Okay, this is cool now. It was at 15,000 a few days ago. Hah! My book has
a better sales rank than The Joy of Sex!*

Amazon Sales Rank
Ruzek, WO-WACK	136,795
Termini, Professional WO with Java	95,501
Mendis, WebObjects Developer’s guide	40,217
The Joy of Sex	12,506
Marker, VQP:WO	9,980
The Joy of Cooking	5,071
The New Joy of Cooking	569
Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People	102
Covey, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People	91

*I make no claims that my book is better than actual sex.

Galleys are in for the first few chapters of the new book. It looks fantastic!

I recently was told that my old book, Inside WebObjects: Discovering WebObjects for HTML or some other such ungainly title, is included in the box with the new version of WebObjects and has been ordered up for another press run. Apple didn’t tell me, of course; Nobody tells me anything. I didn’t find out until a friend bought the new version and congratulated me.
They finally replaced the old cover (this one), too, but I haven’t seen the new one.

Just got this from my editor, regarding a section we’ve been working on:

I knew she’d see it my way eventually.

This is on the Amazon web page for my new book:

Customers who wear clothes also shop for: Clean Underwear from Amazon’s Target Store Ladybug Rain Boots from Amazon’s Nordstrom Store Arm Warmers from Amazon’s Urban Outfitters Store Cheetah Print Slippers from Amazon’s Old Navy Store For a limited time get $30 to spend at Amazon when you spend $50 in Amazon’s new Apparel Store!

“Customers who wear clothes”? It’s just this kind of erudite elite I expect to be reading my stuff. What’s especially amusing is that I wrote most of it naked.

This is disgusting. My book is no longer an advanced WebObjects book; that I can tolerate. But now it’s become a book for drooling cretins. “Change the variable declaration to read thus” I say, and my editor says, “Don’t use jargon.”

I tell them to open ‘the component you wish to edit’ and he says, “be specific. Which component?”

‘change X to Y to create a variable of type int’, I say, and he says, “where? You need to hold their hand here.” There’s one bloody dialog on the screen. I described it in the previous step, and there are three screen shots showing it. How about, “click the mousey-wousey on the cute little button thingy, and make bad mister “java.lang.String” go away with the big ‘ol backspace button.”

I am writing a book for skilled programmers, but I can’t assume they know anything about programming.

It’s not jargon. It’s terminology. It’s for grown ups. Skilled, intelligent people who supposedly know what a method signature is. Christ.

It makes me want to throw in the entire thing and leave. Why waste my hands working on such a thing, in such an environment? There’s no shame in a job well done, but I’d rather be a penthouse whore than the equivalent of a purveyor of truck-stop bathroom-stall handjobs.

My editor just told me that my book is ‘impenetrable’ and needs to be more ‘accessible’. Specifically, under one instruction (“Save the component and close the window”) he commented, “How? Be specific.”

I apologize in advance.