Recently in Books Category

My newest book, written with Janna M. Sweenie is titled Picture Yourself Learning American Sign Language, Level 1 and you can now buy it directly from Amazon.com and at Barnes and Noble and from your nearby bookstore!

Picture Yourself Learning American Sign Language, Level 1 is our second ASL book that employs our "Deaf Way" of Hardcore ASL teaching. 

We have a DVD bundled with the book so you can learn ASL with us in real time!

The most inventive measure of our new book is the "Pick and Say Rubric" that leads you to create quick -- "three idea" -- sentences constructed in ASL. 

You just pick one or more words/ideas from a RED column, a GREEN column and a BLUE column and then sign them in sequence. Easy!

Using that rubric method you can forge more than 27,000 American Sign Language phrases by learning only 90 words -- and getting to understand how to "Pick and Say" takes less than 10 seconds.

I know you'll love the book.  You can use the book as a base for understanding Deaf Culture and for learning an exciting foreign language. 

If you have any thoughts or feedback, please find me and share your mind!

Steve Jobs is a cranky genius. 

After this year's Macworld Expo failed to ignite the Apple stock price upward or to recreate the same sort of feverish buzz of last year's Macworld introduction of the iPhone, Jobs decided to strike back against reading to salve his wounds:

Today he [Jobs] had a wide range of observations on the industry, including the Amazon Kindle book reader, which he said would go nowhere largely because Americans have stopped reading.

�It doesn�t matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don�t read anymore,� he said. Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year. The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don�t read anymore.�

What does Steve Jobs think people are doing with his iPhone and Mac computers if not reading and creating SMS messages, email, notes and the next great blog entry or book?

People may not read paper books any longer, but they do read eBooks -- the Kindle's runaway success is testimony to that Jobs falsity -- but one must wonder what's really at the heart of Jobs' sniper shot at readers.

Is it because reading creates independent minds and richer thinkers? 

Apple is built on product idolatry and a "no questions asked" mantra that means you just must "believe" in order to be a user of Apple products. 

Is reading a threat to Jobs' ultimate plan for us? 

Jobs loves design and images -- but it appears Steve Jobs prefers an inactive eye that allows itself to be washed over with images and colorful preaching -- while the rest of us, with active imaginations, prefer our eyes for questioning and for thinking and for interpreting words and context on the page and then storing it all in our minds for future export in an attempt at a greater gain than entertaining the lonesome self.

In my article -- Writing Advice for Authors -- I implore all authors to demand, and get, Copyright in their name from their publishers.

Agents and publishers will tell you Copyright in your name doesn't matter -- yet many publishers will fight you to the death to keep the Copyright in their name and not yours.

Why do publishers demand to own your Copyright when you do the writing?

Why do authors allow publishers to own their Copyright?

The answer is simplicity:  When it comes to ownership, publication rights, reprints and out-of-publication ownership, it is simply easier for the publisher to "own it whole" so they don't have to fret, wonder about, or pay an author for extra or embedded rights.

As well, when a book goes out-of-print, ownership of the book automatically returns to the author if the original Copyright is owned by the author.  The author does not have to write a letter to the publisher to inform them of republication intent or anything else.  Once the publisher is done with the book, the author pulls back all rights -- and publishers don't like having that sort of automatic and intentional loss of a property even if it is normal, proper and moral.

Fight for your Copyright.  Take less money if you must.  Do not let publishers tell you Copyright doesn't matter and then have them deny it to you in total.  Copyright does matter or it wouldn't be such a sharp and sticky negotiating point.

Is it better, as an author, to make a solid $50,000 on a book and have a tremendous success in the marketplace?

Or is it better to get a $2 million advance on a book and have it die on the vine of public prosperity and to have it slashed by the critics?

Is success for an author measured in popularity or by the pocketbook?

My latest book -- Picture Yourself Learning Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard -- is now available for purchase from major online resellers and your local bookstore. 

This book was a real pleasure to write. 

As a relative newcomer to the world of Apples and Mac OS, I was able to discover and reveal the fun in Leopard and I sure hope my joy effectively translates from keyboard to words on the printed page.

Thomson/Cengage Learning is my outstanding publication house and one thing I really love about the book is the semiotics in the teaching:  You get full-color, super-high quality images of the Mac Operating System in action on every page!

The word can slay -- but the image burns the eye forever!