When reading a technical book, you may sometimes find yourself muttering, “Ha! The author is a complete and utter idiot! I could have done a better job than that!” Or you may be working on an interesting project – or have just developed a novel solution to some problem – when you suddenly think, “I could write a really cool book about this!”

That initial flush of enthusiasm soon cools, however, when you start to mull over things in a little more detail, realizing that you don’t actually have a clue where to start. Is there a market for such a book? What should it cover? Who will create the graphics? How will you find a publisher for your masterpiece?

Given these imponderables, it usually doesn’t take long before you’ve talked yourself out of becoming an author. This is unfortunate, because there may be a lot of potential readers out there who could really benefit from your expertise. And of course, being known as an author can only enhance your career prospects and make your family and friends very proud.

To assist authors-to-be (like yourself?), Xilinx has created an innovative new program called the Xcell Publishing Alliance. The program is designed to help you take your magnum opus from initial concept, through planning and implementation, all the way to publication, fame, and glory.

In fact, as I pen these words, I’m basking in the glow of having just received the author copies of my latest book, “The Design Warrior’s Guide to FPGAs: Devices, Tools, and Flows.” This book was made possible in large part by Xilinx and Mentor Graphics, both of whom provided me with access to a wide variety of experts and information sources. Thus, in this article I thought I’d walk you through the process of creating a book – using “The Design Warrior’s Guide” as an example – and then discuss what Xilinx can do to help you create your very own tour de force.

Topical Questions
The very first thing you have to decide on is a topic. What exactly would you like to write about? There’s little point in spending vast amounts of precious time and effort creating a book that no one actually wants to read.

I’ve been fortunate in this regard, because I’ve tended to write books on topics that interest me and that I would like to read myself. Happily, the folks who read my books seem to enjoy them also. For example, my very first effort – “Bebop to the Boolean Boogie: An Unconventional Guide to Electronics” – was recently re-released in its second edition due to popular demand.

Looking back, I realized that most of my tomes were introductory in nature, so the time seemed right to focus on a particular topic in more depth. FPGAs have become phenomenally powerful and sophisticated in recent years. Today’s FPGA devices can be used to implement extremely large and complex functions that previously could be realized only using ASICs, and thus an increasing number of design engineers are starting to use the little rascals. When I began to look around, however, there seemed to be a dearth of useful material in this arena.

Readership to Shore
Once you’ve decided on your topic, you will have to flesh it out into an outline, and eventually grow it into a full-blown proposed contents list. An integral part of this process is to decide who your audience is, because the type of information you will cover will typically vary depending on whether you are talking to engineering gurus or novices.

I personally dislike reading books that talk down to me as though I am the village idiot. But equally, I’m less than enamored by books that try to impress me with the author’s brilliance, or those that require me to return to college just to wend my weary way through the first chapter.

In the case of “The Design Warrior’s Guide to FPGAs,” I wanted to address the needs of an unusually wide audience, including students, sales and marketing professionals in the EDA arena, and fullblown engineers. For this reason, I devoted the first section of the book to fundamental concepts such as:

• What are FPGAs and why are they of interest?
• Underlying technologies, such as antifuses, flash memory, and SRAM cells
• Alternative architectures and concepts
• Different programming techniques
• Who are the various players in the FPGA space?

• FPGA versus ASIC design styles
• Schematic-based design flows (yes, they are still used to support legacy designs)
• HDL-based design flows
• Silicon virtual prototyping for FPGAs
• C/C++-based design flows
• DSP-based design flows
• Embedded processor-based design flows
• Modular and incremental design
• High-speed design
• Migrating ASIC designs to FPGAs, and vice versa

• Choosing the right device
• Gigabit serial interfaces
• Reconfigurable computing
• Field programmable node arrays (FPNAs)
• Independent design tools
• Creating a design flow based on opensource tools

In Style
Yet another point to ponder before you leap into the fray is the style you intend to use. To a large extent this will be determined by your target audience, but it will also be strongly influenced by your personality.

I soon become disgruntled when reading boring books. Unfortunately, this seems to cover the vast majority of technical books out there (although there are a few notable exceptions). It’s almost as though someone sent out a memo saying, “Whatever you do, don’t make engineering books interesting – otherwise all sorts of folks might decide to read them.”

Fortunately, I didn’t receive this memo, so I don’t feel bound to follow it. As a simple rule of thumb, I tend to write the sort of book that I personally would like to read. Thus, I use a somewhat informal, chatty style – much like this article – and I also like to include nuggets of trivia and tidbits of information, such as “Where did this come from?” or “Why do we do things this way rather than that?”

