Pull the fork back out?

So now the "Tapestry in Action" goes into production; a complicated process of copy editting, typesetting and marketing. One part of this is that I must go back through the manuscript and create the index, a new and mind-numbing procedure. In addition, it's looking good for Manning to public the book under MEAP (early access / online versions of the chapters).

I got some odd feedback from Maryan Bace (publisher at Manning) and Ted Neward about a previous blog. Ted felt that:

The last set of reviews were pretty positive, except for Ryan Cox who was, like, 95% positive, but really didn't like a few aspects of the book ... didn't like the Hangman example app, didn't like the sidebars and warnings, didn't like the deep investigation of the Virtual Library application. This is part of the process ... about fifteen different people have reviewed some or all of the book, and they disagree wildly. Mind Bridge, Geoff Longman, Greg Burd and Dave Buck think the book is aces, and they are my real target audience so I'm not exactly worried.

... was a slam on Ryan. If it could be interpreted that way, I apologize profusely. Both Ryan Cox and Bill Lear were the most negative about the book, and therefore the most useful. Both took considerable amount of time to really work through the manuscript and provide reams of questions, notes and challenges. That's how the process works ... it's suprisingly democratic; as the author, I'm required to respond to each and every reviewer comment. Responding to Bill's comments is what, in my opinion, kicked the book up from a pile of facts into a real, flowing, useful tome. Ryan's comments came later, and so couldn't have the same impact, but he definately zeroed in on particular areas that needed expansion and elaboration. The point of my original blog was that even someone who disagreed on some fundamental aspects of the book was still very positive about the book in general.