Adactio: Journal—Unboxing Apart

Unboxing Apart

Writing a book is hard. Ask someone who’s writing a book right now how it’s going and chances are you’ll catch them at a bad moment.

But there are good moments. Writing the final words of a book: that’s a good moment. Having conversations with a kick-ass editor: those are good moments. Hearing that the book has been sent to the printer: that’s a really good moment.

The best moment of all is when you finally have the physical book in your hands.

HTML5 For Web Designers was delivered to the Clearleft office last week. The moment had arrived.

Joe once told me that the thing to do when you finally have a copy of your own book in your hands is to open it a random page and immediately find a typo. I’m happy to report that that little test returned no results.

Instead, I opened up the book at a random point, pressed my nose into it and breathed deeply. Ah, that new book smell!

It looks as good as it smells, which is hardly surprising given the care and attention that Jason poured into the design. Clearly I’m not alone in that appraisal. As the book gets delivered to discerning readers across the globe, Flickr is filling up with pictures of HTML5 For Web Designers fresh out of the box. I’ve added my own unboxing set to the mix.

Twitter is also abuzz with reports of the book’s arrival, although it’s also filled with an oft-repeated question: when will HTML5 For Web Designers be available in digital format?

It is with great pleasure that I give you… HTML5 For Web Designers on the iPad:

Seriously though, there will be an ePub version available at some point, but we want to make sure that it’s top quality. In the meantime, get yourself the fragrant dead-tree version and enjoy the physical feel of it. You may even want to take a picture.

Monday, July 5th, 2010 11:26pm

Tagged with html5forwebdesigners book abookapart writing