Re: OT - 68K Cross-compiler up for download

[zwsdotcom@gmail.com]

On Mar 24, 11:42 am, rtk <oneelkr...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> On Mar 24, 9:34 am, zwsdot...@gmail.com wrote:

> One last question (OT, but then the entire thread is :) ):

Oh, it's peripherally on topic at least :)

> Would you recommend searching for a publisher first, or writing the
> book and then shopping it around?

Depends on the circumstances. In the case of a novel, unless you're a
well-known author you don't really have a choice - nobody is going to
sign up an unknown fiction author on the strength of an outline, so
you just have to suck it up, write the whole thing, and be prepared to
wait for a year for an editor to read this unsolicited manuscript.

For a technical book, these are typically sold as an outline and maybe
a sample chapter. Technical publishers have a standard questionnaire
(publisher-specific of course) which asks various questions such as
"where will the book be used?", "can we expect to sell boxloads to
colleges?", etc. They will review the questionnaire and your outline
and other sample materials and make a committee decision.

While I'm not familiar with it directly, I spent some time helping a
co-worker look into getting some childrens' books published (she had
much the same questions as you, including the one about self-
publication), and the process for that market appears to be to write
the entire text and shop that to a publisher, who will then hook you
up with an illustrator.

There are many other possible processes though, depending on the
material chosen, the target market, and how much of a (published)
portfolio you can show to a prospective publisher. The key goal is to
remember that you're trying to demonstrate to the publisher that it is
worth their while to invest maybe $20k in advance, preproduction
(proofing and layout) and first-run printing costs, so the bullet
points are (a) prove you can write stuff people will pay to read, and
(b) show that the specific thing you want to write has a bunch of
people jumping up and down and waving dollar bills to read.

Feel free to contact me (using the real email address larwe at
larwe.com - I don't check gmail often) if you want to discuss it
offline.