As some of you know, I run a service called Any New Books?, which emails you a list of new books that are related to the categories of your choice each week. For the most part I pulled this list from the weekly staff picks there throughout this past year, just in time for your Christmas shopping.

The books are ordered by their current sale rank on Amazon (from the most popular to the least popular at the moment, with hardcovers first). I hope this page will help you discover a few titles you may have not have noticed yet.

[Mathematics book list]

	The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood Stores: USA | Canada | Italy | Kindle | UK Kindle By James Gleick ISBN: 0375423729 Publisher: Pantheon Publication date: March 1, 2011 Binding: Hardcover Estimated price: $16.82 Share this book on Twitter |Facebook
	The Art of Computer Programming, Volumes 1-4A Boxed Set Stores: USA | Canada By Donald E. Knuth ISBN: 0321751043 Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional Publication date: March 13, 2011 Binding: Hardcover Estimated price: $190.47 Share this book on Twitter |Facebook
	Algorithms (4th Edition) Stores: USA | UK | Canada | Italy | Kindle | UK Kindle By Robert Sedgewick, Kevin Wayne ISBN: 032157351X Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional Publication date: March 19, 2011 Binding: Hardcover Estimated price: $59.99 Share this book on Twitter |Facebook
	The Art of Computer Programming, Volume 4A: Combinatorial Algorithms, Part 1 Stores: USA | UK | Canada | Italy By Donald E. Knuth ISBN: 0201038048 Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional Publication date: January 22, 2011 Binding: Hardcover Estimated price: $53.15 Share this book on Twitter |Facebook
	GPU Computing Gems Emerald Edition Stores: USA | UK | Canada | Italy | Kindle | UK Kindle By Editors at Morgan Kaufmann ISBN: 0123849888 Publisher: Morgan Kaufmann Publication date: February 7, 2011 Binding: Hardcover Estimated price: $29.06 Share this book on Twitter |Facebook
	Visualize This: The FlowingData Guide to Design, Visualization, and Statistics Stores: USA | UK | Canada | Italy | Kindle | UK Kindle By Nathan Yau ISBN: 0470944889 Publisher: Wiley Publication date: July 20, 2011 Binding: Paperback Estimated price: $20.48 Share this book on Twitter |Facebook
	Programming Android Stores: USA | UK | Canada | Italy | Kindle | UK Kindle By Zigurd Mednieks, Laird Dornin, G. Blake Meike, Masumi Nakamura ISBN: 1449389694 Publisher: O’Reilly Media Publication date: August 5, 2011 Binding: Paperback Estimated price: $22.98 Share this book on Twitter |Facebook
	JavaScript: The Definitive Guide: Activate Your Web Pages Stores: USA | UK | Canada | Italy | Kindle | UK Kindle By David Flanagan ISBN: 0596805527 Publisher: O’Reilly Media Publication date: May 10, 2011 Binding: Paperback Estimated price: $27.48 Share this book on Twitter |Facebook
	iOS Programming: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide (2nd Edition) Stores: USA | UK | Canada | Italy | Kindle | UK Kindle By Joe Conway, Aaron Hillegass ISBN: 0321773772 Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional Publication date: July 2, 2011 Binding: Paperback Estimated price: $26.95 Share this book on Twitter |Facebook
	Programming in Objective-C, Third Edition Stores: USA | UK | Canada | Italy | Kindle | UK Kindle By Stephen G. Kochan ISBN: 0321711394 Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional Publication date: June 20, 2011 Binding: Paperback Estimated price: $25.99 Share this book on Twitter |Facebook
	Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X (4th Edition) Stores: USA | Canada | Kindle | UK Kindle By Aaron Hillegass, Adam Preble ISBN: 0321774086 Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional Publication date: November 19, 2011 Binding: Paperback Estimated price: $27.99 Share this book on Twitter |Facebook
	Introducing HTML5 (2nd Edition) Stores: USA | UK | Canada | Kindle | UK Kindle By Bruce Lawson, Remy Sharp ISBN: 0321784421 Publisher: New Riders Press Publication date: October 28, 2011 Binding: Paperback Estimated price: $14.49 Share this book on Twitter |Facebook
	Programming Python Stores: USA | UK | Canada | Italy | Kindle | UK Kindle By Mark Lutz ISBN: 0596158106 Publisher: O’Reilly Media Publication date: January 7, 2011 Binding: Paperback Estimated price: $36.42 Share this book on Twitter |Facebook
	Beginning Android Application Development Stores: USA | UK | Canada | Italy By Wei-Meng Lee ISBN: 1118017110 Publisher: Wrox Publication date: April 19, 2011 Binding: Paperback Estimated price: $15.99 Share this book on Twitter |Facebook
	Agile Web Development with Rails Stores: USA | UK | Canada | Italy By Sam Ruby, Dave Thomas, David Heinemeier Hansson ISBN: 1934356549 Publisher: Pragmatic Bookshelf Publication date: March 31, 2011 Binding: Paperback Estimated price: $22.36 Share this book on Twitter |Facebook
	Eloquent Ruby Stores: USA | UK | Canada | Italy | Kindle | UK Kindle By Russ Olsen ISBN: 0321584104 Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional Publication date: February 21, 2011 Binding: Paperback Estimated price: $24.99 Share this book on Twitter |Facebook
	Matlab, Second Edition: A Practical Introduction to Programming and Problem Solving Stores: USA | UK | Canada | Kindle | UK Kindle By Stormy Attaway ISBN: 0123850819 Publisher: Butterworth-Heinemann Publication date: August 11, 2011 Binding: Paperback Estimated price: $35.44 Share this book on Twitter |Facebook
	Java Performance Stores: USA | UK | Canada | Italy | Kindle | UK Kindle By Charlie Hunt, Binu John ISBN: 0137142528 Publisher: Prentice Hall Publication date: October 10, 2011 Binding: Paperback Estimated price: $40.73 Share this book on Twitter |Facebook
	Gamification by Design: Implementing Game Mechanics in Web and Mobile Apps Stores: USA | UK | Canada | Italy | Kindle | UK Kindle By Gabe Zichermann, Christopher Cunningham ISBN: 1449397670 Publisher: O’Reilly Media Publication date: August 19, 2011 Binding: Paperback Estimated price: $14.34 Share this book on Twitter |Facebook
	Learn You a Haskell for Great Good!: A Beginner’s Guide Stores: USA | UK | Canada | Italy | Kindle | UK Kindle By Miran Lipovaca ISBN: 1593272839 Publisher: No Starch Press Publication date: April 18, 2011 Binding: Paperback Estimated price: $21.55 Share this book on Twitter |Facebook
	Supercharged JavaScript Graphics: with HTML5 canvas, jQuery, and More Stores: USA | UK | Canada | Italy | Kindle | UK Kindle By Raffaele Cecco ISBN: 1449393632 Publisher: O’Reilly Media Publication date: August 2, 2011 Binding: Paperback Estimated price: $21.31 Share this book on Twitter |Facebook
	Arduino Robotics Stores: USA | UK | Canada | Italy | Kindle | UK Kindle By John-David Warren, Josh Adams, Harald Molle ISBN: 1430231831 Publisher: Apress Publication date: July 14, 2011 Binding: Paperback Estimated price: $26.38 Share this book on Twitter |Facebook
	HBase: The Definitive Guide Stores: USA | UK | Canada | Italy | Kindle | UK Kindle By Lars George ISBN: 1449396100 Publisher: O’Reilly Media Publication date: September 20, 2011 Binding: Paperback Estimated price: $24.99 Share this book on Twitter |Facebook
