One of the things I’ll be trying to figure out here is whether the notion of blog comments-based feedback is enough. Perhaps not. But … let’s see how that goes. :)
First, and most obviously, thanks to everyone that’s commented here, written me email, or pinged me on Twitter. The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, which I appreciate. I should respond to a few of the more common types of comments I’ve received.
Tip jar/donations. At least a few people have mentioned the notion of a virtual tip jar or whatever. Don’t worry about that: I’ll be using parts of this book as inspiration for feature focus articles on the SuperSite going forward—and yes, I mean “inspiration,” not “cut and paste”—and so on, where there are ads and a revenue stream. I’m doing this book as an experiment of sorts and want to see how it goes. And I really care about Windows Phone, so it’s something I want to fully explore. As with the original Windows Phone Secrets book, the goal was largely about forcing myself to learn something inside and out, not to make money. As with that book, I expect to be successful at both here as well. :)
Other topics. A few people have asked about other topics such as Microsoft Office 2013. I picked Windows Phone for a number of reasons, but aside from sheer enthusiasm/advocacy, it’s fair to say that Windows Phone is an approachable, finite topic that can be effectively covered in a far smaller space than something big and complicated like Office, or other topics I considered, like “Learn Windows 8 Programming with Paul” or whatever. There will be other projects in the future, but let’s worry about one book at a time.
Rafael. I of course discussed this book with Rafael before I went public with it. Rafael and I speak every day, often for hours, and while I did give him the offer of a lifetime—something like “you can have 50 percent of the $0 I’ll make, 75 percent of the $0, whatever, it’s you’re call—he won’t be formally writing the book with me. That said, I will be discussing this with him regularly, probably almost daily, and I bet you see a lot of him here. (The “nutter” thing is an inside joke. Please bear with us.)
Publishing end-points. I’ve gotten a few questions about the formats this can/will be published in, and my goal is for this to happen in as many formats as possible (as well as in native apps, etc.) So if you need/want ePub, or whatever, I don’t see any reason why that won’t be the case. The trick, here, of course, is that the book will start happening at some point, and I suspect the first many number of drops will be whatever format only, like PDF or Word format or similar. But as it gets closer to something real, I’ll need to start thinking about those other formats. I may need help with conversion, etc. But that’s for the future.
Site template. As many of you have noticed, I’m using Squarespace for this blog, and have been waiting for an excuse to try it out. I have done less than nothing to modify the look and feel of the site, but will do so in the near future. I guess that’s not a huge priority, but it will happen. I want it to look nice, and have some sort of non-infringing Windows Phone “style.”
Other ways of publishing. A few noted other forms of book publishing, like MEAP (Manning Early Access Program) and what Ed Bott’s doing with his Windows 8 title. I’m not familiar with either, sorry, but if I’m understanding this properly, and perhaps using Charles Petzold’s new Programming Windows book as a guide, those publishing styles are a bit more like traditional publishing than I’d like. I don’t want to write 5 or 8 chapters or whatever and then present it to the world. I want to write parts and then present it much more frequently—perhaps daily in many cases—so I can get feedback immediately. So while I will be the one writing the book, per se, it will be heavily influenced by feedback and, hopefully, made into something that is more complete/concise/correct … or just “better.” I can already write a book, I’ve written something like 25 of them. I don’t want to do that this time. And if this works out, this is the future.
Compared to wiki/help file/etc. Many have compared the plan here to a crowd-sourced wiki, help page, or similar, and that’s probably fair. One thing I’ll bring to this, however, is a book structure. There will be a “cover,” front matter with introduction, “chapters,” and so on. It will be structured something like a book. I think. We’ll see. :) That said, there are issues around referencing other parts of the book. For example, in a book like Windows 8 Secrets, we will have a line like, “we discuss this feature more in Chapter xx” or whatever. While writing what I think of as a book-book, these passages are often highlighted in yellow so we remember to go back and make sure they’re always correct. There are absolutely mechanical parts of this process I’ve never had to deal with before. But the structure of this book—by “chapter,” by topic, by scenario, or however it comes out—will help drive this. Ideally, the book will be structured in such a way that one could read it front to back or just cherry pick topics and not worry about referencing other parts too much.
Hyperlinks. In a similar vein, a true, electronic-only title could have lots of hyperlinks in it for moving around in the book. I suspect this will be part of it, but we’ll need to figure out how to handle those links in the “print” and eBook versions. Maybe just traditional references.
Specific content ideas. A few people have made suggestions about the types of things that could be in the book. One thing I wanted to include in Windows Phone Secrets but had to cut because it was just too early in the product’s lifetime and the information/capabilities just weren’t there yet was the notion of a “how to transition to Windows Phone from other platforms” chapter. This should of course be a part of this book. But I’ll begin the discussion about how I view the content/topic/chapter list soon. Obviously, this one has sort of been preoccupying me lately.
Research. One thing that you may find interesting is how I cull information. One of the next posts will be a deconstruction of the Windows Phone Summit event from June which is still, I believe, Microsoft’s only major public communication about Windows Phone 8. I’ll watch the video, take notes, and show how I’d break what’s in there down into specific parts of the book. I’ll do similar breakdowns for other sources of information I already have, too, and in the future will do so from meeting notes and future events.
OK, hopefully I didn’t miss anything. I’ll be commenting inline in the comments section normally, of course, but I just wanted to kick this off in way that makes sense for where we are at the beginning of this.
I think the next thing will be a topic breakdown. One thing I’ve learned from doing this for so long is that the first version is always a mess, and will always change.