The book is done! Finally!

Posted by Mike Snyder on February 12, 2006  |  Comments (2)

I'm pumped to report that we're now officially done writing the Working with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 book! It wasn't easy, and it took Jim and me about 900 hours total over the past 6 months. Considering all the long nights and weekends we had to work on the project, our wives were incredibly patient with us...so I'm sure they are just as excited for us to be done.

If you're curious what the book writing process is about, I thought I'd share a little behind-the-scenes information. Microsoft Press asks us to write the book using a special Microsoft Word template (XML-based of course!) that allows them to easily get the appropriate formatting for their printed layouts. Unfortunately for us, the Word file isn't too pretty to work with. Here's a sample of the Word template file that we wrote for a page in Chapter 9, "Server-Side SDK".

This screenshot also shows you the various edits and comments made by the other people working on this project! Every page in the book is reviewed at least once (more like two or three times) by our project editor, our copy editor, our technical editor, a member of the CRM product group and a proofreader.

After we send the file to Microsoft Press, they whip it up and turn out a pretty PDF file that looks like the following!

Now Microsoft Press and our project editor are cranking to get the book printed and ready for the Convergence conference at the end of March.

I'm still working on the details to get a sample chapter posted on our website! I hope to have that up soon, thanks for your patience.