A wonderful book. Every time I read it, I can't put it down. Even after numerous reads, I laugh (often out loud) and cry every time. You fall in love with all the characters. Would love another story about Cat, Raven and Morgan and the rest of the crew on the Black Joke. I love to read Johanna Lindsey and Kathleen Woodiwiss but I put The Windflower on the top of my list! My copy has been read so much, it's falling apart. I hate that Sharon and Tom Curtis's books are out of print. It's so hard to find copies of any of their work. The publisher is missing the boat. What has happened to Sharon and Tom Curtis? I eagerly await their next book. Whatever it is, it will be a great read.

This book is listed as one of the 100 best romance novels, and rightly so. When Merry Wilding is accidently abducted by pirates, she faces challenges that make her a engaging heroine worthy of the hero's love.
If you enjoy Woodwiss's " Shanna" , or Susan Wiggs " The Charm School" this is not to be missed.
Although the plot has been done( woman ends up on pirate ship, matures, falls in love) what makes it unique is first of all, its lyricism. The description and dialogue are poetic, poignant, and vivd. Not to mention there are some really funny moments( "You might try giving it a lump of sugar".) It also has an incredible cast of supporting characters, who you may become so attached to, you might like them more than the protagonists. The characterization is nothing short of beautiful, the characters actually develop over the course of the novel, and I thought it was great that the heroine is given time to develop away from the hero.
This is a must read for any romance reader, and the only problems I see with it are it's hard to get a hold of and it ends. I wish the Curtis' work was still in print.

This is one of the few romance novels that totaly haunts me. I have to say that I have Devon's guts. Yup. The guy is a major pain in ..., always accusing the heroine of plotting against him and the other pirates that have kidnapped her (well duh!) etc. Which of course leaves the story open for those who posess trully wonderful personalitites! Like Cat and Raven!! Yay.

Both of them are ready to risk their lives just to save her from disaster, both try to keep her safe, and both remain constantly on her side! *Grins*. Cat has a very sad history which you will discover when you read the book, Raven is a teen pirate who has a crush on Merry (I won't say more), and morgan is completely twisted, devious, calous, and the perfect mysterious (yet evil) pirate.

I have reread this book time and again, finally noticing that the book improves greatly when you skip over the Devon and Merry scenes and focus on just Merry, Cat and Raven. (Morgan is the most momorable evil character that I have ever read about. He's evil, and yet he's not. One minute you're hating his guts, and the second you realize he did something noble.

I will end with just saying that Cat has got to get a story about him, he just has to! He's got the most unique personality.

I won't tell you what to do, but I promise that if you choose to read this book, you will enjoy it. :)

Happy Reading!

I recommend this book to anyone involved in software development, office design, or management of knowledge workers. A very easy read for both techies and non-techies alike. Programmers and engineers will be nodding their heads in agreement. One of the few books that deals with work-space and the impact it has on productivity (statistics are included). It also deals with the management of skills within the software development group, with approaches to handling the varied skills found in the team. Give it to your boss, your CEO, your CIO, and your technical staff.

The book was written about software development projects, but is absolutely loaded with insight not just on that subject, but on management styles and workplace conditions and rules. One can read this book and become genuinely excited about the potential explosion of productivity, hand-in-hand with employee job satisfaction, that could occur if managers would simply follow the advice given by the authors on how to be effective workplace leaders.

Alas, it probably won't ever happen. Several years ago, the large (Fortune 20) company I worked for brought in Timothy Lister to present the book and the ideas in it to management prior to the start of a major software project. Lister did an excellent job presenting his and DeMarco's philosophy. The managers nodded sagely and showed every sign of comprehending and accepting the concepts contained in the book. Then Lister left, the project started, and the managers immediately reverted to the old style: setting unrealistic deadlines, pressuring employees to deliver more and more in less and less time, and in general following every tired old management strategy that almost always leads to a failed project -- as indeed, it did in this case.

So read this book, learn from it, and enjoy it (it's an easy, entertaining read) -- even if your managers are too stupid to profit from it.

