BOOK NEWS
Book meets world. News here as it happens.
Creative Pro Book of the Week
Taking Your Talent to the Web was the Creativepro.com Book of the Week for 7 May, 2002.
First Photos Up!
28 April 2002: The first Photo Contest entries have been incorporated into the book site. Style sheet and other design elements also changed. Text updated.
Talent Photo Contest
13 April 2002: To complete the book site’s CSS/XHTML redesign (and, uh, drum up additional sales), we’ve launched a Photo Contest. Submit yourself!
Gnomedex / Amazon Recommend Talent Book
22 March 2002: TYTTTW recommended in special Gnomedex 2002 feature at Amazon.com.
“Kudos to Zeldman”
12 December: “A very solid overview of what’s involved, [written] in a clear and entertaining style.” Sitepoint reviews TYTTTW.
Five Stars from Fatbrain.com
1 December: Five Star “user reviews” at Fatbrain.com include this lovely quotation:
A fabulous book which presents far more (enjoyable) personality than any other I’ve read. While I don’t think it’s much of a reference book (if you want that, go for an O’Reilly Nutshell book), it’s a fabulous read for anybody wanting to polish—or keep polished—their web design skills. It might also be worth taking notes, as there are several pages where Zeldman breaks from the practice of Web Design and goes into tools and hacks to make the designer’s life easier—like changing the View Source editor for Netscape or MSIE. (His web site has the corrected MSIE on Windows instructions.) Having a print-media background would help with the reading, but it’s not really necessary.
More Reviews
26 November: Some interesting reviews from the press have been archived at New Riders's site. Also at New Riders: a “product” page and a nifty publisher bio.
“Concise, Witty”
24 November: “It is an all encompassing, clear, concise view of the past, present, and future of the web. On top of that, Zeldman’s writing is very witty, never boring!” — one of 21 customer reviews at Amazon.com.
That's Amore
18 October: Taking Your Talent to the Web, Italian style. Istruzioni per l’uso per designer di talento. “Se non leggete Zeldman, beh, e’ molto semplice, non sapete che cosa e’ il Web”—Jeffrey Veen. (We love it when he talks like that.) The cover appears to be adapted from a design by Carlos Segura and Partners.
Buzzed
22 September: “Jeffrey Zeldman knows where he stands in the land of Web design, and he’s not afraid to skewer himself when necessary. Underneath what may appear to be a crushingly large, self–referential ego, he understands that when the historians look back, his book and a Pepsi bottle will be side by side as indicators of our time.” A review in "Builder Buzz" at Builder.com.
Reviewed
3 September:
“The problem with most how–to books, with most guide books, instruction manuals, and text–books, is they aren’t written by real people.... Taking Your Talent to the Web was.” Vestige.org reviews TYTTTW.
Another reader comment received today:
“I was laughing while reading it in the shop before I bought it, and that was worth the price alone. I’ll be recommending it to people who don’t even work in the industry, as well as those who do, because it contains some of the most insighful comments on the web I’ve read.”—Carl Huber
» Read all 18 customer reviews at Amazon.com.
Book Site Refreshed
2 September: The Series and Bugs pages have been updated.
Discounted
13 August: Amazon has radically lowered the price of Taking Your Talent to the Web (list: $40 US, “our price:” $28 US).
Debugged
27 July: Bugs page updated to include sites that have changed addresses or gone offline since the book was published. ::: Amazon sales rank hits 647 after a terrifying mid-week excursion into the land of four digits.
Ranked
20 July: Amazon sales rank holds steady at 629 [screenshot]. Amazon has millions of titles. Any ranking below 1000 is good; lower numbers are better; a ranking of 1 would mean “best–selling book at Amazon.” 629 ain’t bad.
Reviewed
19 July: “Capire i limiti e le possibilità di Internet. Costruire siti accessibili, ma anche piccole opere d’arte. Chi ha detto che un sito semplice da usare non può essere esteticamente appagante? Non Jeffrey Zeldman.” A review from sunny Italy.
Questioned
5 July: Taking Your Talent to the Web: the Adobe interview. “Many of our sites are more beautiful and impressive than they are communicative.” All about the web, the work, and the book we wrote. Includes Reader Q&A.
Recommended
5 July: A review of Taking Your Talent to the Web at Writers Write.
We'd like to thank the Academy
29 June: Amazon sales rank hits 127 [screenshot]. Amazon has millions of titles. Any ranking below 1000 is good; lower numbers are better; a ranking of 1 would mean “best–selling book at Amazon.”
Hyped
28 June: Amazon hypes TYTTTW to its millions of newsletter subscribers. Meantime, the Amazon sales rank reaches 433 [screenshot].
Adored
25 June: iBizBooks.com reviews Taking Your Talent to the Web: “[E]xpect this book to be different from any other web-whatever book you've read. You will gain a clear, real world understanding of web-related concepts.... The book is absorbing in part because you feel like the author is talking directly to you....”
