Work on Apache Essentials is winding to a close... I have some edits left to do on the final three chapters, but they don't seem to be too detailed. I'm aiming to be done all of the edits and loose-end tying (for example, the text on the back cover of the book) by Monday.

Read on for my experience writing the book.

A little backstory.

In April, 2002, after my job at Merilus disappeared (along with everyone elses), a friend of mine who was working for a tech website managed to land a writing contract for me with her company.

I managed to knock off several articles for the site focusing mostly on CSS and HTML. After a few articles, however, I decided to branch off and start covering other topics. One of these topics was configuring Apache, describing the process in simple, clearly understood terms.

In October, 2002, I was approached by Glasshaus, a publication company out of the UK. They were publishing a book on Intranet Design and had one of their authors drop out. They needed someone to write a chapter on planning for an Intranet, and I just so happened to want a little extra money. We struck a deal, and I blitzed through the chapter (in fact, I was done the chapter before the contract could make its way to Canada through the courier).

After finishing the chapter for the Intranet book, I started talking with my project editor and pitched him the idea for a layman's guide to Apache. The idea behind the book was to aim it towards web designers and developers; people who were intimate with the web, but not necessarily conversant with the command-line interface, the technologies behind web servers, or used to text-based configuration files.

Shortly after I'd worked out a tentative outline with him, I received an email saying that the company had gone under. I never received a dime for the work I'd done on the Intranet book, and my book on Apache wouldn't see the light of day.

I didn't think about it much after that. I had the occassional thought that I should just start writing it myself, maybe for publication on the web as a series or something... but never had the time to actually sit down and start writing. Besides, I had other things -- like trying to find a day job -- that distracted me from it.

Then, in October 2003, I received an email from the project editor I had built the outline with. It turned out that he was hired by the company that had bought all of Glasshaus's intellectual property, and he was wondering if I was still interested in writing it.

I said yes, and he started to look for a second author to help write the book. I was a little bummed at the thought of having to share the book, but at the same time didn't want to make any waves about it, since they were going to let me write for them at all.

When the editor asked me to select which chapters I wanted to write, I chose as many as I could; by that time, they'd already found the other author and (because the editor and the other author both lived in the UK), he'd already chosen 3 chapters.

I mentioned to the editor that I was a little worried about the second author, and we arranged to have me read through and change their writing to match the tone I wanted to create in the book. We started writing in late November, when contracts were finally sorted out.

Writing the book

I've had a couple people say, "Wow! You wrote a whole book?" when I tell them about Apache Essentials. It seems like a pretty daunting task, especially when you consider that the average computer book is 300 pages long or so.

But it's really not that bad. With a book like Apache Essentials, you're not really writing a single monolithic work. You're writing a series of related articles. When you start looking at it like that, it really takes a lot of fear out of the writing process.

Now, that being said... it's still not an incredibly easy task. The pressure to write quickly is intense, especially when you're dealing with a medium that becomes deprecated and obsolete quickly. I'm writing my book using Apache 1.3.29 and 2.0.48; new versions could come out in a month that completely derail things I've written in the book (not likely, but it could happen). There's a lot of pressure to get your writing in quickly, and the contracts are written to reinforce this.

Fortunately, I work really well under deadline pressure (would almost dare say I work best under deadline pressure). I was writing, on average, a 15-20 page chapter every week.

Unfortunately, there was complete silence from the second author. I didn't notice at first; I was working my ass off to get my writing done, and so I assumed he was as well. Since I didn't vet my chapters with the other author before sending them to my editor, I assumed he was doing the same.

It wasn't until I had a break in the work and decided to ask my editor to send me the first chapter the author was working on, so I could make sure it didn't conflict with what I was writing that I started feeling like something was wrong. The editor hadn't heard anything from the other author.

We finally did head back from the author a couple of weeks later, after both the editor and I had sent him emails. He apologized, said that he was incredibly busy, and he'd have the chapter for us by next week. A few more weeks passed, again without a single peep from the other author. At this point, I decided that I wasn't going to lose the book because of a lazy, non-producing author, so I started talking with my editor and project manager, pushing to get something from the other author. I also offered, to ensure the book stayed afloat, to pick up the other author's chapters.

Finally, in late February (three months after writing began), the editor sent the other author an email saying "Pony up the chapter before Monday or you're off the book". The other author acquiesced, said that he never really had time to write the book in the first place, and pulled out of the contract. Since I'd expressed interest already in writing the other chapters to keep the book afloat, they were given to me.

The good side? The royalties are all mine, baby! Apress's royalty schedule is fairly generous; I get a decent royalty percentage, which increases in size as more books are sold (hint: buy my book, and tell everyone you know to buy my book. If you're an educator, use my book in a class).

The bad side? If the book sucks, and doesn't do well in the book stores..... it's all my fault, since there's no other author to blame. :)

After the first couple of chapters, I settled into a writing routine. I wrote mainly on the weekends, and sometimes in the evenings after work at home. I tried writing out of the house, but was either too distracted, or unable to get a wireless connection to the 'net for research or SSH to my dev box at home.

Almost all of the book was written on the laptop, sitting in my favourite brown 1950s chair with a blanket over my legs. For whatever reason, this was the only place I could manage to write without distraction (funny, since it's in a place that lets me see all of the main floor of the house).

Kirsten is a champion for putting up with the lack of my presence in the house, and working around my schedule to get things done as far as home repairs are concerned - I landed the book deal shortly before we moved into the house, and much in the way of home renovation has come up since then. She deserves a big gold star for her efforts.

Sitting now at the end of the whole process, I'm exhausted. I would have liked a little longer to write the book. I'm still going to work hard to get all the changes in this weekend, and I still have the copy editing phase to go through (for an author, copy editors are gold... they actually make you sound like you know what you're talking about!). Part of this is my fault - I set my original schedule in November, remembering through rosy-lensed glasses what my experience ni Practical Intranets was. It didn't occur to me that a) it wasn't sustainable to work full-bore, and b) that the house would become a priority as well.

I really wish I had taken control of the second author's work earlier. Parts of his responsibility were tied into what I was writing about. If I had had more control over it earlier, it could have been better integrated.

But in the end, I'm extremely happy with the resulting book, and I'm itchy to do it all over again on another topic. The prospect of seeing my name on the bookshelf at the local Chapters is pretty damned exciting; the idea of being sold at the UBC bookstore (where they're selling the Practical Intranets book) is even more so.

In the end, I'm happy I wrote this book, and even happier that I did it all on my own. I'm an author!