Summed up in one sentence, Peopleware says this: give smart people physical space, intellectual responsibility and strategic direction. DeMarco and Lister advocate private offices and windows. They advocate creating teams with aligned goals and limited non-team work. They advocate managers finding good staff and putting their fate in the hands of those staff. The manager's function, they write, is not to make people work but to make it possible for people to work.

Why is Peopleware so important to Microsoft and a handful of other successful companies? Why does it inspire such intense devotion amongst the elite group of people who think about software project management for a living? Its direct writing and its amusing anecdotes win it friends. So does its fundamental belief that people will behave decently given the right conditions. Then again, lots of books read easily, contain funny stories and exude goodwill. Peopleware's persuasiveness comes from its numbers - from its simple, cold, numerical demonstration that improving programmers' environments will make them more productive.

The numbers in Peopleware come from DeMarco and Lister's Coding War Games, a series of competitions to complete given coding and testing tasks in minimal time and with minimal defects. The Games have consistently confirmed various known facts of the software game. For instance, the best coders outperform the ten-to-one, but their pay seems only weakly linked to their performance. But DeMarco and Lister also found that the best-performing coders had larger, quieter, more private workspaces. It is for this one empirical finding that Peopleware is best known.

(As an aside, it's worth knowing that DeMarco and Lister tried to track down the research showing that open-plan offices make people more productive. It didn't exist. Cubicle makers just kept saying it, without evidence - a technique Peopleware describes as "proof by repeated assertion".)

Around their Coding Wars data, DeMarco and Lister assembled a theory: that managers should help programmers, designers, writers and other brainworkers to reach a state that psychologists call "flow" - an almost meditative condition where people can achieve important leaps towards solving complex problems. It's the state where you start work, look up, and notice that three hours have passed. But it takes time - perhaps fifteen minutes on average - to get into this state. And DeMarco and Lister that today's typical noisy, cubicled, Dilbertesque office rarely allows people 15 minutes of uninterrupted work. In other words, the world is full of places where a highly-paid and dedicated programmer or creative artist can spend a full day without ever getting any hard-core work. Put another way, the world is full of cheap opportunities for people to make their co-workers more productive, just by building their offices a bit smarter.

A decade and a half after Peopleware was written, and after the arrival of a new young breed of IT companies called Web development firms, it would be nice to think DeMarco and Lister's ideas have been widely adopted. Instead, they remain widely ignored. In an economy where smart employees can increasingly pick and choose, it will be interesting to see how much longer this ignorance can continue.

I was 2 years old when Neil Armstrong placed the first boot print on the lunar surface, and after watching Apollo 13, I became curious as to what exactly it was that got us to the moon in the first place. In 6 months time I read "Lost Moon" by Jim Lovell, "Last Man on the Moon" by Gene Cernan, "The Race", "Schirra's Space" and "Deke!".

A Man on The Moon was the last book I read, and I can speak from firsthand experience when I say that if I would have read it up first, I would have had no need to read the others. That is NOT to say that all of the other books are not good, quality reads (with maybe the exception being Schirra's book), because they certainly are, but Andy Chaikin left absolutely nothing to the imagination and almost no stone unturned when he penned this exciting and informative book.

Even though I was just a toddler when our exploration of the lunar surface began, thanks to Andy Chaikin, I don't feel that I missed a single thing.

Along with "Apollo...the Race to the Moon" by Murray/Cox, this is the essential read for the Apollo program. This one tells it from the astronauts perspective and does so richly and in much greater and readable detail than any other book previously written. Dave Scott (Apollo 15 commander) comes alive as the "all-business" leader of his mission...Harrison Schmitt (Apollo 17 LEM pilot) as the un-wavering geologist/astronaut, finally getting his point across about the need for a geologist on the Moon... John Young (Apollo 16 commander) and his "Young-grams" concerning the real or imagined engineering problems with the vehicles, They're all here presented in human terms a they've never been. It's a long book (700 plus pages) but I promise that once you start, you'll have trouble putting it down.