	The Tangled Web: A Guide to Securing Modern Web Applications Stores: USA | Canada | Kindle | UK Kindle By Michal Zalewski ISBN: 1593273886 Publisher: No Starch Press Publication date: November 26, 2011 Binding: Paperback Estimated price: $26.50 Share this book on Twitter |Facebook
	MongoDB in Action Stores: USA By Kyle Banker ISBN: 1935182870 Publisher: Manning Publications Publication date: December 16, 2011 Binding: Paperback Estimated price: $27.46 Share this book on Twitter |Facebook
	Programming Pig Stores: USA | UK | Canada | Italy | Kindle | UK Kindle By Alan Gates ISBN: 1449302645 Publisher: O’Reilly Media Publication date: October 20, 2011 Binding: Paperback Estimated price: $24.99 Share this book on Twitter |Facebook
	The Python Standard Library by Example Stores: USA | UK | Canada | Italy | Kindle | UK Kindle By Doug Hellmann ISBN: 0321767349 Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional Publication date: June 11, 2011 Binding: Paperback Estimated price: $31.49 Share this book on Twitter |Facebook
	The Joy of Clojure: Thinking the Clojure Way Stores: USA | UK | Canada | Italy By Michael Fogus, Chris Houser ISBN: 1935182641 Publisher: Manning Publications Publication date: April 4, 2011 Binding: Paperback Estimated price: $21.99 Share this book on Twitter |Facebook
	Xcode 4 Stores: USA | UK | Canada | Italy | Kindle | UK Kindle By Richard Wentk ISBN: 111800759X Publisher: Wiley Publication date: June 28, 2011 Binding: Paperback Estimated price: $19.99 Share this book on Twitter |Facebook
	Programming Amazon EC2 Stores: USA | UK | Canada | Italy | Kindle | UK Kindle By Jurg van Vliet, Flavia Paganelli ISBN: 1449393683 Publisher: O’Reilly Media Publication date: March 14, 2011 Binding: Paperback Estimated price: $24.22 Share this book on Twitter |Facebook
	Advanced Mac OS X Programming: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide Stores: USA | UK | Canada | Italy | Kindle | UK Kindle By Mark Dalrymple ISBN: 0321706250 Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional Publication date: August 28, 2011 Binding: Paperback Estimated price: $32.95 Share this book on Twitter |Facebook
	CUDA Application Design and Development Stores: USA | UK | Canada | Kindle | UK Kindle By Rob Farber ISBN: 0123884268 Publisher: Morgan Kaufmann Publication date: November 14, 2011 Binding: Paperback Estimated price: $43.98 Share this book on Twitter |Facebook
	Sinatra: Up and Running Stores: USA | Canada | Kindle | UK Kindle By Alan Harris, Konstantin Haase ISBN: 1449304230 Publisher: O’Reilly Media Publication date: December 1, 2011 Binding: Paperback Estimated price: $15.29 Share this book on Twitter |Facebook
	Management 3.0: Leading Agile Developers, Developing Agile Leaders Stores: USA | UK | Canada | Italy | Kindle | UK Kindle By Jurgen Appelo ISBN: 0321712471 Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional Publication date: January 7, 2011 Binding: Paperback Estimated price: $29.50 Share this book on Twitter |Facebook
	Professional NoSQL Stores: USA | UK | Canada | Italy | Kindle | UK Kindle By Shashank Tiwari ISBN: 047094224X Publisher: Wrox Publication date: September 13, 2011 Binding: Paperback Estimated price: $16.99 Share this book on Twitter |Facebook
	Scalability Rules: 50 Principles for Scaling Web Sites Stores: USA | UK | Canada | Italy | Kindle | UK Kindle By Martin L. Abbott, Michael T. Fisher ISBN: 0321753887 Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional Publication date: May 15, 2011 Binding: Paperback Estimated price: $16.96 Share this book on Twitter |Facebook
