Yesterday, I was browsing various design websites in search of inspiration for a new project I’ve begun. I got sidetracked by clicking on a few off-topic links (that never happens!) and somehow ended up reading the first chapter of “Speak Human” by Eric Karjaluoto.
The book discussed the advantages of not being a huge company. Though the publisher is giving the book away free one chapter at a time via the Web site, I could not wait to get my hands on the rest of it. After a little investigation, I discovered that the book was published by a “digital agency” called smashLAB. They seemed cool enough, so I used a strategy which has failed me when dealing with other (larger) publishers: I simply asked for an on-screen version. In a tweet, that is. What normally would have taken weeks, or months, or never, took only an hour and a half. It went like this:
blakewatson: Hey @smashLAB, is there a way to get a digital version of “Speak Human” on my Mac?
smashLAB: @blakewatson Not at this time. For now it’s paperback, Kindle, and free in browser. That said, I hear Amazon is working on Kindle for Mac.
blakewatson: @smashLAB I’d gladly buy the paperback, except I can’t hold it.
smashLAB: @blakewatson That’s the first good reason I’ve received for a screen-only version. Let me see what we can sort out. :-)
smashLAB: @blakewatson Do you run Parallels or have a dual-boot machine?
blakewatson: @smashLAB I run Vista with VirtualBox.
smashLAB: @blakewatson In that case, you could install this: http://gu.nu/Ify and then get this: http://gu.nu/aI9
Problem solved.
Okay, I admit that it is not the most ideal fix. I’m not really looking forward to doing my reading inside Windows Vista, but hey, it is a fix and it is better than struggling with a paperback. I may wait for Kindle on Mac or until the Web site version is posted in its entirety. Probably whichever comes first.
Of course, the interesting point in all of this is that smashLAB lived up to the ideas in the book. Guess you will just have to check out the book to know what I mean. ;-)
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I had a somewhat similar situation with SitePoint, although it took them much longer to get the PDF to me. (They were trying to figure out a way of watermarking each individually as they wanted to offer electronic versions to all their customers eventually.) Once they had the system in place, they were able to send me copies of all the books I had bought, whether they were available to the public as PDFs or not.
(You do know about BookShare, right? Well, I’m sure I’ll find out as I read your older posts.)
Disabled NYC, I recently bought some e-books from SitePoint. I foresee buying a lot of books from SitePoint just because it was so easy and they have the kind of titles I want. I used to be a BookShare member, but I didn’t like the quality of the books. Besides, most of the books I wanted were not available.