The HBO miniseries "From the Earth to the Moon" truly depicted the Apollo experience with great visuals, and the book "A Man on the Moon" covers even than what could be shown in the 45 minute episodes. It's a science fiction detective story that actually happened. The author gives the reader biographies of the key astronauts, and some of the wives who stood behind their husbands, so the reader becomes acquainted with the men who took the daring journey; and this allows the reader to imagine better what was going in the minds of the men who faced a challenge which could easily end in disaster for them as far a quarter of million miles from home. The author also gives the reader some nice anecdotes shared by the astronauts on project Gemini and Apollo, and this in my opinion added even more of a human element to the missions to the moon. Lastly, the author gives just enough clear technical details to the Apollo spacecraft design and mission control protocols which augment the narrative as well as any really good science fiction story I've read. I was too young to know what was going on in the world at the time Neil Armstrong took the small step, but reading "A Man on the Moon" took me back to the era so effectively. Then, I learned much more about the significance of the other Apollo missions we so seldom here about today.

This is an outstanding book filled with common sense, wit and wisdom from a true student and lover of the game: Bob Rotella. Rotella books have been a big factor in me bringing my handicap down from 20 to 3 over the last three years. Rotella uses stories to illustrate his ideas and concepts, making them easier to remember and understand. Much more entertaining than do this, don't do that type instruction. Great instruction for life as well as golf, especially his ideas on pursuing your dreams, hard work and overcoming obstacles. This book is great for competitive golfers and recreational golfers. Rotella teaches you to love and enjoy the process of improving and playing regardless of results for that given day. One of the hardest aspects of this book to implement is his suggestion that if you are not spending 90 percent of your practice time on shots from a 100 yards and in, you are not practicing to become the best player you can be. Yet he is correct. The more I pracice the scoring shots, the better I get. This is a book that every golfer should read.

Just as we golfers have to groove our swing, so must we learn to groove our emotions. Hit a bad, stupid shot, waste a shot or two or ? What to do?

Rotella has been showing golfers, even some of the better ones such as Nick Price and DL3 and Tom Kite and others. His approach is a down-to-earth one, which starts here with his first book, to let us know "we're not going to play perfect golf. So why get all hot and worked up when we don't?

Outstanding chapters I find in this are "fighting thru fear" and "what the third eye sees."

This and his other books will help any golfer with the mental game. I find the unique attribute about Dr. Bob's works are that his suggestions really do go to the course with you.

This book provides incredible insight into the game of golf. Rather than attempting to teach the infamous "perfect swing," Dr. Rotella allows the reader to maintain his current swing and instead he addresses the mental side to lower scores. Whether you are a beginner or carry a low handicap, this book is sure to knock strokes off. This book enables a player to think correctly on the course and develop confidence in his game. It is easy and fun to read since Rotella recalls past memories that support his point. I'd recommend this book for yourself or as a gift. I re-read chapters nightly before playing in tournaments as an instrument to mentally prepare myself. It has helped me to win national junior events and I guarentee that it will help you as well. Hit 'em straight!

My bookshelves are filled with books on many topics, including death and dying and spirituality -- this book might be the only book I really need.

For years I have thought I must read the Tibetan Book of the Dead -- but whenever I tried, it was much too complicated for me to understand.

Sogyal Rinpoche has written this book so that it is easily understood by anyone, even us Westerners, without compromising any of the Buddhist teachings it offers.

In essence, we begin to die the moment we are born. We spend this life preparing to die well. Nothing is permanent, but we spend much of our lives filling our time with activities and pursuits that help us elude ourselves into thinking that what we see and touch is all that matters.

Sogyal Rinpoche says, "To follow the path of wisdom has never been more urgent or more difficult. Our society is dedicated almost entirely to the celebration of ego, with all its sad fantasies about success and power, and it celebrates those very forces of greed and ignorance that are destroying the planet. It has never been more difficult to hear the unflattering voice of the truth, and never more difficult, once having heard it, to follow it: because there is nothing in the world around us that supports our choice, and the entire society in which we live seems to negate every idea of sacredness or eternal meaning. So at the time of our most acute danger, when our very future is in doubt, we as human beings find ourselves at our most bewildered, and trapped in a nightmare of our own creation."

