Everything twitter: From Novice to Expert

Monday, June 29, 2009

Everything twitter - From Novice To Expert

Compiled by Steve Soho and Monica Jones, 2009

You should know

I got this book through the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program -- get a free book, write a review.

Don't worry. I won't let the freebie affect my opinion of the book.

Also, in case you didn't notice on-screen (or you're reading this as an RSS feed), I do have a twitter account: @LCGSTG. Also, after the wedding I'll be starting from scratch as @LauraGrowNyberg, so let's see if this book has any great tips for the new account.

UPDATE: I also erroneously credited everythingtwitter.com as the official site of the book. It is not, and that has been corrected below.

So?

OK, so this book was created and published under a Creative Commons license, and appears to have been based on an ebook. Now, I'm not entirely up on how Creative Commons licensing works, but I know there are rules about changing things. And I know that when you're blogging, typos happen.

The reason I started with all that is that there were numerous typing errors -- and the occasionally "train of thought changed mid-sentence" issue -- in this book, and while my instinct is typically to blame the editors, I don't know how much leeway the editors actually have in a case like this.

I do have to say, "Shame on you," to the publishers, though. Why? Because, as noted above, the title of the book is Everything twitter: From Novice to Expert. And that's just what it says oin both the front and back covers.

But on the spine? It reads, "Everything twitter: From Novice to Professional." (Emphasis mine)

Really, folks? Really?

So I was wary from the beginning.

So since it's on my mind, let me thumb through the book and give you a few more examples. Now, I'm not going to throw stones here; you've all seen how my typing is. But if I ever bind this blog for publication (which... is anyone interested? No?), you can be sure that at the very least I'd look up some friends from j-school to give it a good strong copy-edit. I mean, the cover! Really!

Ahem. So one thing that was a little distracting was when the book did something blogs tend to do and books tend not to do; that is, separate paragraphs with a space rather than indenting the first line. That's not a problem, except for when that space is forgotten and two paragraphs run together. They mix up "its" and "it's" -- a grammarian's pet peeve. The glossary is immensely redundant but doesn't have cross-references to account for it -- and does feature misspellings ("Trivillian"? Don't you mean "Twivillian"? And if not, your alphabetizing needs work). And sometimes, quotations are set off with single marks ( ' ) and sometimes with double ( " ).

Nothing, on its own, is huge, and I'd probably overlook most of it if I saw it on a blog. But you know what? When it's on a blog, it can be fixed the moment it's noticed. This is in print now.

That having been said, there's some good information here. A lot of it's pretty basic -- in most cases, I've either already done what they suggested, or else the ship has already sailed -- but if you're starting from scratch and want some help, it's not a bad resource.

Rating

Read it. Don't buy it.

It's a good resource, but it's got its problems, and frankly you can find all of this information online, since that's where is was compiled. If you see it at your local library, pick it up to thumb through, but skip it at the bookstore.

The rest of the Internet

The official site.
The Everything Twitter website is unaffiliated with the book, but is a great resource to consult in lieu of/in addition to reading the book.
Read it as an ebook.
More reviews at LibraryThing.
Bev Ethington MerryWeather at Basil and Spice gives the book a nice review.
Go ahead and follow the authors: @TwitBlueBook.

Posted in Book, Nonfiction by Laura

Email this post

Reviewing Whatever