The Book Cometh!

We just got exciting news – apparently the books are roughly a week from the warehouse. Meanwhile, Denny and I both have received our author copies and samples have been whizzing all around the country – which is kinda awesome and allows me to take a shot in my dining room like this: Very exciting stuff! It’s the culmination of a little over 18 months of work. When first approached by the publisher in March 2013, I was deep in the depths of finishing the Everything Hard Cider Book. I knew I had about a month more work on the book. (and a publisher very, very eager to get me in somewhat close to deadline. Don’t they always?) so I couldn’t engage immediately. Fortunately, I knew someone who could and who wanted to work collaboratively. That would be the world “Beer Famous” Denny Conn. Through the whole process we had to start from the premise of the title – “Experimental Homebrewing” and decide what that meant. Was it trying to out radical Radical Brewing as our publishers originally envisioned the book? Quickly, we decided that’s a foolish concept – you can’t out “Randy” Randy. Instead we settled on not only showing you how we brew, but how to discover what works best for you and how to give that information back to the community. Our single sentence pitch for the book after much cajoling is “Mr. Wizard meets Click n Clack down at the pub for a couple of pints”.

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In the search for what we wanted to do, we eventually went through three editors, including Thom, our last acquisitions editor and fellow homebrewer, who kept kicking our cans as we missed a few deadlines. He challenged us constantly to push what we were tackling. Thanks Thom! (An acquisitions editor is responsible for shepherding a title from birth to print. It’s a tough job as they literally are the champions of the book and the best of them help shape the project. When you see the book and how gorgeous it is, please give the hat tip for that to the editing and publishing staff at Voyageur Press as we’re both all thumbs at design. If you’ve been listening to Denny and I talk about the book, you may remember – we submitted the final draft way the way back in March – 7 months ago. (See here) So what the hell took so long? Basically, there ‘s a lot of work that most folks never see. Scottish publisher, Floris Books, put together a little infographic to show all the stuff that happens. Back in March we hit that “Author rewrites” stage. Everything else? Well, that’s been the last seven months! All of this is to say – watch out boys and girls – Experimental Homebrewing is ending it’s long journey next week as it arrives in our publisher’s warehouse and should be available everywhere fine books are sold (see above) on November 1st!