My First Book Hitting The Shelves Soon

It’s taken quite some time and amount of work but my first book is hitting the shelves soon.  When I say “my” I should clarify that I’m just one of the many contributors, with me having 4 chapters to my name.

I got an email from the publishers (Sybex) to say that “Mastering Windows Server 2008 R2” was shipping from the warehouses this week.  I’m told that it will be available from retail outlets within the next month.  Localised versions (if there will be any) will take longer.  I’m supposed to be getting my 2 free copies this week.  Of course, being a good mama’s boy the first one will be going down home.

It was expected to be 1200 pages.  We tried to include W2008 and W2008 R2.  That was because we didn’t produce a W2008 book as planned originally.  That was the original project I was working on in 2007/2008.  There would be 3 W2008 books, the first being very basic, the second covering the 80% of stuff that we all need to know and the third covering the advanced stuff.  Things happened and there were delays.  Eventually it became a pointless task because R2 was coming and it was probably going to have a bigger place in the market than the original Windows Server 2008, thanks to things like Hyper-V and “better together”.  It was decided to focus on W2008 R2 in a single book but also draw in W2008 because it is still out there.  R2 brought us so much new material that the pages kept flowing.  Eventually 1200 pages became 1500 pages.

You should start seeing it on the shelves soon in all good book stores and a few rubbish ones too.  If you have ordered from Amazon then your poor postman will be dragging it to your door quite soon.  I’ve read that Sybex are now selling soft versions of their books rather than “treeware” so that might be an option for you mobility aware folks.