An Eclectic Mind

How I try my hand at short, electronically published books and like the results.

Two weeks ago, I was interviewed by David Lawrence for his radio show, Online Tonight with David Lawrence. David is a great interviewer and takes all the stress out of an interview. I don’t have to think about being live on the radio, with thousands of people listening. Instead, I just have a fun, 50-minute long conversation. David has been using Macs as long as (if not longer than) I have and he remembers the “old days” as well as I do (if not better). He doesn’t grill me on my latest book or get my opinion of the state of the computer industry. Instead, we just chat about things. I thoroughly enjoy it and wish I could do it regularly.

Anyway, on the evening of our interview, we discussed (among other things) electronic publishing. David had recently launched a publishing project, selling PDF format instructional books in a series called 10 Quick Steps. The 10 Quick Step Guides cover all kinds of topics, both computer related and non computer related. They’re designed and formatted to be read onscreen and can even be read on a PDA (or so I’m told). At only $10 each, they’re a great bargain for the buyer.

So I decided to give it a try. My idea was to write “10 Quick Steps to Writing a Book Proposal.” I figured that with 55 books under my belt, many of which were won with good book proposals, I should know what I was talking about. Besides, I wrote a short document on the topic about eight years ago. I could brush the dust off that, expand it, get it in the right format, and turn it into a 10 Quick Steps Guide.

I finished the first draft of the project on Monday and submitted it to David for his comments. He liked what he saw. So did I. So I’m going to finalize it and resubmit it for publication. David seems to think it’ll be available on the 10 Quick Steps Web site in January.

If you do buy a copy, please take a moment to use one of the Feedback links in my Weblog to tell me what you think.

Next on the agenda: 10 Quick Steps to Publishing a Nonfiction Book.