Learn to write 101 by Kimberly Jackson (best historical biographies TXT) 📕

Mastering Regular Expressions, Perl and LWP, or Mastering Algorithms with Perl.
So if we've already published what seems to be the definitive book in an area, think about whether there's a more specific topic inside the main area. (Of course, you have to think whether there's enough meat for a book, and enough demand for people to buy it.) When we started publishing in the mid-80's, our competitors did top level books on "Unix," but we did books on sed, awk, vi, and a host of other individual Unix utilities. We like to get below the buzzwords that the marketroids know, and instead find the ones that are meaningful to people "in the know."
We're taking this same approach to the technology topics of today. If you're a working programmer or system administrator, you know which tools matter to you--and which ones you wish there was a book on.
While in most cases, you want to think of an animal book being about a specific program or tool, such that the animal on the book cover could become associated with the program in the same way that the Camel has become identified with Perl, it's also possible for there to be a book aimed at a particular job role. So, for example, the Armadillo on Aeleen Frisch's classic Essential System Administration refers not to any specific program but to the role of the sys admin.
(And of course, for historical reasons, because we published them before we got our branding act together, some books that are "animal books" in style and approach don't have animals on the cover at all. For example, our Linux books have wild west themes, and our security books have woodcuts of various types of security objects. But they share all the other characteristics of animal books.)
Animal books are expected to be definitive. Our primary audience is already very technical. They're programmers and system administrators or students aiming for one of those careers. They're tinkerers; they want the inside information that lets them learn new technologies quickly. They want the straight dope, with no condescension and no fluff. They have high standards for quality and practicality, and they send us scathing criticism when they don't find those virtues in one of our books. On the other hand, they are loyal, and when our books are good, they love them and tell us so. When our authors attend conferences and tradeshows, they can sometimes be treated like rock stars.
"In a Nutshell" References
Our very first book was a quick reference, Unix in a Nutshell. We've followed with similar books for most of the interesting technologies over the last ten years: Linux, Java, Perl, Windows 95, 98 and XP, Web Design, Visual Basic, C#, Oracle, and many others. These books are a keystone of our technical publishing program, containing the material that experienced users will want to refer to again and again throughout their career.
In a Nutshell books sport just the head of the animal, reminding you that the intent of this series is an abbreviated, quick-reference format.
We're always looking for new "In a Nutshell" books covering interesting technologies. If what we're looking for isn't clear to you, get copies of Unix in a Nutshell, Java in a Nutshell, and either Web Design in a Nutshell or Windows XP in a Nutshell and ask yourself what they have in common. Then think about how to apply those principles to a new area.
Pocket Guides and Pocket References
Some topics can benefit from an even more abbreviated treatment than an "In a Nutshell." Pocket References like the HTML Pocket Reference contain just the syntax for things that even experienced users still need to look up. Pocket Guides, on the other hand, are "books for smart people in a hurry." Assume that you've got a really competent user. Assemble all the stuff they might find useful in transferring their skills to a new area. The Mac OS X Pocket Guide and the Word Pocket Guide are good examples of this format. The Pocket Reference or Pocket Guide for a technology usually sports the same animal as the book that we consider the principal book on that technology, relying on its small pocket size for differentiation.
Essentials
Sometimes, a topic isn't ready for the definitive treatment. The subject is moving fast, and we want to get out an "early look" to help our readers evaluate the technology. These books have an animal, but the title ends with the word "Essentials", as in .Net Framework Essentials or IPv6 Essentials. These books are intended to be replaced later by a larger, more definitive work, usually by the same author. (We do, however, have books that use the word "Essential" in some other way, as in Essential System Administration, a book that is among the more comprehensive of all those we publish. Sorry for the confusion, but sometimes we don't think ahead far enough about overlap between titles, and an unexpectedly successful book leads to follow-on books, and thus a new "series".)
Digital Studio
Because graphics and multimedia topics require a different type of layout and treatment than programming books, we created a separate series for design, digital photography, and digital video books. The Digital Studio series explores the tools that occupy the modern artist, designer, or filmmaker's studio, such as Photoshop and Final Cut Pro. Learning Web Design and Designing with JavaScript are good examples of this format.
The Missing Manuals
Published in conjunction with David Pogue, the Missing Manuals are O'Reilly's "consumer" line. Packed with in-depth tips and tricks, they nonetheless start at the beginning and walk users through every feature of a software package or operating system. With David Pogue's classic sense of humor and approachable teaching style, they are a fun way to learn. For consumer software products, this is "the book that should have been in the box."(TM) Mac OS X: The Missing Manual is the book to emulate if you want to write for this series.
