The personal disquiet of

Mark Boulton

January 28th, 2007

A couple of books

A couple of books com­ing up which may be of interest. Firstly, Web Stand­ards Cre­ativ­ity is up on Amazon for pre-order. It’s a sump­tu­ous full-colour paper­back cov­er­ing top­ics like Typo­graphy, PNG trans­par­ency tech­niques and Grid Design from the likes of Ethan Mar­cotte, Simon Col­lison, Cameron Adams, Aaron Gust­afson, Jeff Croft, Derek Feath­er­stone, Dan Rubin, Andy Budd, Ian Lloyd, Rob Weych­ert, Andy Clarke, and me.

Secondly, Five Simple Steps: Design­ing for the Web is near­ing com­ple­tion. It’s not quite fin­ished yet, and yes I’m going to miss the Janu­ary dead­line, but it will be worth the wait. To keep you going until then, here’s a few tasters…

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Above. Example spreads from Chapter Two: Typography.

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Above. Example spreads from Chapter Two and Three: Typo­graphy and Colour.

Self-publishing your own book is tough. I was naive to think I would get this fin­ished by Christ­mas and ambi­tious to think it would be fin­ished this month. These things take time, espe­cially if you con­sider I’m writ­ing, art-directing and design­ing and pub­lish­ing this book. That said, it’s only a little over­due and I’m sure it’ll be worth it.

Thanks to every­one who has already signed up for the launch dis­count. There will also be a bulk licence avail­able for £25 for five cop­ies for you and your col­legues. There is still time to sign up for the dis­count too if you haven’t done already.

Right, that’s enough talk, I’ve got a book to finish.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 28th, 2007 at 5:40 am and is filed under News, Simple Steps.

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28 Responses to “A couple of books”

  1. paul haine said on: January 28th, 2007 at 8:24 am

    Mark, that looks abso­lutely gor­geous. Remind me, were you going to pro­duce a prin­ted copy or just a PDF?

  2. Richard said on: January 28th, 2007 at 8:25 am

    Sweet, looks great!

  3. Mark Boulton said on: January 28th, 2007 at 8:41 am

    Paul: Thanks! Ini­tially, I think it will be just PDF. Although, for an extra bit of time, I could launch both a PDF ver­sion and a prin­ted copy avail­able through Lulu. The only down-side with the lat­ter is that, as this book is full-colour through­out, it will be quite expens­ive, even with min­imal com­mis­sion for myself. 

    I’d quite like a prin­ted copy though.

  4. Des Traynor said on: January 28th, 2007 at 8:50 am

    Looks really good Mark, I’ll def­in­itely be buying. 

    Des

  5. Brian Artka said on: January 28th, 2007 at 10:06 am

    Mark,

    I’m look­ing for­ward to this book as well. The PDF will be nice, but how much do you think a prin­ted color copy through LuLu would actu­ally cost? It may be worth the price =)

  6. Colly said on: January 28th, 2007 at 10:33 am

    Mark, sorry but I too really want a phys­ical copy. Maybe a set Lulu run based on offi­cial requests?

  7. Mark Boulton said on: January 28th, 2007 at 10:38 am

    Yep, fair enough. I do too. I’m going to launch two then. (but this will obvi­ously take longer to set up) — one PDF and one for Lulu. A quick estim­ate from Lulu is the prin­ted ver­sion will be about £30 (give or take a few quid) for a full col­our paperback.

  8. Jason Santa Maria said on: January 28th, 2007 at 10:40 am

    I’ll def­in­itely hold out for the prin­ted book :D

  9. Matthijs said on: January 28th, 2007 at 2:01 pm

    Looks great. Already pre-ordered the pdf but when a prin­ted copy will be avail­able I’ll definately want that one too.

  10. szy said on: January 28th, 2007 at 3:13 pm

    Looks great! I’m eager to get the PDF and wish some smart editor real­ized this must exist in a prin­ted form.

  11. Keeran said on: January 28th, 2007 at 4:48 pm

    Ooo more books to get — can’t wait on all counts — cheers :O)

  12. Ian said on: January 29th, 2007 at 4:08 am

    Cheers for the head’s up on the new web stand­ards book from Friends of ED, it looks like it’ll be well worth the read with such not­able con­tri­bu­tions.  It’s good to see some books which approach the topic of web design as a whole rather than just inter­face lay­out and devel­op­ment meth­od­o­lo­gies.  It’s on my wish list as is a prin­ted copy of your own book.  If your five simple steps art­icles are any­thing to go by a prin­ted copy will be a valu­able resource to keep to hand.

