[jacques_chester]

I've been working on my first book with Manning (should be out in the next few months).

Without the structure a publisher provides it's likely I would not have come even vaguely close to finishing.

The marketing is icing, really.

[ghaff]

Deadlines are definitely a double-edged sword. On the one hand, they can be really inconvenient if something takes longer, other priorities pop up, you just feel you need to release a chapter even though you're not really happy with it, etc. On the other hand, in the absence of deadlines, it's easy to put things to the side for a "week" that turns into a month or two.

[jacques_chester]

There are deadlines, and they helped, but a lot of it was about having someone I "owed" something to.

Another thing I did was plot my word count per commit. Once per week I would post it to an internal channel at work and add a sentence or two summarising my week. The most interesting thing is that while my output could fluctuate a lot per week, the overall trend was fairly stable.

[petr25102018]

Even though I wouldn't want the publisher to make the outline of my book for me, I have to say that Manning books were some of my favourites. Their structure is pretty good.

[jacques_chester]

Manning have a fair amount of docs and support for preparing a TOC, including soliciting opinions from outside experts. I imagine it's similar for other publishers.

I didn't feel like I was being made to follow a template. In fact the TOC changed a lot over the course of writing.

[petr25102018]

Oh, okay. I get the assumption because Manning books do resemble one another a bit.