Another Signing!

Now here’s an interesting coincidence! I came on to write a post about something I did earlier today – signing a contract for publishing The Book, with an exciting new publisher(!) – and then I was reminded of a post I did here exactly two years ago: it was about signing a contract with the previous publisher (who I later parted ways with – see this post).

Anyway, I had a picture in that post (have a look) of me signing the actual paper contract (in triplicate) that had been sent over the ocean on nice paper by pony and so forth, and then I sent it back over the ocean by return pony, and then a countersigned copy was sent over again by yet another pony… Instead, all I have to show you (above) is a screen shot of the electronic signing process I did this morning. Minutes later the countersigned version came back and all was done.

Anyway, in brief, because I should be working on the book (trying to finish a remarkable four pages of art today in one long 15 hour session in the office…), the back story is as follows: As you know from my previous writings about the project, a year of studying and exploring the publishing world helped me realise that the most natural home for an unusual project of this sort is an academic publisher that is interesting enough to be wanting to explore the graphic book world (few are), smart enough to really “get” what I’m trying to do, and (most importantly) bold or crazy enough to want to try this exciting experiment with me. So it was with great reluctance that I broke with ICPress (I explained the reasons) because it was going to be close to impossible to find a replacement that was a good fit, and frankly I did not have the energy or time.

To my good fortune however, I was contacted by an editor at MIT Press who’d heard that I was writing a book and wanted to know more! They key thing is that MIT Press is gearing up to strengthen the Physical Sciences section and got in a dynamic new editor, Jermey Matthews, to make this happen. I’d run into him before in a different context (he edited something I wrote for Physics Today, he previous job) and he recalled me mentioning my book. So he got in touch. What excellent timing! He explained this crazy thing to his people, with shiny new page samples I’d recently produced, and they got very excited about the whole thing. We’re sticking to the old production schedule I had, in order to stay on track to publish the thing in the Fall of 2017, and so I’ll remain an overworked antisocial bore until this is done. (You see, this is all about me working to save you having to think what to get everyone for holiday gifts in 2017… You’re welcome.)

Several people at the Press seem to really understand what is possible with this book, and I’m confident that together we have a shot at fulfilling the vision I had when I ventured (so long ago) into this medium as a means of finding a new way to talk about physics for the general public. The plan is to feature the the book in the Fall MIT Press catalogue, and so I’m rather excited by this.

Ok, back to the drawing board. No, really.

-cvj

(P.S. Until I find a new Facebook connector gadget, you’ll maybe also manually be able to find comments and discussion of this post on the public Facebook re-post here.)