He writes about the importance of realizing the interconnectedness of all living beings (including nature), of meditation (and gives instructions and advice), of finding and being devoted to a good master (something very difficult for Westerners to accept -- he acknowledges that there are fraudulent ones about), of learning to live and learning to die, of letting go of egos and becoming egolessness. Throughout the book, he tells of female masters as well as males, something female readers may greatly appreciate.

Sogyal Rinpoche is from Tibet, and speaks of the cruelty of the Chinese to the Tibetan Buddhists (very similar to the persecution of the early christians, and later the Jews by the Nazis -- when will we ever learn, but then that's the point of this book!)

In the last section of the book, he speaks of "The Universal Process" which is about spirituality, living and dying of all humans, regardless of race, spiritual beliefs, gender or national origin. There are in the back two mantras with explanations and he shares photographs of his beloved masters. Throughout the book are inspiring poems from such poets as Rumi and St. Francis of Assisi, as well as Buddhists. In the very back he gives suggested readings, and offers phone numbers and addresses of Rigpa National Office, where those who are interested can find referrals to cources and study groups in the US, Canada and around the world.

This book is a very good place for the seeker to begin. For those curious about Buddhism, or seriously interested in becoming a Buddha or a Buddhist, or just looking for more thoughts and information on death and dying, this book is excellent, easy to understand, thought-provoking.

This book is like an armour for those like minded people that want a deeper understanding of life and the nature of mind. Sogyal Rinpoche takes lengths to explain in detailed chapters, the MEANING and PURPOSE of life, death and dying; how we can use our true nature of mind to overcome difficulties, and use compassion and meditation to become enlightened in this life. This is a serious book for those that want to follow the spiritual path, of believing and listening to the inner self and overcoming obstacles by healing one's self first. Sogyal Rinpoche has a lot of wisdom to teach and share through his words, and you will find that the end of the last page, you had everything to gain.

This book should be read by or to everyone at some point in their lives. It not is not just for the buddhist. As His Holiness, the Dalia Lama explains, no matter what religion you practice the goal is the same: happiness. This book can be an inspiration at all times in life. Once you have read it through once, it is organized in such a way, so one can go back and read certain sections to help along the way. Sogyal Rinpoche captures the essence of his purpose of creating the book when he writes: "to learn how to die, is to learn how to live." That simple statement is a social commentary on the development of modern society and the direction it is heading in. The ageing and dying are quickly isolated and doctors are rarely educated in emotional or spiritual care. Sogyal Rinpoche's proposes a new attidute to those who are in a stage that we all will reach at some point. His beautiful writing style and comforting compassion radiates from the pages themselves. I do not associate myself with any one religion, but consider myself a wanderer following my own road in search for answers, for all those who feel the same, this book can illuminate some of the darkness that surrounds us all who have not yet awakened.

Our family looked a long time before finding the info that Joseph Jenkins presents in his book. Having moved onto raw land after living in camping trailers and RVs, we had been used to chemical toilets and now faced a situation where we were weekly going to a dump site. I had heard that there were "composting toilets" which were a great alternative, especially for organic farmers, but that they were very expensive. Jenkins' book contributed more to our life than any other resource excluding the Holy Bible. He presents well documented facts for any one who is concerned with bacteria, disease, the environment, recycling and perhaps best of all simplicity and economics. Joes book has helped our family to live a less stressful and more productive life. What he presents can be understood by anyone and will fit the budget of the poorest of us. Joe Jenkins has given us one more tool to help us all return our planet to the beautiful garden it was intended to be.

What a fun and informative book. Joe's ability to include much needed scientific information in a light hearted and comic way makes the reading truely enjoyable. Composting toilets are catching on for many reasons throughout the world and I see why this book has become a primary source of facts about the whole process of using human manure through a low cost composting method. I have actually used a toilet built to his specs--with the 5 gallon plastic bucket and saw dust--and must say it works. My wife and I are planning to add one of our own to a little cabin on our 80 acre tree farm. Have a laugh and learn how to reduce your impact on the Earth. Read the Humanure Handbook!

