This is the first part of an ongoing series about my experiences while writing the MySQL Admin Cookbook
for Packt Publishing. All parts can be found under the mysql-admin-cookbook label.
In a few past posts I wrote about different aspects of my book writing project already. However those posts were not very contiguous, and I was asked a few times what my general experiences were and what caveats to look out for when taking on such a project for the first time. It might be of interest to some if I write down my experiences in a little more structured form.
This will be a series of several posts, because for one I do not think it would be feasible to have a single very long one, and also because this allows me to span writing it over a longer time. I will try to keep everything roughly chronological, but will deviate when I think it makes things clearer or better to understand.
Please be aware that I do not have extensive experience with multiple publishers, their processes and so on. This is solely about my personal experiences while writing a single book, with a single publisher, over a time of roughly 15 months. So please do not take anything for granted – should you go on that route and write something yourself, you might find yourself in completely different circumstances and witness the whole matter completely differently.
As for getting in contact with the publishing company, I already wrote down my experiences with that here: http://www.danielschneller.com/2009/12/51-weeks-since-my-book-writing.html
However I will go into a little more "historical detail" for starters.