Global Moxie

Photo by Felipe Bachomo.

I hit the bricks this month to spread the word about my book, iWork ‘09: The Missing Manual, and even managed to get a few folks to listen as I preached the gospel of beautiful software making our work lives more productive and creative.

iWork is Apple’s suite of elegant, get-stuff-done software: the Pages word processor, Numbers spreadsheet, and Keynote presentation software. It’s a terrific alternative to Microsoft Office, and my book details how to make the most of it—with lots of juicy insights about common-sense document design along the way.

Several kind journalists indulged me and my proselytizing:

• Chuck Joiner interviewed me for the MacVoices podcast, and I really enjoyed it (notwithstanding my alarming tendency to say “you know” every few seconds).

• Mary Rotman posted a Q&A with me, along with my favorite iWork tips at the O’Reilly FYI blog.

• Garry Barker of the Australian daily The Age notes the necessity of The Missing Manual series for understanding subtle software like iWork: “Mr. Clark’s Missing Manual on iWork is full of good advice in easily absorbed form.” (Thanks, Garry! But please, call me Josh.)

• Web Worker Daily’s review of my book wasn’t really a review of my book, but nonetheless called it “a great title for acclimatizing yourself with Apple’s lovely working environment.” Much appreciated!

And I’m especially flattered to see that the book is featured this week on the front page of Amazon’s Computers & Internet section, where it’s been bouncing around the list of top 100 titles for the past month. This has all been so much fun, and it’s great to see the book finding its audience. I enjoyed writing it, and it’s great to see people enjoy reading it, too. Thanks to all.

Tags: amazon, books, iwork, josh, podcast, press, software