	Programming Concurrency on the JVM: Mastering Synchronization, STM, and Actors Stores: USA | UK | Canada | Italy By Venkat Subramaniam ISBN: 193435676X Publisher: Pragmatic Bookshelf Publication date: September 2, 2011 Binding: Paperback Estimated price: $19.29 Share this book on Twitter |Facebook
	Learning HTML5 Game Programming: A Hands-on Guide to Building Online Games Using Canvas, SVG, and WebGL Stores: USA | UK | Canada | Italy | Kindle | UK Kindle By James L. Williams ISBN: 0321767365 Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional Publication date: October 5, 2011 Binding: Paperback Estimated price: $16.54 Share this book on Twitter |Facebook
	Semantic Web for the Working Ontologist, Second Edition: Effective Modeling in RDFS and OWL Stores: USA | UK | Canada | Italy By Dean Allemang, James Hendler ISBN: 0123859654 Publisher: Morgan Kaufmann Publication date: June 3, 2011 Binding: Paperback Estimated price: $38.43 Share this book on Twitter |Facebook
	Brave NUI World: Designing Natural User Interfaces for Touch and Gesture Stores: USA | UK | Canada | Italy By Daniel Wigdor, Dennis Wixon ISBN: 0123822319 Publisher: Morgan Kaufmann Publication date: April 27, 2011 Binding: Paperback Estimated price: $18.49 Share this book on Twitter |Facebook
	Haskell: The Craft of Functional Programming (3rd Edition) Stores: USA | UK | Canada | Italy By Simon Thompson ISBN: 0201882957 Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional Publication date: October 2, 2011 Binding: Paperback Estimated price: $44.96 Share this book on Twitter |Facebook
	Think Stats Stores: USA | UK | Canada | Italy | Kindle | UK Kindle By Allen B. Downey ISBN: 1449307116 Publisher: O’Reilly Media Publication date: July 22, 2011 Binding: Paperback Estimated price: $21.98 Share this book on Twitter |Facebook
	Rails 3 in Action Stores: USA | UK | Canada | Italy By Ryan Bigg, Yehuda Katz ISBN: 1935182277 Publisher: Manning Publications Publication date: September 28, 2011 Binding: Paperback Estimated price: $27.48 Share this book on Twitter |Facebook
	Test Driven Development for Embedded C Stores: USA | UK | Canada | Italy By James W. Grenning ISBN: 193435662X Publisher: Pragmatic Bookshelf Publication date: May 2, 2011 Binding: Paperback Estimated price: $19.37 Share this book on Twitter |Facebook
	MacRuby: The Definitive Guide: Ruby and Cocoa on OS X Stores: USA | UK | Canada | Kindle | UK Kindle By Matt Aimonetti ISBN: 1449380379 Publisher: O’Reilly Media Publication date: November 4, 2011 Binding: Paperback Estimated price: $16.70 Share this book on Twitter |Facebook
	Modern Information Retrieval: The Concepts and Technology behind Search (2nd Edition) Stores: USA | UK | Canada | Italy By Ricardo Baeza-Yates, Berthier Ribeiro-Neto ISBN: 0321416910 Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional Publication date: February 10, 2011 Binding: Paperback Estimated price: $56.24 Share this book on Twitter |Facebook
	Designing Search: UX Strategies for eCommerce Success Stores: USA | UK | Canada | Italy | Kindle | UK Kindle By Greg Nudelman ISBN: 0470942231 Publisher: Wiley Publication date: May 24, 2011 Binding: Paperback Estimated price: $14.99 Share this book on Twitter |Facebook
	Windows Phone 7 Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach Stores: USA | UK | Canada | Italy | Kindle | UK Kindle By Fabio Claudio Ferracchiati, Emanuele Garofalo ISBN: 1430233710 Publisher: Apress Publication date: May 26, 2011 Binding: Paperback Estimated price: $22.99 Share this book on Twitter |Facebook

