Dear Book Updates Newsletter,I'm happy to announce that after an intense proofing process, Chinese 24/7 is finally at the printers!

1. Write book
2. Editing
3. Design / layout
4. Proofing
5. Print book

It's hard to believe that some machine somewhere is putting actual ink on actual paper at this point. It's all been digital to me so far. The great thing about this proofreading process has been that technology allows instantaneous marking and correcting of changes. I'm in China but I was proofreading a book being printed in the USA. Thanks to Adobe PDFs and email, it's possible for a group of people almost as far away as they could be (and still be on earth) to work together to create a book.So when will it be available in stores?The book ships from the printer on March 24th and I was told it should take about 4 weeks after that to make it to stores. That puts it on the shelves sometime around the week of April 20. Those who pre-ordered on Amazon should get it before anyone else though (at least those in the USA).Speaking of AmazonI'm afraid I have some bad news for those who have pre-ordered: the price of the book has been increased to $24.95 (from $19.95). The publisher sent me an email the other day saying that they'd increased the price. They really wanted the price to be $19.95 but the book is a little longer than they expected and the editorial and layout costs were higher than they projected. The information on Amazon (which I'm hoping will be updated soon) is about six months old and was an estimate (which explains why the release date shows as Nov 1, 2008 but you can still only pre-order!).I guess this happens all the time in the publishing world, but I'd like to say I'm sorry to anyone who pre-ordered the book on Amazon and will now have to pay a few extra dollars. This decision was completely out of my hands. The good news is, just as you didn't pre-order it for the full $19.95 price, Amazon will be offering the book at a discount less than $24.95 (although I don't know exactly how much).Thanks again to everyone who pre-ordered and thanks for your patience while we all wait in this final "limbo time" when the book is neither on my computer nor in your hands.