How long does a book take?

The book (Knight, M.  and Cook, C., 2013, Social Media for Journalists: Principles and Practice, London: Sage.) is still not done. It’s kind of done in the way Zeno’s arrow has kind of hit its target. It’s incrementally done. The amount of not done it is is becoming exponentially smaller every time the publisher sends it back to us. It’s still the incredible boomerang book, though.

It’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with it. It just takes forever, and because I was done some time ago, I keep missing things and having them bounce back from the ever patient commissioning editor.

And then, today, I saw this:

from the amazing Hyperbole and a Half webcomic blog genius thing. Thank you, Allie.  And this sums it up perfectly, although academic books take even longer. Three babies, in fact. Or most of one one school kid. Seriously, my co-author was pregnant when we first pitched this thing, and her daughter is walking, talking and generally being a kid.

Of course, she talks back less than the book is doing now.

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