  13. Karl said on: January 29th, 2007 at 5:42 am

    I am def­in­itely up for the real book Mark.

  14. Simon said on: January 29th, 2007 at 6:04 am

    If it’s com­ing in at around the 30-quid mark, that seems about right — a prin­ted book is much nicer to have, you can dip into it whenever and read­ing a lot of text on-screen off a PDF isn’t so great. 

    I’d definately buy a copy of your book! 

    Really look­ing for­ward to hav­ing a butchers at the fin­ished article!

  15. Andy Beeching said on: January 29th, 2007 at 6:06 am

    Sign me up for the prin­ted ver­sion as well!

  16. David Airey said on: January 29th, 2007 at 7:36 am

    Your spreads are look­ing great Mark. 

    I’ve been sus­brib­ing to your feed for quite a while now and it was only a mat­ter of time before the book came to fruition.

  17. zak said on: January 29th, 2007 at 8:42 am

    def need the prin­ted copy, but as i cant wait i will also get the pdf and attempt screen-reading!

  18. Brian said on: January 29th, 2007 at 9:00 am

    yes, a full color prin­ted copy would be excel­lent to have. Please “LuLu” it Mark =)

  19. Nick Dunn said on: January 30th, 2007 at 2:38 am

    Another Lulu request (at the risk of jump­ing on a band­wagon). I’ll prob­ably end up run­ning the PDF through the col­our printer at work, but noth­ing beats a prop­erly prin­ted volume. 

    And thanks for the heads up about the FOE book too. Both books look excel­lent — can’t wait :)

  20. Paul said on: January 30th, 2007 at 9:26 am

    “I’m going to launch two then. (but this will obvi­ously take longer to set up) — one PDF and one for Lulu.” 

    You wont delay releas­ing the PDF will you? I’m game for instant gratification!

  21. Zach Katkin said on: January 30th, 2007 at 5:43 pm

    I had seen your single book, mini web page before, but decided not to sign up. After see­ing these screens, I have decided to sign up. Can’t wait to get a copy. Good luck with the release, maybe it will encour­age more people to writeand self-publish.

  22. aMIT said on: January 31st, 2007 at 2:28 pm

    On a more tech­nical note, what are you using to pro­duce this pdf?  Indes­ign or just acrobat itself?

  23. kartooner said on: February 1st, 2007 at 7:54 pm

    Oooh.. had no idea about Web Stand­ards Cre­ativ­ity. Looks like another fant­astic resource and of course I’ll have to make more room on my shelf. 

    Mark, I’ve been on the lookout for your book on typo­graphy since you first men­tioned in a while back. I’ll be wait­ing for the prin­ted ver­sion as well since I prefer a book in it’s tan­gible form over a digital format.

    As for off­set­ting costs, why not poll your read­ers up front and col­lect the funds that way? 

    I’d buy a book (up front) at a reas­on­able price to sup­port you and con­sid­er­ing the wealth of inform­a­tion you’re shar­ing in the book, it’d be well worth it.

  24. Robin said on: February 7th, 2007 at 8:02 am

    I can’t wait any longer. How long now till the PDF? 

    Thanks for let­ting me know about Web Stand­ards Cre­ativ­ity, it looks great!

  25. Mark Boulton said on: February 7th, 2007 at 8:32 am

    Robin: I’m afraid, as indic­ated in this post, and now updated on the site, the PDF will be avail­able soon, but com­mit­ting to any kind of dead­line (after I’ve missed two already), wouldn’t be too smart. 

    There is no point rush­ing this. I want it to be right. 

    Say­ing all that, I do want it all fin­ished and out of the door this month, or pos­sibly next.

  26. Erik said on: February 8th, 2007 at 3:42 pm

    I’m in. You’ve really got my type-obsession star­ted since that art­icle about web-typography. So this book’s a must-buy for me I guess.

  27. Danny Murphy said on: February 16th, 2007 at 3:21 am

    I can­not wait for you to release your book

  28. Max said on: February 17th, 2007 at 5:37 am

    Looks really good Mark, I’ll def­in­itely be buy­ing. Keep up the good work. Greet­ings from Poland

  • Me

    Hello. My name is Mark Boulton. I’m a designer, an author, a speaker and I run a small design agency where we work with lovely cli­ents and pub­lish books as we go. This is my blog.

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    Design­ing for the Web
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    A small design stu­dio doing good things for nice clients.
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