Er. Yes. About that.
I never mentioned the “first quarter of 2020” date publicly, but because we are now past that date, this is a good time to talk about the status of the book.
The writing is done. The copy editing and revision is done. The cover design has gone through a few versions, and is probably close to being finalized. Planning is going on for production and promotion. But we’re not going to be close to that original planned publication date.
Part of the reason we slid past the planned publication date was my own fault. Copy editing took longer than I anticipated. I always knew it would be complex, but things that I didn’t think of cropped up, like getting permissions for quotes. And I was still teaching full course loads when the copy editing was going on. And it was partly because the copy editing wasn’t just text, either. I ended up revising a lot of figures, and even creating a few new ones.
But the other big reason it will still be some time before you can hold the Better Posters book in your hand is not my fault. There are more important things going on than my little book.
So you may have noticed we’re in the middle of a global pandemic.
Normally, if the book was coming out in the next few months, it would be leading into, or in the middle of, summer. Summer is peak conference season, but every scientific conference that I know of has been cancelled for 2020. It is the worst time ever to release a book about conference presentations.
Of course, that problem even assumes that the book could be physically printed over the next couple of months. Much of book production is digital now and can be done remotely, but there’s enough stuff involving moving atoms around instead of bits that printing and shipping a book would be somewhere between “slow and difficult” to “Shut up and get out, and take your impossible demands with you.”
We’d be doing nobody any favours trying to get this book out in the next few weeks. There’s no point. (Thanks, COVID-19!)
I am still hoping that you will be able to read this book before the end of the year, but only time will tell. It always does.
P.S.—The artwork at the top is a snippet of a cover concept! Just a teaser to show production is happening, and to give you a little more than authorial angst over publication delays.
P.P.S—Because the book is still in production and should still be released, I thought this was a good time to give the blog header a new look. You may notice it is a little more in line with the cover concept sample above than the old blog header.
This was my first project in the newest version of CorelDraw. I was excited to play with some of the new features, like variable fonts. Looking for references for the “Soon to be a major motion picture” sticker was also fun.