Now that the Complete Guide to the Nikon D7000 is buttoned up and off to production, I'm going to open the pre-ordering process. It's "pre-order" because at the moment I'm not expecting to actually ship until at least March 9th, and I'm not yet sure how many copies I'll have in hand on the first day of shipments.
I use just-in-time, print-on-demand methods these days. If demand is too high initially, it might take a week or more to clear all early orders. The machine doesn't spit out that many 800+ page bound copies a day, after all. By taking pre-orders like this, I'll be able to keep the machines running so that I can clear first orders a bit faster than if I just guessed.
You may wonder why things have taken so long. It actually had nothing to do with my writing. The book was written by the time I left for Chile just before Christmas. First, there was the almost week-long delay in getting home from the workshop. Then the motherboard on my main work machine decided it didn't know that anything was plugged into it, necessitating a lengthy repair and restore process. And then there is something that has had me tearing my hair out (fortunately I've got a lot of it): eReaders aren't very good at reading, and Adobe's PDF standards aren't very standard.
Demand for reading my works on eReaders has been increasing over the years. I've actually always tried to support it. Early Sony eReaders had no problem with my files, for instance. But lately, well, there are some software developers that need to be taken out to the back shed and given a few whacks. Yes, I'm talking to you Adobe and Amazon.
Let's start with Adobe. Acrobat Pro has iterated several times in recent years, including the most recent version 10. Version 10 is, to put it mildly, one of the most wretched excuses for an upgrade ever made. Things moved, features went away, other features are no longer working the same, but there's nothing really new in the product other than the terrible UI. Seriously, Acrobat Pro 10 makes Capture NX2 look like a slick upgrade. So back to Acrobat 9, even though the point iterations on that have made some unwanted changes, too.
Meanwhile, up in Seattle, the Amazon programmers are all smoking their coffee grounds, apparently. Would you believe that the Kindle 1, Kindle 2, Kindle DX, and Kindle 3 (that last one is the current one) all have different PDF support? Files that work on one don't work on another. Trying to figure out what they're doing and why has been a serious time sink. I finally gave up trying to find a file format that all four Kindles could handle.
While I'd love to support everything, in the end I've decided to support only the following eReaders for now: B&N Color Nook, Amazon Kindle 3, Apple iPad using Goodreader. I'll test my PDFs on new products and updates on those three things. Other eReaders may work, but I won't be claiming that they do. Even the eReaders I am supporting seem to change constantly. Even as I was preparing the final files for production Amazon updated the Kindle 3 firmware and it appears to have changed some small things in PDF support.