Hi Jeff,
You asked about getting the relationship set up, so I'll take that as a license to gush. :-)
Working with my publishers, Dave and Andy, has been a wonderful experience for me. They not only know how to write great books (and edit, and typeset, and market), but they're also expert programmers. Being able to bounce technical ideas and code off of them was invaluable for me. It's really the kind of support every technical author dreams of, I think.
Moreover, I found the entire process to be refreshing in that it was agile. Everything was streamlined toward getting a book into readers' hands as soon as possible. But at the same time they offered me a blank canvas on which to create ideas, so I never felt constrained by a process. And I got a lot of timely and valuable feedback along the way.
In addition to all the personal support, the toolset support they built was a dream for a programmer like me. Indeed, it was a critical component in getting the book to print quickly because it stayed out of my way and eliminated rework. I've written about the tool chain several times in my blog:
http://www.clarkware.com/cgi/blosxom/2004/06/25#WYSIWYG http://www.clarkware.com/cgi/blosxom/2004/07/14#BeyondTheBook I can't overstate just how enjoyable Dave and Andy have been to work with. Suffice it to say, if I had the time and brainpower to write another book, I'd start writing another book for the Pragmatic Bookshelf tomorrow.
Mike