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Early feedback has been great and helped shape the book. The reception by early readers and reviewers has been nothing short of incredible. Here is one:

My career got a huge boost when I got serious about blogging, two years ago. So I’m in absolute awe at this amazing book, going above and beyond the best advice I’ve ever heard on the subject. I wish I would have read this two years ago, as I had to learn this the hard way. Honestly, this book has got me inspired to get back to writing more.
—Derek Sivers, founder, CD Baby, sivers.org

I’m pretty confident, humbly, that you’ll love it. It provides you with all the info you really need to succeed with your own blog, and it does so in an organized manner that will get you to plan, build, promote, benefit from, and grow your own blog.

While useful to a general audience, the book was specifically written for developers and technically minded entrepreneurs (e.g., hackers and founders). Above all, it aims to be a practical book packed with actionable advice, and not your typical fluffy book about blogging.

You can buy the beta here, and please let me know what you think about it once you get around to read it. I’m very excited to be able to share the fruits of much hard work that took most of my evenings and weekends for the past few months.

No related posts.

The most important update is that the book is not going to be self-published. Instead, after receiving offers from a couple of major publishers earlier this year, I decided to publish the book with The Pragmatic Bookshelf. My experience with them has been more than satisfactory so far.

The book is going to be about 250 pages, and at the moment I’ve completed about 70% of it. The exact title and cover are not set in stone yet, but there is a concrete possibility that it will head into beta soon. This means that the book is likely to become purchasable before it’s fully finished, even though this hasn’t officially been confirmed yet.

Early technical reviewers have provided extremely encouraging feedback. Among those who’ve shared their valued thoughts are well-know world class bloggers who found the book to be packed with useful advice.

To give you a better idea of what the book is all about, I’ll share the (very provisional and subject to change) Table of Contents (as it appears at this early stage) here.

Table of Contents

0. Introduction

Part I — Plan it

1. What kind of blog are you going to run?
1.1 Solo vs Collective
1.2 General vs Niche
1.3 Pundit vs Instructional
1.4 Business Blogs
1.5 What’s Next

2. A rock-solid plan for your blog
2.1 Define Your Blog’s Main Topic
2.2 Analyze the Size of Your Niche
2.3 Give Readers a Compelling Reason To Stick Around
2.4 Set Goals for Your Blog
2.5 Choosing and Registering a Domain Name

Part II — Build it

3. Setting up your blog
3.1 Choose Your Blogging Software and Hosting
3.2 Installing WordPress
3.3 Configuring WordPress
3.4 Enhancing WordPress With Plugins
3.5 What’s Next

4. Customizing and fine-tuning your blog
4.1 Pick a Professional Theme
4.2 Enable Tracking of Your Site’s Visitors
4.3 Customize Your Sidebar
4.4 Encourage Social Media Sharing
4.5 Win Over Subscribers
4.6 Don’t Get in Trouble, Use Disclaimers
4.7 Master On-page SEO With Platinum SEO
4.8 Performance Considerations
4.9 Enable Code Highlighting in Your Posts
4.10 What’s Next

5. Creating remarkable content
5.1 Content Is King
5.2 Write for the Web
5.3 Can Linkbaiting Be Ethical?
5.4 Write Catchy Headlines
5.5 Develop Your Own Voice
5.6 Where to Find Ideas for Your Posts
5.7 Case Study: Math-Blog.com’s Headlines
5.8 Get Readers to Explore Your Content
5.9 Dealing With Copyright Violations
5.10 Back Up Your Content
5.11 What’s Next

6. Producing content regularly
6.1 What’s the Post Frequency, Kenneth?
6.2 Consistency Is Queen
6.3 On What Days Should You Post?
6.4 Schedule Time to Blog
6.5 Manage Your Time With the Pomodoro Technique
6.6 Surviving Writer’s Block
6.7 Get Others to Write for You
6.8 What’s Next

Part III — Promote it

7. Promoting your blog
7.1 Market It and They Will Come
7.2 Correcting a Self-Sabotaging Mindset
7.3 Perform On-Page and Off-Page SEO
7.4 Not All Links Are Created Equal
7.5 Guest Blogging on Other Blogs
7.6 Other Forms of Article Marketing
7.7 Participate in the Community
7.8 The Dark Side of Link Building
7.9 Promoting Your Articles on Social Networks
7.10 Promote on Technical Social News Sites
7.11 Case Study: ProgrammingZen.com’s Referral Traffic
7.12 What’s Next

