On Sat, 13 Jun 2009 14:59:03 -0500, Mueen Nawaz wrote:

> 	Step 3 is what I don't know anything about, given that I haven't
> published anything. However, if no one else has written a book on it,
> and the publisher knows there's a market, why wouldn't they publish it?

Well, there's a few reasons they wouldn't - they may not understand that 
the subject hasn't been covered before (first book we had that problem - 
tried to publish through the software developer's imprint at Sybex, and 
the acquisitions editor said "why do we need a book on that?  We already 
have one." - problem was, the one we wrote was troubleshooting, the one 
they had was design.  Two different subjects).

We shopped it around to one other publisher, and they picked it up, no 
problem.

But I've also seen books where the author didn't know what they were 
talking about and the publisher picked it up.  There was one notorious 
one that Peter (my co-author) dubbed "the book from Hell" because the 
publisher asked him to do the technical review and he basically ripped it 
apart.  It was *awful*.  So the publisher said "fine, if you think you 
can do better, go ahead."  So he ended up rewriting it and getting author 
credit on that one as well (along with 4 or 5 other people I know; I'd 
have to look, but I don't think I wrote anything but did some technical 
review myself on it).

Jim

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