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> > >Is there a newsgroup or listserv for authors to discuss publishers,
> > writing, and so on? <snip>
> >
> Chris Benz replied:
> > I don't know of one, but I'd sure be interesting in joining. Are there any
> > truly Internet-savvy authors out there who'd like to help?
> >
> It seems to me that the vast majority of the discussion I would envision
> happening within such a group would be of interest to techwhirlers.
> Notice that no one (as of this minute) has torched the discussion of
<snip>
< Wouldn't most discussions of relations between
> authors and publishers (to use one example of what might come up in such
> a new list) also be of at least enough, what, ?collateral? interest to be
> carried on this list?
There are a *large* number of us who at one time or another have made a fair
amount of money doing books for publishers, who qualify as "authors." I've
done 31 software books, for a number of publishers, but of late have been doing
more garden-variety "technical writing" because, frankly, it pays better.
Vastly better.
Most of the authors of technical books move in and out of "technical writing"
projects or programming assignments or whatever, because most of us are
contractors to the core. (There are exceptions, of course: a few technical
books are written in what passes for free time by someone who also has a
salariied job.)
The single best place for questions and answers re: the technical book market
I've found on the net thus far is right here, in bit.listserv.techwr-1. The
single best concentrated conference solely aimed at the technical book market,
IMHO, is the conference put on by Waterside Productions, in February or March,
in San Diego. You can contact Waterside at (619) 632-9190 for more information.
Many of us frequent issue-specific fora on CompuServe and AOL as well,
and topic-specific newsgroups on the net, particularly if we want to remain
"experts" in a selected field.
