i submitted a book proposal...
So after I sent my last author-reviewed chapters back to my editor, for
STY PMA AiO, 2e (acronyms are my friend), she said (and I love her for this) "what's next?" I said, "What's been bandied about but doesn't have an author attached to it?" (because that's how I ended up writing the
Plone book) She didn't list anything terribly interesting, or that I thought would sell, so I said, "how about this blogging book..."
That's how I ended up writing a proposal for
Teach Yourself Blogging in 10 Minutes, and no, I don't think up the titles when they're part of a series like this. Basically, I proposed a book that would serve as a lightweight reference guide to all things blog-related, from getting started with understanding the concept of blogging, to maintaining a blog utilizing a custom template, comments, trackbacks, photos, "blogrolls" and more. Because part of maintaining a blog is the understanding the basics of HTML and CSS, brief primers on these subjects would be included as well.
While the book would be conceptually platform-independent, readers who are new to blogging would be shown how to get started using Blogger; it wouldn't be a guide to using Blogger (they have their own documentation) but with a goal of getting a user up and running in a few minutes, Blogger is the way to go (and we all know how much I like Google). Later in the book, other blogging platforms would be discussed, like LiveJournal, TypePad, Moveable Type, etc. as well as some of the benefits and pitfalls of maintaining an installation of blogging software on your own server.
The ultimate purpose of the book, as part of the 10 minutes series, would be to provide the reader with easily-digestible, concise lessons for all of the tools and tasks that make up the art of "blogging". While somewhat linear in design, the reader would be able to (and should want to) refer back to any lesson in the book, at any time, as needed.
Sure, there's competition out there, which I appropriately identified, but I also identified a selling point that
I care about—the ability, because of its size and price (books in this series run about 225pp and eleven bucks at Amazon), for this book to take the place of the tutorials and other handouts that profs have to make for students, when using blogs in the classroom. Make them buy the darn book. :)
That is...if my proposal passes muster. Sams hasn't turned me down yet, but this is a little out there....but my books sell well for them and I haven't managed to burn any bridges, so I think there's a chance.
