We’re definitely in the home stretch with Professional WordPress. The cover is done (and looks pretty sharp). All of our technical editing and content review is done, which means we know what we’re going to say and how we’re going to say it. 11 of the 15 chapters have gone through production, giving us proofs of the finished, printed page that we’re reviewing for style, missing punctuation, last minute spelling or grammar fixes, and the occasional wayward angle bracket.

If we get the last batch of page proofs back next week, and production goes back to fix the page breaks that our proofreading damaged, the book goes to the printer sometime in the next few weeks. From the printer it goes to the Wiley distribution network, with boxes of shiny new titles going to Borders, Barnes & Noble, amazon.com, and your favorite local technical book nook.

Roughly two months from today, coincident with the first pitch of baseball season, Professional WordPress will be in full swing as well.

We finished editing the book early this morning. All of the content has been edited, technically assured, cleaned up and otherwise prepared to turn into something prettier than a word processing document. Going from rough manuscript to pre-production copy took about five weeks, during which we reworked about 30% of the content to tell a better story, and to integrate the cross-references that make a technical book tie together related concepts.

Got the first set of publisher’s galleys today from Wiley, featuring the “new” WROX imprint stylistic elements. It’s a sharp, simple visual presentation. Galleys are an exciting time in the lifecycle of a book because they mark the point at which your written words no longer look like a word processor brain dump and instead have the feel of an actual printed page (the alignment marks in the margins just make it oh-so-cool, too).

Today’s book progress is: 100% written, about 40% edited, 20% production galleys. We’re still aiming for a springtime release, meaning you can read our words while yelling at the Mets on Opening Day.

Professional WordPress is officially in editing mode!  All chapters have been written and submitted to WROX/Wiley.