My previous post described how O’Reilly does rapid releases, instead of waterfall-model releases, for book publishing. Since then, I’ve been working with the folks at O’Reilly to get the first milestone of my book ready.

As this is the first public deliverable of my first book, I had to learn a bunch of mechanics, asking questions and working through many, many details. Very time consuming, and all new-to-me, hence my recent silence. The level of detailed coordination is quite something – especially when you consider how many *other* books O’Reilly has in progress at the same time.

One evening, while in the car to a social event with friends, I looked up the “not-yet-live” page to show to friends in the car – only to discover it was live. Eeeeek! People could now buy the 1st milestone drop of my book. Exciting, and scary, all at the same time. Hopefully, people like it, but what if they don’t? What if I missed an important typo in all the various proof-reading sessions? I barely slept at all that night.

In O’Reilly language, this drop is called “Early Release #1 (ER#1)”. Now that ER#1 is out, and I have learned a bunch about the release mechanics involved, the next milestone drop should be more routine. Which is good, because we’re doing these every month. Oh, and like software: anyone who buys ER#1 will be prompted to update when ER#2 is available later in Oct, and prompted again when ER#3 is available in Nov, and so on.

You can buy the book-in-progress by clicking here, or clicking on the thumbnail of the book cover. And please, do let me know what you think – Is there anything I should add/edit/change? Anything you found worked for you, as a “remotie” or person in a distributed team, which you wish you knew when you were starting? If you were going to setup a distributed team today, what would you like to know before you started?

To make sure that any feedback doesn’t get lost or caught in spam filters, I’ve setup a special email address (feedback at oduinn dot com) although I’ve already been surprised by feedback via twitter and linkedin. Thanks again to everyone for their encouragement, proof-reading help and feedback so far.

Now, it’s time to brew more coffee and get back to typing.

John.