Need your help for my books on Squeak

stéphane ducasse ducasse at iam.unibe.ch
Wed Sep 22 07:47:28 UTC 2004


Hi all,

Some context:
I was under contract with Morgan Kaufman Publisher for publishing two 
books on teaching novices how to program with Squeak. I went over two 
complete reviews, rewrote big parts of the books, changed my 
environment to following the ideas of my editor.....over the last 3 or 
4 years. Note that Alan Kay agreed to write a small foreword for the 
books. I spent a lot of my vacation and nights on these book. Since 
June this year (now we are mid september) I was waiting to get english 
corrections for the first book,  and I had no schedule since more than 
6 months so I asked my editor if this would not be smarter that we 
break the contract. He replied laconically that yes this was possible, 
I got several emails exchange with him but apparently the situation 
cannot be solved (I think that he is taking advantage of his position 
since I invested much more than him, in his last email he implied that 
I was not asking useful or sincere questions when I ask why he did not 
give me a schedule) so my contract is now broken because this is not 
possible to work with such a kind of people.  The funny thing is that 
two years ago this person told me that I could have my own series with 
MKP.  Time passes apparently and things change.
So I let you deduce if this is wise to get book published by MKP and if 
this is wise to buy them. I have made my own
argumented opinion on that topic.

Some facts about these books:
	- Using a logo like robot, the first book presents basic principles of 
programming: variables, loops, procedural 	abstraction, parameters, 
conditional, small problems, the second one introduces another 
environment
	in which we have to program a robot to find his way into mazes, follow 
sign...Then it introduces object-	oriented programming.

	- My audience is really parents or teachers that want to have fun with 
their kids or students.

	- The contents of the books has been tested in classrooms over the 
last 3 or 4 years here in Switzerland. I use 	Squeak but I build a 
dedicated environment for kids. My book is not about etoy programming 
but about how 	students can learn basic principles of programming using 
this environment in a problem-oriented way.

	- These books got around two full reviewing circles ( I was waiting 
for the english review to get the first one 	done).

	- Note that these books fit perfectly in the market since it arrives 
after the Etoy book published by the 	Kim Rose (www.squeakland.org) and 
before the book of Mark Guzdial.  Note that for example a japanese 
	book on etoy sold last year 5000 copies only in japan. The people 
behind squeakland told me that:  "We 	guesstimate about 1500-2500 
downloads per month on average and about 8000 unique visitors a month." 
so 	there is a big interest in the teacher community for squeak. 
Squeakland accepted to advertise my book on their 	site too.

	- Extremely early drafts can be found at: 
http://kilana.unibe.ch:9090/botinc/

Now I would like to know:
	- whether you have any contact with other editor in other publishing 
companies.
	- whether you have ideas how to publish this book (may be with a print 
on demand system).
	- whether you would be interested to prove read my english if I just 
put the pdf on the web.



Stef




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