📖 More Mexico City Guidebook Updates!

The book is getting bigger, but it's also getting smaller!

The updates continue! We've built out most of the Condesa chapter and changed the format for our longer reviews. We've also predictably run into a problem with file size, so we reduced the number of images to address that issue.

But first, it's almost our one-year anniversary! In April 2024, we revealed that we were creating an Eternal Spring guidebook for Mexico City, and we spent the year since then working to get it into a complete, first edition state. Despite me having written about 30 books before this, the Eternal Spring book has been challenging for all kinds of reasons and the source of a lot of stress and frustration.

But it's finally in a state that we feel good about, and while the work never really ends--Mexico City changes every week, and there's always more to do and learn--this is a solid base for us to work from going forward. And so one of our goals now is to shift to a more predictable schedule for updates, so that those who buy whatever edition of the book understand what they're getting and see the value in that.

📗 Content updates

We've been working hard to get this book out of preview. Earlier this month, we added the "How to use this book" section, "finished" (for now) the Roma Sur and Juárez and Reforma chapters, and fixed a lot of internal and external links. And last week, we published an update to the book with major layout changes, while adding the Eat and Drink section to the Condesa chapter. Today, we finished up most of the rest of the Condesa chapter. It's getting there, I just need to document our Condesa walk now.

📋 Reviews changes

For our longer restaurant/bar reviews, we use a specific format that has, to date, listed the price, cuisine, and then a series of pros and cons for each place, with each pro marked with a green checkbox and each con marked with a red "x." For example:

Price:💲💲💲
Cuisine: Mexican

Pros: ✅ Friendly staff
✅ English spoken
✅ English menu
✅ Good vibe
✅ Popular with expats
✅ Open Sunday

Cons
❌ Closed Monday
❌ Reservation recommended

But after some negative feedback about one of those reviews--which was a misunderstanding--it occurred to us that we could present the same information more concisely without compromising its usefulness. And so we switched to a format in which there is just a single, shorter "At a glance" list, and we combined topics that previously required multiple lines. The result is a shorter and nicer-looking list.

Here's one example, with the old version on the left and the new on the right.

And here's a better look at one of these new "At a glance" lists (using the same review as above).

At a glance 💲💲💲 Sushi/Japanese
👍 Friendly staff, good vibe, quiet
💠 Indoor and outdoor seating
✨ Popular with locals and expats
📅 Open Sunday (lunch only), closed Monday
📋 No reservation required
🗣️ English spoken

🖼️ Fewer images, (much) smaller file size

After completing our Condesa update, the book had ballooned to about 90 MB in PDF form, so it would likely be over 100 MB when we finalize the remaining chapters. That's too big, and the obvious solution was image related: We want the book to be visual, and though we had done everything we could to make each image as small as possible, there were simply too many images. And so we took the painful but necessary step of removing about half of them throughout the book, but most notably in the neighborhood chapters.

It worked. The file size dropped to about 54 MB, which is fantastic.

This change and, to a lesser degree, the reviews change noted above, have reduced the page count nicely too. The PDF version of the book was previously about 560 pages long, but now it's about 490 pages long. We still have content to add, of course, so the page count will increase again. But this was a very nice savings overall.

🛣️ Heading out of preview

With the Condesa chapter mostly behind us for now, there's only one more neighborhood chapter--Polanco and Chapultepec--to go. And that's the point when Eternal Spring: Our Guide to Mexico City will exit preview. After that, we will simply refer to this as the 2025 edition, and we will continue updating the book. Next up will be the three reference chapters in the back of the book--Connections, Practicalities, and Resources--and the first two of those are already partially done. So we're in pretty good shape.

Now that's a welcome change.

More soon!