Looking back over my Junk Folder I have accumulated over 22,000 pieces of spam over the past six weeks. That averages out to one spam email every three minutes every day of the year, or over 175,000 spams per year.
This fact is evident when coming back from a trip or vacation where I haven't checked my email in several days. I start Outlook and see it has ~1,600 email messages to download, which of course takes a good stretch of time. I leave the computer and do other things, letting the spam move from my ISP's server to my computer. Then, maybe 30 minutes later, I go back to my computer and, from that 1,600 deluge, there are maybe 100 for me, maybe three or four of which are from someone that I know/met/talked to. (Most non-spam emails I get are from people who've read my books and/or articles and have questions either about the book/article or some other general ASP/ASP.NET question.)
Fortunately, those ~1,500 spams don't clog up my Inbox. SpamBayes correctly flags and deletes over 99% of the crapola that is sent to me.
My latest book, Teach Yourself ASP.NET 2.0 in 24 Hours, is now available at online and “brick and mortar” bookstores! I wrote more about this over at my technical blog in the entry, Hot Off the Presses - Teach Yourself ASP.NET 2.0 in 24 Hours!
As an author the most rewarding day in the life of a book is the day you are sent your author copies. When signing the author agreement many, many months ago, there is typically a clause that promises the author X copies of the finished book to give out to user groups, friends, family, coworkers, and so on. What follows are months filled with arduous writing, interspersed with reviews and the early stages of editing. The length of this stage depends on the number of authors, the length of the book, and the productivity of the author(s). My experience has been 3 to 4 months of writing, on average, but keep in mind that I'm verbose and that's typically writing three to four days a week for maybe six hours per day.
After the book has been written and the chapters submitted to the publisher, there's typically a month of author review, which involves the publisher editing the content for grammar and layout along with some technical editing/reviewing. Following that there's silence. The book is in the hands of the publisher as they put together the layout, get the book printed, have any accompanying media pressed, package everything, and distribute to the bookstores' warehouses. So after 3 to 4 months of really hard and tiring work, followed by a month (or two) of lightweight author review, there's 2 to 3 months of quiet. And then, it happens. That box of books arrives in the mail, your author copies. You get to hold in your hands the fruit of your labors. Those words that were just ones and zeros on your computer several month ago are now paper between your fingers. I imagine it's similar (albeit a very muted version) of what it must feel like to hold your child for the first time after their birth.
Today I received my author copies of my latest book, Teach Yourself ASP.NET 2.0 in 24 Hours (which is now available for purchase from online and local bookstores (ISBN 0672327384))! The book's first words were typed into Microsoft Word back in September 2005 and today, six months later, they are paper underneath my fingertips.
(In case you're wondering, the second most rewarding day for an author is when he sees it for the first time in a bookstore, sitting there proudly on the shelf. On a side note, if you ever do stumble across any of my books in a bookstore, please take a moment to turn it cover-out. That is, turn it so that the cover is facing outward, rather than just the spine. Thanks! :-)
Seven down, who knows how many more to go....................................