Ironically, I was working on a book with a similar concept in the same time frame that came out as "Computer Science from Scratch: Interpreters, Computer Art, Emulators, and ML in Python" with No Starch Press a couple months ago. Like Austin's book it contains a CHIP8 chapter and a couple chapters on making a programming language. The difference with regards to his experience and my experience in writing it with a traditional publisher, is that I was an experienced author so I felt comfortable finishing the entire book first before shopping it around to publishers. I didn't want too much scrutiny around the core concept and I was getting similar signals of "every chapter must have AI."

I wrote a similar blog post a month ago describing the process of creating the book and getting it published called "Writing Computer Science from Scratch":

https://www.observationalhazard.com/2025/12/writing-computer...

Some in this thread have wondered what publisher Austin was working with. Based on my experience working with three different technical publishers and the setup and terms Austin was offered, my educated guess would be Manning.

I will critique the blog post a little bit. It's presented as a critique of the experience of working with the publisher, but ultimately I'm reading between the lines that the book failed because he was missing deadlines. He wrote that "life got in the way" and I think he lost his motivation only partially because the publisher wanted AI in more of the book. Many of the trials he had along the way: dealing with a development editor who wants to tailor your style to a particular audience, a technical editor who needs a couple chapters to warmup, back and forth on the proposal, etc. these are all really par for the course when writing a technical book. Ultimately you have to be self-motivated to finish because of course the development editor, technical editor, etc are going to disagree with you from time to time and try to push you in different directions. If that alone is so demotivating to you, it's just not for you to work with a publisher.

PS I think his blog is really good and he should think about self publishing under a time frame and terms he is more comfortable with.

I came away with the same impression. I was less blaming the publisher and more about life getting in the way with the author

Agreed. The one time I worked through a publisher I beat every schedule and it was all smooth enough.

I’m glad I did it but I’m not sure how much the publisher added beyond some prestige and a few bucks. The first edition in particular I felt I needed to pad out a bit to meet length requirements.

Manning makes sense - all the details fit, and there aren't that many. Publishing is a stupid business that makes less and less sense every passing day. Self publishing and going through an outlet, marketing for yourself, or contracting out the relevant tasks, will save you a ton of money for anything publishers can offer anymore. They survive more and more often on grift and network effects that are increasingly irrelevant and often run counter to the interests of a given author or work.

Glad the author got out relatively unscathed.

Self publish - especially with AI available to get you through the stuff where you just need superficial or process knowledge, like which firms to hire and how to market a self-published work, what boilerplate legal protections you need. You'll get 99% of the value of a big publishing firm at a small fraction of the cost, and you won't have to put up with someone else taking a cut just because they know a few things that they don't want to tell you in order to justify taking your money.

I’ll also note that the publisher was right to bring up AI, even if they did not do it in an artful way. He himself comes to doubt the need for his book in the era of LLMs and he says that is part of why he cancelled. To his publisher’s credit they raised the issue early in the process where a pivot would have been more practical.

In fairness to the author, he presents a reasonably balanced view and it did not read to me like “my publisher sucked.”