📖 Big Mexico City guidebook update!

It's 50 percent bigger than before, with new neighborhood guides, walks, maps, and more!

Over the past few weeks, we've published several updates to our book, Eternal Spring: Our Guide to Mexico City. The result is a lot of new content and a nice step towards getting the book out of preview.

When we started working on this last year, we were nervous about putting out an incomplete, preview version of the book, wanting it to be substantial in some way. And, of course, we went through numerous iterations of what that might be. But when we finally did release the first preview in mid-December, we felt pretty good about it, while knowing that there was still so much more to do.

I've written about 30 books over about as many years, but this book has additional responsibilities that are new to me. I'm working on it with my wife, for starters, and that's been an adventure for someone who typically writes in isolation. And this is a new topic for both of us. It's important that we get this right.

Last night, as I was putting together what I hoped would be the final touches on the most recent updates, I started wondering how much we'd added since that initial preview. Normally, this is straightforward, and I can measure my output by page count: My other books are all published to PDF in a standard 8.5 × 11 inch size that makes comparing versions of the same book, or different books, pretty straightforward.

But this book is for a different audience, and we feel that most people will read it--or reference it--on their smartphones. And so we went with a different output size for the PDF, 5.5 × 8 inches, which is roughly the size of a typical (paper-based) guidebook. (For example, the latest Rick Steves guidebooks are 4.55 × 8 inches.) But those pages also have less content than you see with a typical (paper-based) guidebook because, again, it's designed specifically to be read on a phone.

There are still ways to measure the progress.

For example, the PDF version of the first preview was about 320 pages long, and the latest version is about 480 pages long.

We can also look at the word count, which is perhaps the more accurate comparison. Where the first preview contained about 33,000 words of text, the latest version consists of about 48,000 words. So it's about half again as big.

Then, there's file size. Where the first preview was a roughly 18 MB download, the latest version is about 46 MB. It's over twice as big because we're using more images now, after being initially concerned about what that might do to the file size. (The goal there is to keep it under 200 MB, which is the limit for Send to Kindle.)

So that's nice. Nothing happens as quickly as I'd like or expect, but it does feel like progress.

For readers, this means that the first edition of Eternal Spring: Our Guide to Mexico City is becoming more complete and, we hope, more useful. There are still rough spots and lots of missing content, but the changes we've made over the past weeks and months are meaningful. It's getting there.

More specifically, the latest version of the book now includes:

• A reasonably complete Roma Norte chapter with listings for several recommended places and almost 25 recommended restaurants and bars, plus an updated full-bleed map.

• A reasonably complete Coyoacán and San Ángel chapter with listings for several recommended places and several recommended restaurants and bars, plus two detailed walks and an updated full-bleed map.

• An update to the Centro chapter that includes a fully fleshed-out Avenida Francisco I. Madero walk. (It was previously just a full-bleed map.)

• More new photos that I could keep track of.

We're here in Mexico City through early May--and then will return again in the summer and then the fall--and our goal is to publish similar chapter updates for Condesa, Juárez and Reforma, and Roma Sur, at the very least. And at that point, we feel that we can take the book out of preview. Though, again, there will still be more to do: The Polanco and Chapultepec and Further afield chapters, plus many updates to the three reference chapters in the back, Connections, Practicalities, and Resources. It never ends, really. But we knew that going in.

So that's where we're at. Progress. But more to do.

If you already own the book, please download the latest version from your Leanpub library. Remember, you get all the updates to this edition for free. And if you don't own the book, it costs just $9.99. Either way, we'd love to know what you think.

Thanks for reading!