8. Understanding traffic statistics
8.1 Baseline vs Spike Traffic
8.2 Key Site Usage Metrics You Need to Consider
8.3 Interpreting Visit Quantity and Quality
8.4 Where Do They All Come From?
8.5 Analyzing Google Analytics and Clicky Statistics
8.6 Keeping Track of Your Blog’s Growth
8.7 What’s Next

9. Building a community around your blog
9.1 Engage Readers
9.2 Supplement Your Blog With Community Tools
9.3 Forms Of Criticism
9.4 Your Mantras When Dealing With Criticism
9.5 What’s Next

Part IV — Benefit from it

10. Making money from your blog
11. Promoting your own products
12. Benefiting from your blog to the fullest

Part V — Scale it

13. Scaling your blogging activities
14. Beyond blogging: your strategy for social media
15. Growing your online presence
16. Final words of advice

If you are interested in receiving ongoing news about the book, you can sign up for my spam-free, very infrequent, announcement newsletter here.

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I also created a pre-launch landing page where you can signup to receive occasional updates about the progress of the project, and learn of when the book becomes available for purchase. If you are interested, please signup now.

Your feedback has been extremely helpful in determining the goals for the book. While I won’t share the many personal messages of encouragement I received via that surbey form, I’d like to transparently share the quantitative results of the survey, in case you are curious.

Title-wise, people liked Zen and the Art of Technical Blogging and Zen and the Art of Technical Marketing. I went with the former.

A large majority of survey participants have bought an ebook before:

Of the proposed topics for, and goals you’d like to achieve from reading, the book, earning extra income, promoting a startup, sharing technical knowledge, becoming a better self-promoter, and understanding online marketing where the most popular. So that’s what I’ll focus on.

When it comes to formats, most people strongly favoured PDF. I haven’t sorted out the details yet, but I think I will end up producing DRM-free PDF, Epub, and Mobi ebooks. I may also have a printed version as well, if I can find a printing and distribution system that doesn’t have insane markups on each copy.

Regarding price, I suspect a certain bias in the results. When asked how much you’d be willing to pay, respondents will sometimes state a lower number in the hope that this will influence the price and make it more affordable. Regardless, I have not decided yet on the price and it’s something I’ll likely establish towards the end of the writing process, based on the actual value the book ends up delivering. It will most likely be affordable though; anything between $19-$29 for all the digital formats (with a discount for those who signup to the pre-launch newsletter).

To wrap up, these results show that most respondents would be quite interested in buying this book, so long as the conditions are right:

I may occasionally post announcements about this in the blog as the project progresses, but the best way to stay up-to-date is to signup for the spam-free newsletter for the book. I’m genuinely excited about this book and hope that I’ll be able to bring a good deal of value and insight to many people.

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However, before committing to investing a large amount of my time and energy in such a project, I thought it would be best to gauge the interest level in this idea amongst my readers first. I would also like to understand what areas interest you the most, and what you’d like to get out of such a book.

For example, would you like to learn how to blog so as to earn extra income? Or maybe how to further your career? Perhaps you’re interested in promoting your own products (such as desktop software or a web application) online.

If the interest is there, I want to get feedback as early as possible so as to create a useful step by step roadmap that truly answers your questions and serves your needs well.

If you are intrigued, please consider filling out the following brief survey. Thank you very much in advance for your valuable input.

Ebook Survey

Those who read the Gang of Four (US | UK | CA) several years before, may have expected a highly technical reference book with examples translated from C++ to Ruby (whenever patterns applied to Ruby as well). And in theory Olsen’s book was very much like that, as it was a list of 14 design patterns extracted from the Gang of Four and applied to Ruby.

In practice though, Design Patterns in Ruby really wasn’t anything like Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software. To start with, it wasn’t much of a reference. It was more akin to a cookbook of recipes that related to the idiomatic use of Ruby patterns.

Upon starting that book, readers may have expected a cold, dry, tough-to-fully grasp treatment of the topic at hand. Instead they were greeted with a tone that was friendly and entertaining; you could read and absorb the whole thing in a matter of days. While some people may have thought this book was aimed only at Ruby experts, it turned out to be incredibly accessible to, and suitable for, Ruby beginners as well.

