The No Starch Press Blog

Over the past few months, I’ve been working on an interesting experiment. We’re calling the series the Manga Guides–educational comic books translated from the Japanese, all about technical or scientific concepts. (The publisher of the originals is Ohmsha of Japan, and they are co-publishing these translations with us.)

The original artwork in them is simply beautiful. Here are a few of my favorite panels from the Manga Guide to Electricity, Physics, Statistics, and Databases.

Rereko begs Hikaru to teach her about electricity!

Sayaka taunts Megumi about her ignorance of physics

Yamamoto introduces a theoretical mall of Ramen shops

Who knew tabulating data could be so fun?

Keep on the lookout for The Manga Guide to Calculus, the Universe, Molecular Biology, Regression Analysis, and Fourier Analysis, all coming soon. I’ll post some samples as I have them.

For all of you keeping track, we’re currently #1 on The Pirate Bay’s Top 100 Ebooks with over 300 visible seeders for The Cult of Mac (link: http://thepiratebay.org/top/601). I just wish we had a reliable way to measure how many people have really downloaded the books. Mininova is showing 500 downloads, but their stats have seemed very conservative at certain points in this process.

I’m also really happy to see that TorrentFreak’s coverage of our releases has received 500+ Diggs and caught major traction after it was elevated to Popular.

Big thanks to everyone who has blogged about or participated in this experiment.

In all of my blogging furor I forgot that we’ve finally released the second edition of this landmark title. And you thought it would never happen. Well, ye of little faith, it’s real paper now. And check out that cover. Do you get the reference? You don’t? Where have you been these last 20 years?

This is a major revision with (if I recall correctly) about 200 pages of new material and a rewrite throughout. It also includes a Live CD with a version of Ubuntu replete with hacking tools.

Whether you’ve been reading and enjoying the first edition of this book for years or you’ve been sitting on the fence, you’ve got to check out this second edition. I think you’ll agree that it’s well worth the wait.

We don’t like to publish patch-job revisions at No Starch Press, and neither does Jon Erickson, author of Hacking. And we haven’t published one. This is a big event.

So go drop some hard-earned cash on a copy today. Call it a belated Valentines present. Heck, you can even paint the cover red for all I care.

I’m just back from SCALE. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to attend any sessions because I spent the entire time selling books! I shouldn’t complain and I won’t — we sold out and even sold several titles multiple times. I was truly gratified.

And I’ll say this: LinuxWorld has nothing on SCALE. I haven’t seen so many dot orgs at a conference in awhile. There was energy on the exhibit floor. Hardly any suits. And even good kebab down the street.

We’re planning to put regional Linux shows high on our list. Sure, attendance is much smaller than at a show like LinuxWorld, but if the other regional shows are at all like SCALE they’re a whole lot more fun.

Our own publisher, Bill Pollock, is serving as a judge of Tutorama, the Mac Tutorial Contest kicking off today over at Macinstruct.com, a non-profit organization dedicated to teaching people how to use their Macs.

Tutorama invites individuals to submit educational tutorials on anything related to Apple hardware and software products. Winners will get goodies including iPods, books personally-signed by Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, and a Mac Mini. Some of the other judges include Macworld Senior Editor Dan Frakes, former Apple evangelist Guy Kawasaki, and award-winning author Robin Williams.

Participants are encouraged to experiment and you can submit as many tutorials as you want, in any format. Entries will be published anonymously to protect privacy and ensure fairness. Entries must be received by March 20, 2007, and finalists will be announced on April 3, 2007.

So, head on over to Macinstruct, enter Tutorama, and show ‘em what you know!

You know, books are probably the easiest gifts to wrap. And the No Starch Press catalog has so many titles that would make any geek’s holiday season complete. In particular, we’re excited about the three big releases that cap off our year: Inside the Machine by Jon “Hannibal” Stokes, The Book of JavaScript, 2^nd Ed., by thau! and Code Craft by Pete Goodliffe. You can read all about these new books elsewhere on the website, so I won’t abuse the blog with more of the same. But let me explain WHY there’s so much enthusiasm for these titles.

Jon Stokes, Inside the Machine’s author, is the co-founder of Ars Technica, which has a devoted following most websites and blogs would kill for. A few hundred signed copies of the book were made available on the site last Saturday afternoon and were sold out within hours. Better yet, no one had to sit outside in the cold or fight unruly crowds to get their hands on a copy, unlike the mad grab for PS3s. The book’s also creating buzz around the engineering/architecture community, i.e., the people who work on the processors that Jon explores and explains in such fascinating detail.

It’s been six years since the first edition of The Book of JavaScript was published to wide acclaim. Needless to say, the Internet scene has changed dramatically since then. This updated version of thau!’s popular work covers Ajax, all the rage in Web development today. Jesse James Garrett himself, the guy who came up with the term Ajax in the first place, has praised the way thau! “makes JavaScript wizardry more accessible than ever for experts and beginners alike.”

Code Craft is another cool book we expect to do well. Billed as “survival guide for the software factory,” this one is not only full of advice for writing stellar code, it’s a great primer on how to conduct oneself as a true programming professional and grow one’s career in software development. It’ll be an excellent resource for programmers just starting out, for senior programmers who have to manage the newcomers, and for anyone else along the software food chain who wants to work more successfully.

So, there are plenty of reasons to give the gift of books this holiday season — besides the easy-wrapping advantage!

Another great bit of news to share — the designer behind The Cult of iPod, Derek Yee of Octopod Studios, was selected for inclusion in the 2006 Design Annual compiled by Communication Arts magazine, a special issue showcasing the best designs of the year. The Cult of iPod garnered mention in the Books & Jackets category for the unique and creative design elements Yee used to reflect the music player’s essence. 76,000 copies of the Design Annual issue are sold and distributed worldwide, according to Communication Arts, which bills this as “the largest and most eminent of all juried competitions in graphic design.”

Juried by top design professionals and attracting entries from 20 countries, each year’s Communication Arts Design Annual features 250 pages of the best work in posters, brochures, packaging, trademarks, corporate identity, annual reports, catalogs, letterheads and signage, and is fully indexed for reference, according to the magazine’s website.

The Cult of iPod has previously been recognized in the 2006 annual STEP inside 100 competition and won a 2005 Ippy Award for “Most Unique Design” from Independent Publisher magazine.

Octopod Studios has been an important partner of No Starch Press for nearly 10 years, coming up with the eye-catching designs for most of its books, including the best-selling Steal This Computer Book series, the Wicked Cool series, and the retro look of the core of No Starch Press titles, and even the No Starch Press t-shirt. More examples of Yee’s book design work are on display throughout this site, so feel free to browse.

A great note on which to end the year!