Just a couple years ago I had never written a book, fast forward to the present and my third book is winging its way to a finer bookstore near you. The world is a crazy place, I tells ya.
My first book was all about WordPress, to which many a wag said, “If you love WordPress so much why is Blankbaby hosted on TypePad?” This was often accompanied with a sneer, as if the questioner had caught me doing something particularly nasty. I would calmly explain that one man can love more than one blogging platform (I’m like a blogging Mormon).
The truth is, I’m a big fan of both WordPress and TypePad. This clearly explains why my second book was all about, you guessed it: Amazon’s Kindle. When no one bought that book I was fairly certain my writing career was at an end.
I wouldn’t let something like a career ending book stop me from pitching my editor a third book about TypePad (OMG!). Shockingly my editor, Cliff, thought about it for a little while, checked with some business-type folks, and in a matter of a few weeks I had a contract in hand. That just left it up to me to write the thing (An aside: I find the process of getting the contract signed and receiving the first advance check to be quite exciting. Starting the writing process is something I find quite vexing [just ask anyone who has worked with me on one of my books. I’m slow to start], but once I get going I’m like a writing train barreling down the paragraph rails… or something).
The kind people at Peachpit sent me 25 copies of my new book, called Building a TypePad Blog People Want to Read, and I did what any normal person would do: laid them all out on our dining room table and took a picture of me making a face in front of them:
Here’s the real point of this post: buy a darned copy of the book. I know you’ll like it.
Oh, and if anyone out there works for TypePad (or SixApart), contact me! I’d be happy to have a little contest/promotion with ya. I need to do something with all these books, so I might as well give some away!