Eloquent Ruby (USA | UK | CA), Olsen’s newest book, doesn’t veer much from the same description. This time the focus is not on specific design patterns, but rather on the style and essence of Ruby as a whole.

In the three plus years that separate Olsen’s two books, we’ve witnessed the language and its community mature as we’ve moved away from Ruby 1.8, and we’ve seen plenty of new tools and idioms emerge. Eloquent Ruby tries to capture the essence of writing beautiful Ruby code in this modern idiomatic manner, by focusing on Ruby 1.9 (while providing footnotes for those who are still using 1.8).

There is a certain “Ruby way” of approaching problems and elements of style that reveals if a developer is an experienced Ruby programmer or not. This book will no doubt help you better understand not only the “how” but also the “why” of this distinctive Ruby way.

The 31 short chapters in Eloquent Ruby are logically organized and easy to follow, but can be read independently from one another, too. By focusing on practical examples, these chapters cover everything from basic style considerations to object oriented design, and delve into such topics as testing, metaprogramming, DSL, packaging and deploying gems, different Ruby implementations available, and monkey patching considerations.

This useful book assumes that its readers have a basic knowledge of Ruby, yet aren’t complete and total experts yet (and indeed such experienced Ruby users may not pick up too much new information from this book). For those who consider themselves to be novice to moderately well versed Ruby programmers, this book is a delightful read that’s likely to help you further your Ruby skill set considerably.

I would classify Eloquent Ruby as a “second Ruby book”, to be read after you’ve worked your way through a canonical introduction. Yet, if you’re a bright developer who’s coming from a different language, you may consider jumping right into it as your first Ruby book.

This great title is called “Eloquent Ruby”, but I feel it could just as easily have been called Idiomatic Ruby, Elegant Ruby, or Beautiful Ruby – as all of those descriptions fit it to a tee, too.

Book giveaway: I will randomly draw one person from among those who share (retweet) this review on Twitter, and personally ship that person a free copy of Eloquent Ruby. All you have to do to be entered in this giveaway is to tweet about this post. I will announce the winner tomorrow morning on my twitter account and in the comments below.

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To make things even more intriguing, and to really get all of us CS/programming/math enthusiasts salivating, the boxed set is also made available for preorder (it’s slated to ship out next month). Given that a good percentage of programmers are apt to really want this boxed set, chances are that it will sell out fairly quickly (as such I made sure to preordered mine today).

While very few people will actually read this great set from cover to cover (in total it’s more than 3000 pages long), this is one of those monumental tomes that deserves a spot on your shelves, provided they are strong enough!

Having such an epic body of work on hand is a joy many of us would relish. (I speak from firsthand experience here, as I used to have an older version of this algorithms Bible, but I had to part with it when I moved continents a few years back.)

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The Rails page is a complete rewrite as I’ve removed any trace of Rails 2 books. I outlined a useful path of Rails books to follow based on the few available titles that are up-to-date with the latest version of the framework.

It’s likely that more books on the subject will come out in the next few months and as they do, I will update the list accordingly. That said, the existing Rails 3 books (or those that are just about to be released) are very valid, useful ones.

No related posts.

Jeremy has now published a new book called Authoring eBooks (tagline: How to Write and Market Your Technical eBook), the aim of which is to provide fellow programmers with the benefit of his insight and experience, so that they too can successfully self-publish and market a technical ebook, and make some serious money out of it.

Let me just start by saying that, despite the topic at hand, this is not a get rich quick book. Most of this book is in fact focused on how to create a great product that will be useful to a wide number of people.

Doing so will also incidentally lead to worthwhile earnings, but there are no empty promises of easy riches. Jeremy never concealed the truth, which is that writing a technical book is hard work, and he treats his readers as intelligent, rational individuals and not desperate people looking for a quick buck.

It’s aimed at programmers so the examples are specific to programmers, but its content could very well apply to any non-fiction work you intend to self-publish.