Joe Jenkins is a great guy with a great message to spread. He wakes up his readers to the possibilities of a greatly overlooked resource. Many people, like myself, probably have thought about the use of humane manure for garden fertilizer, but it seemed too crazy. Jenkins EMPOWERS us to take advantage of our byproducts, and shows us that there's nothing to fear! Humanmanure composting makes SO much sense. It provides needed fertilizer, reduces pollution, and reduces the need for huge, dirty sewage infrastructure. It's a shame that so many toilets continue to flush every day.

I am currently doing grass-roots development work in rural Bolivia, and am hoping to implement humanure composting in the way Jenkins teaches it. This low-tech technology has SUCH tremendous potential in the developing world, where farmers ALWAYS need more fertilizer, and where there are often not even latrines, let alone sewage systems. Excrement usually just lies about, eaten by pigs and dogs, or leaking into water sources, thus continuing the viscous cycle of parasite diseases.

Joe Jenkins has empowered me to do what makes sense by nature and recycle precious organic nutrients. Everyone should read this book and wake up to these fecal realities. I read his book over a year ago, and am still so excited that I'm considering doing humanure research for my PhD! Read away...

The author heads a security agency that supports Government agencies, public figures, and private citizens. Mr. de Becker discusses the violence that his agency fights: terrorism, attempted assassinations, death threats, rapes, stalkings, domestic violence, child abuse, and children who shoot their parents. Mr. de Becker discusses why people perform these violent acts, how the authorities attempt to prevent these violent acts, and warning signals that precede these violent acts.

Mr. de Becker's book is troubling because it is an "Encyclopedia of Violent Acts" that immerses the reader in fear. Mr. de Becker does list advance signals indicating *when* individuals should fear for their safety, an extremely useful discussion. But many of Mr. de Becker's examples concern public figures who purposefully maintain high media visibility (e.g., celebrities and government officials). These illustrative examples do not always represent the life of a private citizen.

Read this book! So many people have been looking for answers about how to protect themselves from the most dangerous form of violent behavior: that involving acquaintances and obsessives. "The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us From Violence," is clearly destined to become the primer on threat management and violence prevention. Gavin de Becker, the nation's best known personal security expert, provides a series of very readable case studies of obsessed, violence committing criminals. The result is effective guidelines for recognizing and managing potentially violent relationships. Anyone who has faced the horrors of domestic violence, stalking, workplace violence, or persistent pursuit someone with romantic interests, will receive the best threat management plan available anywhere. It is REQUIRED READING by law enforcement and probation officers, domestic violence counselors, attorneys and judges, legislators, anyone is has been or has known a victim of violence, and everyone who wants to avoid victimization. And please, after you read it, give it to your children before they leave for college.

Few crime prevention experts emphasize intuition. Instead, they talk about staying alert to crime. Sometimes crime prevention experts generate more fear than they alleviate.

Gavin deBecker, on the other hand, makes intuition and freedom from fear the focus of his philosophy. Instead of imagining the bad things that could happen, he says, live without worry of crime.

He also says to stop watching the news. It only generates needless worry and gives one a distorted view of the world. I have been teaching these same concepts for years as a black belt in karate, so it was refreshing to read them from someone else. I avoid newspapers and TV news--it only darkens our view of the world. It only makes crime seem worse. Give up news for two weeks and notice how your outlook improves.

As a teacher of women's self-defense, I've heard many stories of intuition. Some people call it the "back ground music," because it is like the music that plays in a movie before something bad happens.

As deBecker writes, act upon your survival signals (run, search your house in the middle of the night, stay away from an individual, etc.), even if you feel foolish doing so.

Shed the fears in your life, because fear clouds the survival signals. Those who live in fear of crime are already victims.

Some of the book is difficult to read, such as chapters on child abuse. But the book is still worth it. Buy copies for yourself and friends. If you spend time worrying about crime, this book could change your life.

