Daniel Roy Greenfeld

Daniel Roy Greenfeld

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Two Scoops of Django is in print!

2013-4-17

Since I was a child I wanted to be a published author. I've dreamt of people reading my book. While one could say that dream was fulfilled when we launched the e-book version in January, it's not the same as seeing the printed copy. Today I got to see my dream come true, a printed book is out there with my name on it.

Also, I have a confession to make. When it comes to technical books, I really prefer the print version. For me, nothing beats being able to flip through pages of a hardcopy next to a keyboard, or simply reading while I'm on a bus, train, or plane. So this adds to my excitement when I get to say that the book that Audrey Roy and I wrote together is in print.

Note: As of April 17th it's only available in the US. However, it's in the queue for being available for Amazon Europe. Enough people are asking that we are also looking into getting it bulk shipped to Django Circus.

While it's been an amazing journey, it's also been a long hard road. Starting with a late night dinner with Randall Degges, his wife Samantha, and Sean Bradley, to spending hours upon hours writing and revising, to taking painfully honest critiques from mentors, to alpha launch, then rewriting the book followed by the beta launch. It wasn't easy, but the growing volume of positive feedback and suggestions from readers kept us going.

Between the Alpha and Beta releases we switched over to LaTeX. Audrey taught it to me in February, and I'm proud to say I've progressed from absolute neophyte to beginner. We chose it because of it's fine-grained control over layout for the PDF and print versions. Creating the Kindle and ePub versions from LaTeX was harder thanks to using LaTeX, but everything's automated now so making updates is easy. Future editions of this book (1.6, 1.7, etc) or other technical books I hope to write will continue to be in LaTeX, but if I publish fiction I'll probably go with RestructuredText.

While working on the final version we were greatly saddened by the death of Malcolm Tredennick, to whom the book is dedicated. We miss him terribly. I've tried to write about Malcolm's volume of his contribution to the book, but it's still too hard. For now, let's just say that he gave and taught us so much and asked us for nothing in return, which is why we continue to give free copies of the PDF edition of the book to developers in need, as well as try to stay in contact with all recipients of the free PDF.

In fact, if you are a developer in need, and can't afford a copy, drop us a note at 2scoops@cartwheelweb.com explaining your situation. Our quick rule of thumb is that if you can afford to buy games for your favorite device, then you can afford to buy our book. Also, please do your friends a favor and don't just give them a copy without having them ask us. Why not? Well, we update the book frequently, and have a strong commitment for adding security related content even now that the final edition is out.

What now? Well, we aren't certain. We're maintaining a couple client projects but aren't taking on new ones. We've got a couple projects we're working on and I'm talking employment with a couple companies who do good things for the community.


Tags: python twoscoops book django
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