Having outlined this premise, let’s get started. The book is divided into four major areas: concept, content, writing, and sale. The idea behind it is that this book will provide you with a roadmap to go from an idea for an ebook to a finished product that sells well.

Concept

This section is dedicated to finding the right idea and audience for your book. A lot of emphasis is put on the kind of questions you have to answer during this planning phase, in order to avoid giving up on your book half-way through or ending up publishing something that nobody really wants.

Defining a pitch for the book, a philosophy, and having a clear picture of who is going to buy your book will help you develop your content and aid you when it comes to selling your ebook.

Jeremy also invites you not to get too stuck in this planning phase. Nothing is set in stone, but going through the steps suggested by the book will lend you a flexible map for where you are going throughout the production process.

Content

The content section tries to focus on how to write effective, useful technical material. Starting with a general outline of the chapters you are going to cover in order to provide your readers with a logical progression.

It then goes on to deal with the importance of answering people’s questions in your writing, the type of code examples that will be most beneficial to the reader, establishing an effective technical writing style, as well as the importance of code and diagrams over verbose descriptions (“Show, don’t tell”).

The book also stresses the point of how you shouldn’t be afraid to ruthlessly cut parts that don’t belong. As technical writers we should resist the temptation to jam in extra content that doesn’t really align with the scope and goals you’ve defined for your book.

Writing

The writing section deals with the actual issue of writing the text in a editor and exporting it to standard ebook formats (Authoring eBooks itself ships in PDF, MOBI, and ePub, so that it can be shown on pretty much any device).

Several options are shown, from WYSIWYG editors like Microsoft Word or Apple Pages, all the way to custom scripts that automatically translate text into beautiful documents. Jeremy uses a middle ground based on markup (specifically Markdown) and recommends standard tools to perform the conversions to HTML and PDF.

The importance of dividing the book into multiple documents, and relying on tools like git for version control and collaboration among multiple people, is also stressed. This is something that should be obvious to most programmers, but it warrants repeating.

Sale

The last and largest section of the book is dedicated to the art and science of getting your book to sell. This section amounts to a good plan that goes from testing the market to customer care, and monetizing after sales.

Programmers will find this section to be the most interesting one as it provides many tips and tricks to help you acquire prospective customers even before your book has been published, as well as how to go about defining a fair price, and selling and marketing your book once it’s ready.

Shortcomings

Before writing my overall take on this book, I thought I’d share what could have been done better in what is otherwise a great little book.

In the market research section of the book I would have loved to see keyword tools employed to estimate the size of a market for a given subject, as well as the foreseeable costs required to generate paid traffic.

I also feel that the book could have benefited from specific case studies from existing products. This is a minor complaint, but it would have enriched the book to see specific numbers for signups, conversion rates, sales, Adwords campaigns, and so on.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I believe that Jeremy wrote a solid, impressive roadmap to publishing a successful ebook. I found the “protips” throughout the book to be particularly insightful.

Authoring eBooks currently sells at the promotional price of $29, but its price will go up to $49 in a few days (after New Year). So if you are interested, grab it now.

Some people will frown upon the price, given that it’s a relatively short ebook (110 pages). But if the content or ideas presented in this book allow you to save even a single hour of work, or make at least an extra sale or two, then it will have already paid for itself.

Don’t buy this book if you are not willing to do the work required to make that extra passive income each month. And don’t buy this book if you expect step-by-step instructions for every aspect of publishing your ebook.

For example, you’ll be told which storefronts you should sell your book through (e.g., Lulu, Amazon Kindle, etc…), but you won’t receive detailed instructions on how to set each of them up. You are a programmer, so it’s assumed that you can figure this out on your own.

I sincerely recommend this book to anyone who has been toying with the idea of self-publishing a technical ebook (which is something that’s rather popular among programmers as of late). I’m no stranger to information marketing, yet Authoring eBooks still gave me a few good points to think about should I decide to self-publish my own ebook.

Disclaimer: Links to the book contain my referral id. Nevertheless, I tried to provide an impartial and honest review.

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