Furthermore, in my later books I’ve started to include little pronunciation notes as sidebar items for technical acronyms and terms. I do this because if you mispronounce a word when talking to someone in the industry, you immediately brand yourself as an outsider. Some engineers have been known to scoff at me for this, but I’ve received many e-mails from less-technical readers that say, “Only the other day you saved me from a potentially embarrassing situation.”

Yes, There’s More
At some stage, of course, you are going to have to actually put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard). Writing a book-length project isn’t easy. You may start off full of vim and enthusiasm, but as you approach the middle of the project things seem to slow down and become increasingly difficult – much like wading through molasses. And then, suddenly, you’ll find that you’ve crested the brow of the hill and are racing down the other side towards the finish line.

Another consideration is creating graphics. I personally go by the adage that “a picture is worth a thousand words,” so I festoon my writings with graphics wherever I can. For technical books and white papers, I tend to use line art created in Microsoft™ Visio™, an incredibly useful and easy-to-use tool. As an example, consider a sample illustration from “The Design Warrior’s Guide” (Figure 1), which reflects a simple multiplexer-based FPGA architecture. Logic gates are not usually shown with gray fills and shadows, but I think it looks more interesting – and it’s my book.

Another consideration is finding someone to help you proofread and copyedit your work and to offer suggestions as to presentation and style. Although many editors can discourse for hours on the many and varied uses of the apostrophe, the loathsome split infinitive, and parallel sentence structure, actually finding one who has a clue what you are talking about technology- wise can be somewhat taxing.

And last, but certainly not least, once you’ve finally finished, you will need to find a publisher who can take your masterpiece, lay it out, print it, distribute it, and promote it far and wide.

The Xcell Publishing Alliance
All of the above may seem a little overwhelming at first, but things aren’t as daunting as they appear. The idea behind the Xcell Publishing Alliance is to help folks write books on FPGA-related topics, where said “folks” may range from individual engineers to small engineering houses to large Xilinx partner companies.

One key point to note is that it is not the purpose of the Xcell Publishing Alliance program to flood the market with Xilinxcentric books. The guys and gals at Xilinx aren’t stupid, and they know that the last thing engineers need is for technical books to mutate into marketing brochures halfway through. The only criteria are for the books to address FPGA-related issues and to be generally useful to a wide audience.

How can Xilinx help you create the book of your dreams? Well, in the case of partner companies, Xilinx can put you in touch with authors (like me) who can write the book on your behalf; they can help you decide on the contents; and they can facilitate your relationship with a publisher.

For individual authors or small engineering houses who wish to write and publish a book, the Xcell Publishing Alliance can help in the following ways:

• Consulting with you on the topic, outline, and eventual contents list
• Providing access to the appropriate technical and marketing employees, both at Xilinx and their partner companies
• Facilitating access to industry insiders such as technical experts, editors, and analysts
• Helping to create any figures, diagrams, and cover art
• Proofreading and copyediting your manuscript (or finding someone who can)
• Providing access to a publishing house
• Helping you market, promote, and publicize your book

And as for to helping you market, promote, and publicize your book, Xilinx can be a powerhouse working on your behalf. For example, in addition to their inside contacts at the various industry magazines, soon after your book rolls off the printing presses, you could pen an article on it for the Xcell Journal.

After all, since it is published quarterly in five languages, distributed in 114 countries, and directly targeted to more than 50,000 programmable digital design users, the Xcell Journal can carry a huge amount of weight. And let’s not forget the advantages of any publicity for yourself and your company (see the info blurb on my company, for example).

Conclusion
Writing a book is much harder than most people imagine, and there will be moments that you rue the day you ever had the idea for such a project. It’s also true that the chances of ever getting rich from a technical book are laughably slight.

On the bright side, however, the feeling you get when holding the first copy of your baby when it comes back from the publisher is absolutely fantastic. Be prepared to run around with a silly “aw shucks” grin on your face. And don’t discount the fact that having a book in print is a wonderful way to market yourself, open doors, reinforce your career, and enhance your future employment prospects.

Embarking on a project like this is a major task, but the chances of your success will be far greater if you have the support of the Xcell Publishing Alliance. For more information about this exciting new program, please send an e-mail to Xcell@xilinx.com.

Clive “Max” Maxfield is president of TechBites Interactive Inc. ( www.techbites.com). A marketing consultancy, TechBites specializes in servicing high-technology companies, ranging from small “ Fred-in-a-shed” startups all the way to the “big boys” in EDA. The services provided by TechBites include logo creation, corporate/product branding, marketing plans, web design and development, collateral design and production, technical and creative writing, technical translation, and digitizing.

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