A Book Apart

2010 was a good year for me. I moved into a new home. Salter Cane released an album. We had a really good dConstruct. And I wrote a book.

It was HTML5 For Web Designers, the very first title from a new indie publisher called A Book Apart.

Back then, I wrote about the writing process, Jason wrote about the design, Mandy wrote about editing, and Jeffrey wrote a lovely foreword. What a dream team!

From there, A Book Apart went from strength to strength. Under Katel’s stewardship, they released the must-have books for web design and development.

One of the perks of being an author for A Book Apart is that I get a copy of every book published. I have a shelf of slim but colourful book spines.

Now, after 14 years and 60 titles, the collection is complete. A Book Apart won’t be publishing any more new books. Don’t worry—you can still buy the existing titles at all good bookshops, like bookshop.org. They made sure to prepare the way for this decision.

I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to express how grateful I am to everyone at A Book Apart. They treated me very, very well. Heck, they even let me publish a second book.

Thank you, team—it was a pleasure and honour to collaborate with you.

On Rejection | Zeldman on Web & Interaction Design

The focus of the A Book Apart series is what makes it great …and that means having to reject some proposals that don’t fit. Even though I’ve had the honour of being a twice-published A Book Apart author, I also have the honour of receiving a rejection, which Jeffrey mentions here:

In one case we even had to say no to a beautifully written, fully finished book.

That was Resilient Web Design.

So why did we turn down books we knew would sell? Because, again—they weren’t quite right for us.

It was the right decision. And this is the right advice:

If you’ve sent us a proposal that ultimately wasn’t for us, don’t be afraid to try again if you write something new—and most importantly, believe in yourself and keep writing.

A Book Apart celebrates its third anniversary

Aw, my l’il ol’ book is three years old!

To celebrate, you can get 15% off any title from A Book Apart with this discount code for the next few days: HAPPY3RD.

Kissa. Book. Launch. — Roden Explorers Archive

Own. Your. Nook. There’s power in owning your nook of the ‘net — your domain name, your design, your archives — and it’s easier than ever to do so, and run a crowdfunding campaign at the same time.

Bookin’. — Ethan Marcotte

The twelve(!) year old photo that Ethan has illustrated this post with still makes my heart sing.