A little about my book...

I apologize for this brief digression from the normal flow of the blog, but I've been receiving certain comments of late from several venues, and I thought I would address them all at once...

Many times, in forums (forii??) or email, someone will see me say "...as I mentioned in my book..." or "...as detailed in my book..." and I've received comments that some folks have been turned off by that. Okay, I can go with that, as I dislike sales pitches myself. So why do I say something like that?

The first conclusion that many seem to come to is that I'm trying to get you to purchase my book to line my pockets. Don't take this personally...but that is not only the first and most popular reaction, but also the most naive and uneducated one, as well. The folks who feel that way have not written a book and do not know what goes into writing such a book. Further, they have no idea how little an author makes on the sale of a book.

So why do it? Well, I wrote both of my books (first one and second one) as references...I had a lot of information to share, and I wanted to put it all in one place, and thought that it would be a good idea to do so in a manner that would make it available to others.

Now, I could post this stuff on the Internet for free, couldn't I? Rather constantly rewriting the same thing over and over again into emails and posts, I could cut-n-paste it, or simply post it on the Internet and constantly repost the link. But that gets pretty tiresome...so why not put it into a book? Another benefit of having it in a book is that there is a certain amount of credibility to the material...after all, it has to be tech edited and reviewed. My first book had three tech reviewers (some more engaged than others)...my second one started with one, and ultimately had two. Look at who tech edited my second book, and also look at the names of folks who are acknowledged as having made contributions that were important to the development of the book...doesn't that give the material a bit more credibility than posting it to the Internet?

So the next time you see me say those words, and think to yourself, "man, I wish this guy would just shut up about his book!!", try thinking instead that there maybe something useful in that book or on the DVD...Troy Larson thought so.