Shirley’s book
Thursday, July 20th, 2006
Just over two years ago, I made a point of calling in to the offices of SitePoint in Melbourne , Australia . I was in town, passing through as part of my year-long world travels, and wanted to meet some of the people there who I’d emailed and written a few articles for in the past. We did lunch. We spoke about writing. And I said that I didn’t think that I was up to writing a book by myself but I’d like the chance to do something.
That something turned out to be a job of tech-editing a book by Shirley Kaiser. I got the offer to do it about a week after we did lunch and thought ‘why not?’. It was a job I could do while on the travels – all I’d need to do was call in at Internet Cafes from time to time to get chapters for review and send back my comments changes.
The travels ended, I got back to the UK , but there was no sign of Shirley’s book. Then, in February last year, I got an email from SitePoint entitled ‘Potential Writing Opportunity’. That was then, and this is now – the potential writing opportunity was fulfilled, but what happened to Shirley’s book?
I have just received my complimentary copy of her book Deliver First Class Web Sites: 101 Essential Checklists, after my own book which I began writing months after editing hers. It’s strange that it worked out like that, and I feel for Shirley having to wait that long for publication (I was just itching to get my hands on the printed copy of my own book!).
A peremptory scan through the book this morning suggests that it’s not that different a beast from the versions that I originally reviewed, but after a year and a half my mind is a little hazy on the fine details, so I could be wrong!
What this book does really well, if I’m allowed to pass comment on something that I had a hand in, is that it cuts out a lot of the waffle and gets to the point very quickly. I’m a fan of the checklist approach (especially if the person reading knows some background info and is not a total newbie) and with this book you can also download easily printable PDF checklists, rather than scribble on the pages themselves (or break the spine of the book by photocopying pages … which obviously you wouldn’t do for copyright reasons, nudge., nudge, wink?).
I’m looking forward to finding some time to re-read the book from start to finish. Who knows, I might even read it in the van and pretend that I’m somewhere exotic, just to take me back to where I was when I originally worked on it!