"Good Night, Mr. Tom",is an excellent historical novel, by Michelle Magorian, set in World War II. This is a wonderful and touching story, about a small boy, named Willie Beech, who is evacuated from London to live in Little Weirwold with a complete stranger, Mr. Thomas Oakley. Tom is an old man, not used to children (he had a baby bay that died, but that was his only child), but he is kind to Willie. Willie is a deprived and abused child, and he is afraid of everything, because he wasn't let outside much in his earlier life. Slowly, Willie starts to think on his own, and he forgets the hate and despair of his past. Tom comes to love Willie like a son. Then a telegram comes, and Willie must return to his abusive mother in London, but weeks pass and Willie doesn't come back, so Mr. Tom goes to London to try to find the boy he has come to love so much. I would recommend this book to anyone young or old wo wants to read an excellent book. I hope all who read this book enjoy it as much as I did.

In Michelle Magorian's novel Good Night, Mr. Tom, she brilliantly illustrates the hardships of a young child growing up post World War II after having being abused and abandoned by his mother, the one person who was truly supposed to love him. After being shipped from London to the English countryside to live with Mr. Tom, Willie has to adjust to living in a world he never knew existed. A world in which love, affection and friendships flourish. Magorian uses what she knows to set the plot, being that she was born and raised mostly in England. Her parents met each other during the World War II and perhaps she was reflecting on her own issues because as a child she lived a couple of years in Singapore and Australia. She eventually came back to England when she was 9 years old, but had already been moved around a lot, as did the main character in the book. The New Yorker called Magorian's novel "An engrossing and poignant story, with much sunlight to balance the darkness." Jim Trelease from The Read-Aloud Handbook said it was "powerful." And that, it is.

The book Good Night Mr. Tom by Michelle Magorian, was a book I extremely enjoyed reading. When I first looked at the title, I wasn't too attracted to reading the book but once I caught the basic idea on what it was about on the inside, I was eager to read it. I'm glad I did, because this book is one of the most heartbreaking stories I have read. The story starts out very nicely, introducing the main character, William aka Willie aka Will. Unlike some books, the beginning of the story catches your attention and does throughout the whole book. The sad part is, Will is an evacuee and constantly gets seriously abused by his mother. With no father to help him out and his mother not willing to take him during a war, Will is sent house after house with other children to be accepted somewhere else. Will's mother is a religious type but takes everything to another dangerous and extreme level that hurts herself as well as her son. Will is very lucky and ends up in a small town named Little Weirwold with Thomas Oakley, or whom Will learned to call, Mister Tom. Hardened by the loss of his son and wife, he gradually starts to accept Will and in a way, takes him in as his own son. After making friends, discovering talents, creating memories and going on wild adventures, he slowly regains the childhood that he missed. Learning that his before life was not suppose to be, Will is reluctant to return to his mother because she is "sick." The rest of the story is something you need to find out yourself. Even I cannot express the joy and sorrows with reading this heart touching story. Only the readers can feel this by encountering it for themselves. The reason this book received the rating it did is because it was so nicely put together, it makes the reader see the innocence of Will when it's such a heart break just to see him learning new things that are common to us. Michelle Magorian also brought out the infinite patience and love of Mister Tom. This made the story even more special because of the hero role he plays to Will. Another reason is because she makes the conclusion and ending worthwhile the read. It was as if the only reason I was reading the book was to get to the end. The final important reason was because the whole book was exciting. I cannot remember one moment in the book where I wanted to stop. The experiences little William became a part of me and I wanted to encourage this character as he went struggling through his rough life. Overall, this book was very satisfying. I hope to read more books like this in the future... a true heartache. (Very special book)

Review by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of This is the Place

Writers alert! A book we all need is here. Anyone tempted to pooh, pooh that may be dissing a chance at success.
The Complete Guide to Self-Publishing is a book for writers who are new to publishing and those who aren't. It is a book for writers who are already published by big houses or little. It is a book for writers who are scared and trying to decide how to publish and where. It is a book for writers who want to have their books read.
Written by Tom and Marilyn Ross, the gurus of SPAN (Small Publishers of North America), this book is chock-full of 521 pages of up-to-the-times information on the publishing scene, on selling books, and on publicizing books. It has all the how-to nitty gritty necessary if you decide to do it yourself.
If you don't decide to self publish, you'll still be glad you have this one under your belt; these days everyone knows that even if you land a big publisher, you'd still better be prepared to do almost all the publicity for it yourself.
This tome includes recommended reading, point-of-purchase suppliers, printers, catalogs, review sources, bookstore chains, and on and on. It also includes the dope on e-publishing. As a reviewer, I should be finding some flaw in this book, so you can believe the praise. As an author who has been doing lots of publicity on her own for quite a while, I should be able to spot some gaps. Sorry, I just can't. I can only visualize what this reference and guide might do for any writer's career.

