feedback on teaching talk

# Reviewer 1

I liked the knitting comparison! Cute way to start out.

I found that between the slide about not using humour and the previous one, there was a pretty sudden jump from general to specific. I also found that the level of information on the "no humour" slide and the following one felt a bit at odds with the rest of the content.

I enjoyed the bits about "books won't help with this; don't try to do this".

I enjoyed the publisher role info like "good publishers will do X for you".

I enjoyed learning about your experience with the web in relation to book writing (ex. your usage of stack overflow, maintaining HTML online).

Regarding publishers starting to shift their focus away from quality, if I were an audience member I might ask "do you think that the movement toward AI will accelerate this?" But I would maybe only ask this because you mentioned ChatGPT earlier in the talk. I think I disagree with Ann Marie here; I would keep the ChatGPT slide because it feels relevant to some of your points about the evolving landscape.

Don't polish too early is a great tip. If I were an audience member I might ask "any specific tips for perfectionists"?

Your bit about writing Python to procrastinate on the writing reminded me of Robert Kroetsch's Seed Catalogue.

I loved the self-awareness with "as a straight middle age white guy".

# Reviewer 2

What is the purpose of the different color headings in your slides?

Some of the slides seem out of order - like "Avoid Banal Advice" and "Don't Write to Cover Your Ass" Seem related but are not together. Plus things like not using exclamation marks is more related to the copy editing process that is covered later.

You made a very interesting point about the number of books that have sales over a certain number - that would be good to include on a slide.

In the publisher section - you mention that publishers want to know why you are the right person to write this. Having a strong social media presence is valuable because you can help promote the book and already have an audience. That can also tie into your point about writing a blog - or getting content out there in some way.

The advice about not being funny is a good one, but in the talk, it would be amusing to include this somewhere - it reinforces many of your points


I think my comment about deleting the AI slide was wrong. The impact of AI on technical writing is a very interesting topic, and you made some very good points later in your talk. So maybe that page just needs to be moved and updated?