Cookbooks
While the animal on the cover tells you that this is an authoritative, in-depth treatment for developers or sys admins, the "Cookbook" in the title tells you that this is a reference book in a special "Problem/Solution/Discussion" format. Designed to explicate common programming or system administration techniques, these books are filled with hundreds of specific code sequences that you can effectively cut and paste into your own programs. The Perl Cookbook is a good example of this type of book. Cookbooks are one of our most successful new types of book, and we are interested in developing Cookbooks for most of our major topics.
Hacks and Power Tools
The difference between computer "hackers" and ordinary users is that hackers are always trying something new, something we may not yet know how to do, whether it is for solving an urgent problem, feeling the joy of pushing boundaries, or just, as the poet Wallace Stevens once said, "searching the possible for its possibleness." We experiment, we try things. We ask our friends what works for them when we hit a snag. We have fun with this wonderfully complex toolmaking tool, the computer.
We've always wanted to publish books that capture the essence of the hacker experience. Our animal books embody all the knowledge of a single expert. But we've always wanted a format that made it easy to present lots of small but useful tidbits--tips, tricks, and dare we say, hacks. Our first crack at this problem came in 1993, when Tim edited and co-authored a book entitled Unix Power Tools. Tim conceived it in the early days of the World Wide Web as a kind of "hypertext in print" that would make it possible to present a collection of tips harvested from the Net and from a community of experts, in a way that was both easy to search and fun to explore.
Unix Power Tools went on to sell several hundred thousand copies, and we've heard from many readers that it's their all-time favorite computer book. Nevertheless, despite several attempts, we've never followed it up with more books in the same format. We just couldn't find authors who had the time or encyclopedic depth of knowledge to pull off a massive tome containing thousands of tips and tools.
Recently though, Dale Dougherty and Rael Dornfest independently reinvented a book with a very similar format. It started out with the idea for a focused collection of "Google hacks" - advanced search techniques, scripts for driving the Google API and tips from search experts. We soon realized that the format they were working on was very similar to Unix Power Tools, but by choosing narrower topics, they were able to make the projects more manageable. What's more, with the Web now widespread, the books could actually be developed as a collaborative authoring project using a shared private weblog.
We're interested in doing more "tips and tricks" books along the line of Unix Power Tools and Google Hacks, Mac OS X Hacks and Linux Server Hacks. Check them out and see if you have any ideas. The Hacks books are smaller, on more narrowly focused topics, and they always contain 100 hacks. We wanted a title that didn't lead people to expect another 1000-page encyclopedia with a software CD. And besides, we wanted to do our small bit to reclaim the term "hacker" from those who've redefined it to mean "unauthorized intruder" rather than "computer equivalent of a great jazz improvisationist."
Community Press
Sometimes, a developer community has created a body of online documentation that's well-worth putting into print. Often, as with the Linux Network Administrator's Guide or Using Samba, we work with the community to expand and improve their documentation and publish it as an animal book. But in other cases, such as the MySQL Reference Manual, the online reference documentation makes a great book in and of itself, without added O'Reilly editorial work. In such cases, we'll publish the documentation as part of the Community Press series.
What Topics Are We Interested In?
We continue to be interested in publishing new books in almost all of the "core" areas we are known for -- Internet and open source technologies such as Linux, Perl, MySQL, PHP, Python, Apache, as well as Java, Oracle, networking and security, and system administration topics in general. Some of the newer areas we've been working in include XML and web services, Microsoft's programming and sys admin technologies, including .Net, and graphics and multimedia. If you are at all clued-in to what we publish, you're likely to think of us if you have a book to propose in any of these areas.
We'll always want more good books on these topics. In general, we want proposals that are tightly focused; we need to know who's going to read the book and why they need it. We are not interested in "melting pot" books that throw a bunch of unrelated topics between two covers and pretend that there's some relation between them. (On the other hand, if you can really show how to integrate two different areas in a compelling way, we're definitely interested.) And we're not interested in books that rehash "the same old stuff."
We are interested in filling out our line of Cookbooks and developing collections of tips and tricks for the Hacks series. Because these are new series, there are opportunities to revisit some of our "old" topic areas with a fresh approach. In particular, we'd love good "Web Power Tools" and "Network Administration Power Tools" proposals.
In addition, there are some topic areas we are interested in that you are not as likely to associate with O'Reilly. These include:
Mac OS X
OK, we lied. You probably do think of us for Mac OS X, since we've quickly become the dominant publisher in the space, but we're still looking for more proposals in areas like AppleScript and Mac networking.