Writing a book involves a massive time commitment, and since, as a first-time author, you will almost definitely have to self-publish, you want the best guide out there that will take you through the dizzying maze of items that must be attended to with the least amount of time necessary to understand what has to be done and make the best decisions for your project. This book is THE guide for this purpose. Covers all bases and provides practical how-to guidance on all items. This book gives you the confidence you need to do-it-yourself rather than go the POD route. JUMP START YOUR BOOK SALES is also an excellent companion for selling your book after you figure out with the Complete Guide To Self-Publishing how to get your book completed and printed, etc. in a quality manner worthy of your mighty efforts as an author.

Writers alert! A book we all need is here. Anyone tempted to pooh, pooh that may be dissing a chance at success.

The Complete Guide to Self-Publishing is a book for writers who are new to publishing and those who aren't. It is a book for writers who are already published by big houses or little. It is a book for writers who are scared and trying to decide how to publish and where. It is a book for writers who want to have their books read.

Written by Tom and Marilyn Ross, the gurus of SPAN (Small Publishers of North America), this book's 521 pages is chock-full of up-to-the-times information on the publishing scene, on selling books, and on publicizing books. It has all the how-to nitty-gritty necessary if you decide to do it yourself.

If you don't decide to self publish, you'll still be glad you have this one under your belt; these days everyone knows that even if you land a big publisher, you'd still better be prepared to do almost all the publicity for it yourself.

This tome includes recommended reading, point-of-purchase suppliers, printers, catalogs, review sources, bookstore chains, and on and on. It also includes the dope on e-publishing. As a reviewer, I should be finding some flaw in this book, so you can believe the praise. Sorry, I just can't. I can only visualize what this might do for any writer's career.

Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of "This is the Place"

Marilyn and Tom Ross invite you to explore the real world of gorilla book marketing from pillar to post in both traditional and non-traditional markets. Suspend your disbelief and follow their sage advice. I guarantee you will find ideas you didn't think of. This book is definitely a keeper, your publicity Bible. For those of you who think your publisher is going to do all the things the Ross' suggest, think again. If you want your book to be a best seller, you've got to do the selling and the Rosses tell you how to go about it so it's not so bewildering. The best part, the Rosses give you enough information to make the suggestions your reality. Sometimes following good leaders is better than whacking through your own path--this is one of those times! Be daring, have fun, and sell, sell, sell, and never stop selling! Your books are your intellectual children, love them nurture them, and never, ever forget them for a minute! Blessings, Barbara Garro, MA, CPCU, author of "Grow Yourself a Life You'll Love."

This is a beautifully formatted book on the tough subject of promotion and publicity for self-publishers. It covers all the bases with no real emphasis on any area because the area of eventual success for each self-publisher will probably vary. Marilyn and Tom Ross are the founders of the SPAN network and definitely know their subject. I would recommend this book to anyone who is or is considering the self-publishing road. Along with Dan Poynter's books, this is one to have in your publishing library. But my personal opinion here (and the Rosses wouldn't dare say it) is that in today's competitive environment, self-publishing is more likely to result in lost money rather than new fortunes. Thus, it is very important that the new self-publisher knows what's a potential waste of time and what has any financial payoff. And some of the areas covered in this book may very easily lead to nowhere. All self-publishers beware: it's really tough to make any money here. For most, it's, like it or not, a non-profit business.

As an independent publisher and author (From Depression To Wholeness: The Anatomy of Healing), I can't thank Tom and Marilyn Ross enough for this marvelous, comprehensive guide. I wear many hats, not the least of which is publicist. Jump Start Your Book Sales gives me a professional edge in a highly competitive market. Clearly, this book will remain unexcelled in providing me and other authors/publishers the tools with which to launch and sustain successful publicity campaigns for our books. Kudos to the Rosses.