Reviewed
22 June: James McNally reviews Taking Your Talent to the Web for CanadaComputes.com: “Once in a while ... an author comes along whose personality just jumps from the pages, making the mastering of a difficult subject feel more like a discussion over coffee.”
Amazon Calling
14 June: Amazon UK asked why we wrote this book.
Ranking Full Stop
13 June: Amazon sales rank reaches 345 [screenshot]. Sales rank fluctuates continually. Anything below 1,000 is considered very good.
Reviewed Redux
12 June: “Gold, gold, gold. This is the best web design book I've read.” Since1968 reviews TYTTTW. A favorable Infoworld review calls the book “an excellent teaching or learning tool.” There are now nine “customer” reviews at Amazon. And TYTTTW has made the front cover of New Riders.
Reviewed
10 June: Reader reviews (eight and counting) have begun to appear at Amazon.
Touted
8 June: Taking Your Talent to the Web is the current “book pick” at Adobe.com. Meanwhile, Seattle–based designer Mathias Eichler liked the book so much, he used it as a splash page for his personal site (and even blessed the splash page with a permanent URL). We're speechless.
Cranked
8 June: Amazon sales rank reaches 440 [screenshot].
Giveaway
7 June: Consolation Champs is running a Zeldman haiku contest. First (and only) prize is a copy of TAKING YOUR TALENT TO THE WEB.
Ranked
5 June: Amazon sales rank reaches 976 [screenshot].
Reviewed
5 June: Andrew King, newsletter editor at Webreference.com, has posted a book review to the Webreference Mailing List. “Like Jeffrey Veen’s book from the same imprint, Zeldman imparts more a way of thinking about the Web, less specific techniques or code.” [14 June update: the review has now been reprinted on the web.]
Bugged
5 June: The Bugs page has been updated.
Pretty Pretty
2 June: The Cover Gallery has been thumbnailed and updated for your pleasure. Designers, note the fine work by Allison Cecil, Carlos Segura and partners, Michael Schmidt, Token Nygaard, and others. Code buffs, view source: the non–structural DIVs are workarounds to avoid bad display in Netscape 4.
Interview
2 June: Then, Now, Next: Christopher Schmitt interviews Zeldman, Jakob Nielsen, Todd Purgason, Lynda Weinman, and David Siegel about where the web has been, where it is now, and where it might be going.
Talk Soup
2 June: The community at Redcricket dishes on the book release. Meanwhile, the Amazon sales rank is listed as 1,358.
Rank and File 2
31 May 2001: Amazon sales rank listed as 2,087, corrected cover image in place at last. Screenshot.
Art of Promo
31 May 2001: Art Today has been running book excerpts online. Unfortunately, these are only available to Art Today members (password required).
Rank and File
30 May 2001: Amazon sales rank listed as 857 (out of several million titles). This has to be a mistake, but we're enjoying it anyway. Sales rank fluctuates by the minute. We've memorialized our temporary status in this cheesy Screenshot.
Blemishes
30 May 2001: Added a Bugs page listing errata in the text.
Linkology
29 May 2001: Prentice-Hall has posted a catalog page for the book, and ISBN.nu offers a comparative price guide for online shoppers.
Sitewise
28 May 2001: The book site (hint: you’re soaking in it) has been redesigned and expanded.
For Sale
27 May 2001: Amazon notes: “Amazon.com Sales Rank: 2,562. Usually ships in 24 hours.” Amazon’s cover illustration is still wrong, as are some facts in the text, but the book is selling and shipping.
Interview
18 May 2001: Webreview’s Molly E. Holzschlag asks Zeldman why he wrote this book. [More interviews ... ]
Absurdity
18 May 2001: The Cheat: The author’s response to finally getting the book in his hot little hands after laboring on it for over a year.
It's Out!
17 May 2001: TAKING YOUR TALENT TO THE WEB was published today, on the tenth anniversary of the WWW, and is now available online and at bookstores everywhere.
Mission of Pre-pro
22 April: Galleys edited, book goes to press.
Covered
April 2001: Allison Cecil’s cover design (72K PDF) has been finalized. Previous versions are memorialized in the cover gallery.
Online
10 April: Those wonderful people at Internet.com have put an excerpt from Chapter 3 online. It’s a short extract from a long chapter, with more to come. (Note that there are a few minor errors in the excerpt, since it's taken from a third revision, and there were a couple of edits after that version.)
Coverage
23 March 2001: SXSW Festival coverage in the Austin Chronicle includes information on New Riders’s “getting published” panel, featuring Nolan, Veen, Powazek, Champeon, and Zeldman.
School's in Session
29 June 2000: Populi and Pratt Institute launch curriculum on which this book will be based.
Copyright © 1995–2002 Jeffrey Zeldman PresentsReset bookmarks to www.zeldman.com. Ahead Warp Speed.