the story of creation, thanks and competition. And at the very end - links to buy a paper version and the announcement of the free electronic version.

How it all began

I am an applied mathematician by education (although I haven’t applied mathematics anywhere), and by profession I am a programmer. Once I wrote an article for Habr about how poor development is cost-effective than good. Fortunately for everyone, before publishing, I re-read what I wrote and realized that the article was dull, and the world without it would be a little better. But I just didn’t want to throw out the text, and I reworked it into an artistic story, abundantly diluting it with images from one little-known work and observations from life. What happened was met unexpectedly well.

Inspired by the result, I wrote another storyabout the same topic. I received even more positive feedback (to say nothing, when I read comments on the story and private messages, I had endorphins from my ears), and with them a few suggestions from publishers. Of course, it was not a question of millions of royalties (there was no discussion of royalties at all, lol), but it became possible to publish a book with almost no investment on my part. And more importantly, there are people who want to read it.

The only thing left was to write the book itself.

Process

I must say, I never had problems with ideas. Every day two or three completely new ones are born in my head, crowding out those who were there before. And I began to record for myself. Almost like Lebedev . Evernote came in handy for drafts and notes , and I store the cleaners in the Ubuntu One cloud in LibreOffice Writer format. Another story was quietly written (it was inspired by the song of Olga Kochanova , heard on Grushenskoye, by the way), and in parallel with it were several chapters from the STARTUP story.

Then, under the influence of moods roaming on Habré, this. I decided not to spread the rest of the written stories, so that more of the new would fall into the book.

And all this time in the background was written the novel “Advice from Paris”. I don’t know how others write, but it turned out to be almost impossible for me to sit down and write the text from beginning to end. Therefore, at every moment I wrote only what I wanted to write about, and then, when there were a lot of fragments accumulated, I united them into one whole.

Sometime in November, I had a cunning plan. Slightly ahead of the events, I will say that the cunning plan was implemented on January 1 at seven in the morning in full accordance with the plan. Well, so that the picture was complete, I note that the cunning plan organically fits into the plot of the book.

File processing

When the manuscript (I write “manuscript” everywhere, although, of course, I did not write a single letter by hand) was almost ready, three questions arose: illustrations, editing, and typesetting.

I accidentally found an artist on one strange forum. What is especially important, we coincided with him the vision of the world and the love of graphics (my favorite artist, no matter how hard it is to guess, Escher) Therefore, there were practically no disagreements. The mistake was the incorrect setting of goals - initially I wanted each story and each chapter to have its own picture, a kind of picture book. This did not work out. The lesson I learned is that the number and size of pictures is best set based on layout to reduce the number of “hanging” lines and “blank” pages. Creating illustrations took more than a month. At this point I should give a link to the artist’s portfolio, but he wished to remain anonymous. So just say “thank you very much” to him. It's really great to work with you.

Editing your text yourself is pretty hard. After writing, it should take several days, or better weeks, otherwise the eye "becomes blurred" and does not see obvious jambs. Editing was done by my good friend, journalist Sofya Zhilina. It was just an overwhelming number of typos and extra commas. It's like checking an essay in school, just more fun. It took about three weeks to edit and fix the errors. The lesson is to give as much as possible checked text to editing and always read what is written out loud.

I did the layout myself. I did not encounter any particular difficulties and dealt with a total of ten hours, including adjusting the size of the pictures and arranging inextricable spaces.

Publishing house

Of all the proposals I received, I chose the publisher at the request of Prostobook and did not regret it. “On Demand” means that they print a book only when there is an order for it. If the circulation is large, then the price of one copy is higher than in a regular publishing house, but for small runs it’s the most. The book’s layout and payment for the publication of the author’s copy are received at the entrance to the publishing house, and at the output we receive the author’s copy in the mailbox and the book is sold in the online store with payment of a fee for each completed order. Prostobook works quickly and accurately, support quickly answers all questions, product quality at the level of printing. In general, if someone has a need to publish a book in this way - I recommend it.

My layout was moderated the first time in just a few hours. A few days later, a parcel with a printed book went on a journey. It would seem that the most difficult is behind. But then she got down to business ...

Post of Russia

It is a pity that the UFO removed the blog "I am resentful." But I still write an article about how the parcel went to me and what feelings I had when trying to get it. I’ll just say that by dividing the distance in a straight line from the departure point to the destination point for the time from the moment of departure to the moment of receipt, I counted 1.5 km / h. This is slightly less than the grasshopper’s flight speed and is inspiring . But everything ended well, good brought evil to its knees and shot in the back of my head , I wrote a total of four complaints, made three phone calls and took my package.

Competition

Initially, I wanted to give books to those who will pass the New Year’s quest , but, firstly, the collective consciousness does not have a mailing address, and secondly, no one guessed it completely.

Therefore, the book “IT AS IS” autographed by the author will receive:

• the one who comes up with the best decoding of the abbreviation STARTUP (or S.T.A.R.T.A.P.). The degree of "goodness" will be determined by the number of pluses and in my subjective opinion;
• one who guesses what the phone number and SMS text from "Internet Devices" means ;
• the one whose comment on this post will gain the maximum number of pluses.

Please write your options in the comments. I will send the books to the winners by the Russian Post as soon as the Russian Post delivers the ordered circulation to me.

Thank you for scrolling through to the end. Now the most important thing. Promised Link: Dmitry Lipkind IT AS IS buy . Free download without SMS will be exactly in a week, simultaneously with the results of the competition.

Well, thanks to the habrayuzers, who pointed out typos, encouraged and helped with advice. Sorry if I forgot someone.

Adrior , Atv , boh , d43 , Deeman , Denkol , DraX , ertaquo , grimich, jorikburlakov , ks_ks , Kumarunster , Lorien_Elf , MaGIc2laNTern , Malerok , micbsv , multik , nepx , obiwanus , Ramires , Saska , sl4mmer , SoLRoN , tyomitch , Volkman , zenon

Thank you!

UPD.
Forgot to mention, the book is licensed under CC-BY-NC-ND. If you liked her, you can support the author by transferring money to one of the following accounts:

• WebMoney (WMZ) Z308373224874
• WebMoney (WMR) R316631716963
• Yandex Money 41001416912882

If you donate more than 600 rubles or more than $ 20, then I will send you a book with an autograph as a gift. To do this, indicate your email address in the commentary on the translation. If you made a transfer for the indicated amount and want to receive a book, but forgot to specify an email, contact me .

UPD2
Results of the contest here . Download for free here .