Great advice here! I especially like the idea of 50 minute meetings.

I’ve been lightly enforcing a rule of my own too: “no agenda, no attenda”

Ironically the article is barely readable on an iPhone…

On the topic of copy editing you raise: I wrote a book in DocBook for Manning in 2010. DocBook is XML, so I structured it with opening / end tags on their own line, content in the middle. As you would with a HTML document.

After copy editing multiple chapters, they sent it back to me with all the content on a single line. I was so incredibly upset that they ditched all my painstaking format that I almost abandoned the project there + then.

It sounds like from your experience that it has barely changed. I ended up moving to self-publishing so I have a greater control over the whole process. I wrote it up long-form here: https://ryanbigg.com/2015/08/my-self-publishing-success-stor...

I wonder if Fitzgibbon fits this pattern? Fitz being “the bastard son of…” and Gibbon, like ape? Or perhaps Gibbon has another meaning?

The "Writing" section here has huge "draw the rest of the owl" vibes. (I say this as an accomplished author of 10 tech books.)

Yes, it's worth optimising for your productivity. It's not the be all and end all. I've written at my desk with the comfiest chair (A Mirra) I have, and the most ergonomic keyboard for my needs (Ergodox EZ). I write at cafes with just the laptop. I write on the couch at odd but comfortable angles. I write on public transport squished against strangers.

I love using AsciiDoc as the tooling (asciidoctor + friends) give me output that looks decent, and the way I _input_ into that is not mind-breaking like Docbook is. Asciidoctor gives me a PDF which I then style how I like with CSS and then can put on leanpub.com and sell for real dollars.

The way I would put the writing section for tech books is this:

Start with the _topics_ you want to cover. Make these the chapters. Then dive into each topic and figure out what you want to say about the topic. Usually 3-4 main points per chapter. These come out to be your subheadings. Order the chapters from beginner-to-advanced concepts or in a way that makes sense for the book you're writing. For the books I've written it's usually start with a simple base app and then incrementally build things on top of that.

This is weasel wording but with actions. I’d expect better from Apple