If you haven’t already, check out the story behind the book I’m writing on Nikola Tesla. Today I had my first meeting – a call actually – with the editor of the book. Chris Barsanti is a senior editor at Fall River Press, Sterling Publishing Co., Inc., which is a wholly owned subsidiary of Barnes & Noble. Today we discussed the vision for the book, timeline for completion, and quite a bit of book publishing technical logistics for which I will gladly spare you the pain of reading.
In a wonderful alignment of the stars (or planets or what have you), the vision of Sterling Publishing is exactly the vision that I had for the book. As I had planned, the book will be written for the general reader in mind, so we can all breathe a collective sigh of relief that it isn’t going to be some dry, technicalese, treatise that only a techie junkie could love (though I hope that they will love it too). The goal is to bring the character of Nikola Tesla to the people in a way that everyone can appreciate.
And he was quite a character. Besides the usual eccentricities of genius, Tesla had quite a few, um, let’s say, personality elements that made him interesting. I’ll get into details as time passes, but be sure that I’ll cover both his inventive side and his “interesting” side. Chris and I envision a book that is highly readable with many photos and drawings, sidebars to bring out interesting morsels to wet your tastes, and quotable quotes.
And we’ve already discussed the cover photo. Trust me, if we can pull it off it will definitely earn the working title of “Nikola Tesla: Scientific Rock Star.” (Shh, secrets to be revealed later).
The next step is for me to provide Chris and the publisher with a Chapter Outline within the next two weeks. I have a working framework already and now that the editor and I have discussed the book, I’ll be able to flesh it out shortly.
Keep coming back for periodic updates!
