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book release date

12 replies on 1 page. Most recent reply: Nov 16, 2008 8:17 PM by William Robertson

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Jan Van Besien

Posts: 8
Nickname: jvb
Registered: Feb, 2008

book release date

Posted: Sep 2, 2008 12:26 AM

Hi

What's the latest estimate for the release date of the paper version of the book? The website says around 30 august, which is a few days ago...

thanks
Jan

Bill Venners

Posts: 2284
Nickname: bv
Registered: Jan, 2002

Re: book release date

Posted: Sep 2, 2008 3:19 AM

Hi Jan,

Yes, sorry, I updated it to September 30.

Bill

Jan Van Besien

Posts: 8
Nickname: jvb
Registered: Feb, 2008

Re: book release date

Posted: Sep 29, 2008 4:19 PM

Today is the 30th of september (at least where I live already). Has a shipment date been set yet?

thanks
Jan

Bill Venners

Posts: 2284
Nickname: bv
Registered: Jan, 2002

Re: book release date

Posted: Oct 3, 2008 3:57 PM

Hi Jan,

Sorry, one last delay. I updated the ship date to the end of October. It will be going to the printer this coming week, and it takes about 3 weeks after that before we can ship.

Bill

Richard Dallaway

Posts: 1
Nickname: d6y
Registered: Dec, 2007

Re: book release date

Posted: Oct 6, 2008 5:43 AM

Thanks for the update.

I'm hoping you're printing plenty :-) I know I want to order a number of copies of the print edition for various colleagues, and I'm sure I'm not alone in needed a few paper-only copies.

Richard

Calum MacLean

Posts: 9
Nickname: calummacle
Registered: Feb, 2003

Re: book release date

Posted: Oct 8, 2008 2:19 AM

Hi Bill

From your post, which talks about the book going to the printer, can we assume that the ship date of 30 Oct is more realistic than previous ship dates of 30 Aug, 30 Sep etc.?
Or might the ship date change to 30 Nov in 4 weeks time...?

Thanks,
Calum

Bill Venners

Posts: 2284
Nickname: bv
Registered: Jan, 2002

Re: book release date

Posted: Oct 8, 2008 4:06 PM

> From your post, which talks about the book going to the
> printer, can we assume that the ship date of 30 Oct is
> more realistic than previous ship dates of 30 Aug, 30 Sep
> etc.?
> Or might the ship date change to 30 Nov in 4 weeks
> time...?
>
Hi Calum,

A very fair question. Sorry again for all the repeated delays. Where we are at now is that I have an 18 page index, but I'm not happy with the quality of it. So I'm making one more pass at the indexing. There are 2 or 3 other minor tweaks to do internally, which will take no more than a half day. So basically as soon as I'm satisfied with the quality of the index I'll send to the printer. I'm also having them do another cover proof right now, because I wasn't happy with how the cover looked in the previous proof.

I leave for OOPSLA two weeks from today, and it will definitely be at the printer by then. Hopefully around next Wednesday though I'll be sending it. It takes them about 3 weeks to actually complete the order, and then it will take probably 5 days to ship the boxes to California. So the date I will actually be able to start shipping will probably be very early November at this point.

We could have shipped this book quite a few months ago, but it wouldn't have been nearly as good. It really did come down to a tradeoff between time to market and quality. We almost certainly could have made more money shipping earlier, because people would have bought it anyway, but I just wasn't comfortable printing it yet. Two other things also helped. One is that there is no alternative printed Scala book that people could buy instead now, so I didn't have a competitive pressure like that which could have pushed me to compromise a bit on quality to get an earlier pub date. The other is that because of the PrePrint, everyone who wanted it already had access to the information. So although I'm sure it is frustrating that you all have to wait so long for this, I'm hoping you'll be ultimately happy with how good the book is once you hold it in your hands.

Bill

j herber

Posts: 6
Nickname: 53144
Registered: Jan, 2008

Re: book release date

Posted: Nov 12, 2008 6:27 AM

Hi Bill. You, Martin, and Lex have put together a great language book. My current ebook is dated 8/17/2008. Not frustrated, the ebook is superb. I am however hoping for another drop soon, with a review of changes since last drop.

I've also heard chatter that Martin might be planning to refactor some of the Collections API. Did some insight into future direction of Scala make it into the last iteration? Not a big deal if it did not, regardless Artima should interview Martin upon release and also talk about what was learned in the process of writing about Scala and where the language is headed short and long term.

Thanks for the keeping the focus on quality and content.

William Robertson

Posts: 6
Nickname: billr42
Registered: May, 2008

Re: book release date

Posted: Nov 14, 2008 1:20 PM

Are we there yet?

Bill Venners

Posts: 2284
Nickname: bv
Registered: Jan, 2002

Re: book release date

Posted: Nov 14, 2008 8:16 PM

> Are we there yet?

Just about. The final eBook PDF (not a PrePrint) has been ready for a week, but we've been putting together the other pieces needed for the final release. We now have the sample code ready, and are very close to being done with the book's resources site. I just now finished with the update to the shop page, including new versions of the sample chapters. I had to revise all the cover images too, because our cover changed slightly from what we were using during the PrePrint stage. I'm sorry I always take longer than I say I will. I'm not usually like that. I did get the eBook ready in short order, but I realized it made little sense to release another PrePrint, and I wanted to have all the other pieces in place that are mentioned in the introduction before I released the final eBook.

As far as the paper book is concerned. The first batch is printed and boxed and sitting in a warehouse for the weekend, where the books are anticipating with great excitement their coming trip across the country to California. They should be shipped on Monday, which means I'll probably see them on Friday or so, which in turn means American buyers should have them in their hands before the Thanksgiving holiday. International shipping takes a bit longer, but hopefully within the next 10 days the paper books should all be on their way.

To answer j herber's question, I do plan on publishing an interview that Frank Sommers and I did with Martin Odersky last JavaOne. It's a great interview. We've been holding onto it until the book was released.

Zemian Deng

Posts: 49
Nickname: zdeng
Registered: Jan, 2008

Re: book release date

Posted: Nov 16, 2008 7:56 AM

I just received an email notice that the final version of e-print Programming In Scala book is out! Congratulation guys!

Bill Venners

Posts: 2284
Nickname: bv
Registered: Jan, 2002

Re: book release date

Posted: Nov 16, 2008 6:17 PM

> I just received an email notice that the final version of
> e-print Programming In Scala book is out! Congratulation
> guys!

Thanks, Zemian. The paper books are also done and sitting in cartons at the printer. They'll be shipped to us tomorrow. It takes about 5 days to get to our warehouse, after which we'll need about three days to get them all shipped out to everyone.

William Robertson

Posts: 6
Nickname: billr42
Registered: May, 2008

Re: book release date

Posted: Nov 16, 2008 8:17 PM

Thanks and congratulations on your accomplishment.

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