A little over a year ago, I began serializing the translation of twenty Years of JavaScript in my column. With everyone’s attention and encouragement, the Chinese version of the book only took half a year to complete. And today, I’m pleased to report that the project has gone one step further, reaching “publishable” quality and hitting the shelves in its first print edition.

The idea of publishing a print book with your own signature is a dream for many of your friends. So in addition to the official announcement of the print edition, this article will mainly share a little experience of publishing a physical book, and some interesting anecdotes along the way, to tell you that publishing a book is probably not as difficult as you think.

First of all, a brief introduction to the paper version of this time, roughly as follows:

  • The main content of the paper version is the same as the online version, after all, it was a solemn promise half a year ago.
  • The paper version is carefully typesetted and fully corrected, making it a better reading experience than markdown.
  • The paper edition is supplemented by a series of exclusive prologues and recommendations in accordance with the literati tradition. In the spirit of making things bigger, in addition to Allen Wirfs-Brock’s Chinese introduction and my own translator’s introduction, the book also invited Zhou Aimin to write the recommended introduction. He was joined by people from Dougulas Crockford, @JustJavac, @Deathue, @Yueyin, @Li Yubei, @Zhang Yunlong, @Gu Yaling, @Huang Yi, @Yu Hang, @Shen Yi, @Huang Xuan, @Jijue, @Jue, @Jue, @Jue, @Jasin Yip and @Lucas HC, @Hanyan, @Taiwolf, @Ao Tianyu, @XcatLiu, @Himself65 Front-end entertainment, after all.
  • A significant portion of the print revenue will be used to support the open Web, as discussed below.
  • The paper version can be scanned with a reader exchange group (if that’s a good thing).

When I see my words in print, it still feels like… Does have a bit of a sense of accomplishment hahaha. So what do you need to do to publish a book like this?

It’s pretty simple. I can only remember a few things:

  • Fill out the selection form, sign the contract, and hand in the paper.
  • Wait for the publishing house to finish typesetting and polishing the sample and cover.
  • Pick out the cover, send it to the bigwigs, and trade blows.
  • Finally revise the next sample (such as this book"The quotation marks were almost replaced").
  • Rack with goods!

This is an understatement, because it’s really easy to go through… In my opinion, the most important thing for the author to care about is the content itself. As long as the content is fine, there’s really nothing else to worry about… Publishing houses can take care of a lot of typography, distribution, etc. (you don’t need to know LaTeX; typography is a professional department of publishing houses that can do it for you). In terms of the mode of content production, this book once again verifies a way: first write trial content in the community, and then continue to output it after receiving a certain response, which is very close to publication. This format is largely based on the success of the JavaScript you Don’t Know series, and the benefit is that you can basically follow through without much pressure to be pushed. Of course, it would be more common to sign a contract and then hand it in later, but even then, I think it’s important to at least have a clear idea of what’s being released.

And this isn’t actually my first attempt to publish a physical book. At least twice before, I had carefully written the outline and initial chapter of the topic and sent them to my friends. However, after collecting the feedback from alpha users, I felt that it was not meaningful to continue writing, so I did not continue. Now it seems to be a wise choice, because I feel that the so-called product market fit is also important in this field… But I still recommend trying to systematically summarize things. It’s never a bad thing. Maybe next time?

Things that are not important will not be far away, the following to share some interesting tidbits:

  • Allen Wirfs-Brock, the first author of this book, makes detailed suggestions on chapter titles in Chinese. For example, the title of the third part of the book is ES4Failed ReformationAt first, I translated it as “reform grudges”. Reformation has nothing to do with “hate.” Its etymology is rooted in the great doctrinal split of Christianity in 15th century Europe. His choice of the term was a subtle metaphor for the “religious war” between dynamically typed and statically typed languages. I told him that the word “regret” didn’t mean “hate,” it meant “regret,” and he said that wasn’t true either,What’s so bad about the ES4 thing failingI can’t argue with that — after all, he did the ES4 himself…
  • I wanted to use the TeXmacs editor maintained by @Shenda (and praised by Wang) to compose the paper version myself, but the ready-made service of the publishing house was too convenient, so I got lazy…
  • There was another recommendation for this book by @He Shijun, but unfortunately he, who was busy opposing the class Private Field proposal, ended up being a doggy… So the first printing is out of print, with higher collection value (dog head).
  • Uncle Douglas Crockford’s quote, “JavaScript is the most misunderstood programming language in the world,” is tempered for the purposes of advertising law because it goes on the back page.
  • Word was not used in the Chinese version. I mainly use Bear, VSCode and foxit PDF editors, while publishers use the more specialised InDesign — so the “focus on content” mantra still holds, and styling and typography is something that can be left to a small number of experts. I think this is another example of how the vast majority of Web productivity tools are competing against Office.

With the public opinion of zhihu, nowadays any knowledge that needs to be paid seems to be a bit of leek. But as a tightly edited publication, the actual price of the book is roughly the price of a fast food meal, and there is always a free online version. Anyway, I’m trying to align myself with the “conscience of the industry” standard… One more thing to mention in terms of monetization: Allen Wirfs-Brock and I agreed to donate 10% of our gross royalties to Mozilla, as free and Open Web.

Finally, I would like to reflect on the historical process of coincidence. The HOPL (History of Programming Languages) is a conference on the History of Programming Languages held only once every ten years. Only a few key contributors of important Programming Languages are qualified to write, which is extremely rare in itself. Due to the epidemic, HOPL was postponed to June this year. JavaScript managed to publish translations of its historical research documents in Chinese before the conference. This is probably unprecedented in the history of programming languages. Thanks to teacher @Zhang Chunyu and editor @Zhang Shuang for their assistance, and also thanks to all the friends who have paid attention to JavaScript 20 Years. Your support has made such snakeskin position possible. (Laughter)

There will be a video conference at HOPL in June, and there should be presentations by the two authors of this book. If you’ve finished reading the book, maybe you’ll feel better about asking the father of JS about the line (

The first time I put the shopping link, I hope I will have the opportunity to bring my own book:

Twenty Years of JavaScript