Wanted: Potential Python Authors

[William Park]

Lothar Scholz <llothar at web.de> wrote:
> On Wed, 12 Jun 2002 08:03:35 -0500, "Jeff Donahoo"
> <Jeff_Donahoo at Baylor.edu> wrote:
> 
>>I'm looking for somebody to author a short book on Python in my programming
>>technology series.  Who do you think would make a great author that hasn't
>>already written a book on Python?  Candidates include:
> 
>>- Competent and frequent posters to this newsgroup
> This can be an indicator. 
> 
>>- Author of articles in the various trade magazines
> You really mean "trade" magazines ?
> Normally they are written by marketing peoples who don't
> have the competence to write more then a 4 page overview.
> Hands off !!!!
> 
>>- Expert programmer
> No, definitely not. Most programmers are not trained on writing
> tutorials or books - and normally they are really bad.
> Look more for someone trained as technical writer.

Bull.  I agree about trade magazines above, though there isn't any magazine
covering Python.  But, whether you want "techical writer" or "real
programmer" would depend on your target audience.

If your audience is people who needs some hand-holding and will never
re-read the book again, then you may want "technical writer".  But, if your
audience is people who learned C from "K&R book" over the weekend and
learned Awk/Bash from manpages, then you may want "real programmer" who can
write.

There is no such thing as "trained as writer", whether it's for computer
books or fiction/nonfiction novels.  You either can write or you can't.

-- 
William Park, Open Geometry Consulting, <opengeometry at yahoo.ca>
8-CPU Cluster, Hosting, NAS, Linux, LaTeX, python, vim, mutt, tin