A Blog for Graymad

Alex Lowe accepted a postion with Microsoft as Technical Evangelist for .NET.

Alex is definitely one of the best ASP.NET developers I have met. Microsoft made a smart choice :)

Congratulations and Good luck.

[ScottW's ASP.NET WebLog]

Wow! Congrats, indeed, Alex! Microsoft is lucky to have you, and best wishes in your new role!

Roy writes:

I can't say these words any better:

"My shameful secret is out: I cannot write. I have been sitting for two hours now, my pen idling over my page. My mind is barren of fresh ideas, my thoughts are cranky and resistant. I have been calling to the winds for inspiration but it hasn't come. It's almost noon and my writing boat hasn't even left the shore."

... 

[The Imposter Syndrome: Feeling Like A Fraud]

(if you totally get what this is saying, you should read the whole article.)

I bet many of you have felt like this, god knows I have You know what? it's normal. this article changed my point of view so much, that I couldn't help but share it. So although it may seem off topic, it really isn't. 

[Roy Osherove]

Roy's right. Lots of us have felt this way. I've felt it many times especially when struggling over a given chapter or presentation, and the article (which you should read if you've ever thought someone someday is going to see through your façade of competence) is right that the more success one has, the more this feeling tries to creep in.

Mind you, I'd rather be successful and have doubts about how long it can last than not be successful at all. But in an ideal world, it would be nice to be able to get through writing a book or article, or giving a presentation, without wondering when someone's going to notice that I don't really know everything. Sure, it helps you keep your 'edge', but it also makes you...well...edgy.

just one more time that sun has completely, totally amazed me with their, well... badoingas.[Brady Gaster]

Seems that Sun's announced their intent to create a new IDE for Java. They also claim that they're going to get 10 million new developers with it. The phrase "pull the other one" comes to mind.

I also can't help but wondering whether perhaps Sun is attempting to replicate the success that Microsoft has had with their Visual Studio line, as well as the free Web Matrix Project (hmm...Web Matrix Project...Project Rave, no similarities there...at least it's not as obvious as JSP, or JDBC).

OTOH, even if Sun is following again, rather than leading, if they follow through and create a useful IDE for Java, that's all to the good IMO. The more solid tools there are for developers, the better. Whether or not Sun's claims of the developers that will flock to Rave are accurate or not, they still may have something useful to offer. After all, the developers of C#, while not cloning Java as some claim, certainly took advantage of the knowledge of what worked well in Java and what didn't. If Sun follows the same recipe with Project Rave, they may end up with a useful IDE, and one that Microsoft can learn from for their future tools.

Coming up next month (which is only about a week away, at this point), I'll be speaking at the Delmarva .NET User Group in Berlin, Maryland, on Monday August 4th at 6:30pm. The topic I'm speaking on is an overview of the ASP.NET Page class, and some of the useful, if overlooked, members it exposes.

If you're in the DC/MD/VA area, I hope you'll consider making the trip. Berlin, MD is only a short distance from Ocean City, MD, on the Eastern shore, so you could drive out, spend the day at the beach, and the evening learning about .NET.

Last, but not least, this event is another made possible by the wonderful folks at INETA. I can't say it frequently enough...if you run or are in a .NET user group, and you're looking for speakers or other resources for your group, you need to get in touch with the folks at INETA. They exist for the purpose of helping folks like you, and they're doing a great job of it. All you need to do is ask...they'll do the rest. OK, maybe they'll make you fill out a little paperwork, but it's well worth it. :-)

Last week, I was fortunate enough to get to spend some time in Redmond with one of the product teams, hearing about upcoming stuff. I won't tease you by hinting at what it was, and saying I can't talk about it. I'll just say...if you're a developer using .NET, or planning to use .NET, or interested in finding out about .NET, you need to go to the Professional Developer's Conference (PDC) this year. This year's PDC boasts information on Yukon (the next version of SQL Server), Longhorn (the next version of Windows), and most importantly for developers, Whidbey (the next version of Visual Studio). The preliminary agenda for this year's PDC shows the variety of topics to be covered.

So if you're a developer on the Microsoft platform (as most folks reading this blog probably are ), and you're only going to one conference this year...make it the PDC. I know I'll be there.

Scott Mitchell wrote an entry about the economics of book writing, and none other than Tim O'Reilly dropped by to comment on the issue:

One detail that you left out in describing royalty rates is that many publishers' contracts provide for different royalty rates for different types of sales. So you might see an attractive "top line" royalty rate, say 15%, and overlook the fact that international sales (perhaps 30-40% of all your sales), direct-to-consumer sales (another 5-10%), or deep-discount sales (which may happen to "big box" stores, or even the chains) receive only half that. Not only that, most publishers take our large "returns reserves", and many of them hang on to those reserves for a long time, if not forever. I remember one "for Dummies" author telling me that his nominal royalty rate was 10%, but that he never actually saw over 5%.
By contrast, at O'Reilly, we pay 10%, but we pay 10% on all sales.

...

Ask your publisher to estimate the total revenues for the book, and your total royalty take. It will just be a guess -- no one knows for sure how a book will do -- but it will help to ensure that you're on the same page.

Good points, but O'Reilly leaves out another important point, particularly in a soft book market...many book contracts used a tiered system for the main royalty rate (domestic sales), in which the first X copies pay you one percentage, while X copies to Y copies pay a higher rate. In some contracts, there's a third tier, above which the highest rate is paid. The important thing to note about this is that if you're negotiating a contract with such breakpoints in it, you need to make sure that the breakpoints are realistically achievable. It does you no good as an author to negotiate a really high second or third-tier royalty rate if you'll never reach the breakpoint.

I also want to thank both Scott and Tim for starting/continuing this discussion. It's definitely a good thing, IMO, for authors to have more information going in, so as to avoid getting burned, or ending up being very disappointed with the remuneration they receive for what is, in the end, very hard work.