A portrait of the artist as a book buyer

This modern world our ours works in mysterious ways.

The Guardian newspaper (the London one, not the San Francisco Bay Guardian one where I started my career twenty years ago, nor the Moscow Guardian one where I served as Art Director fifteen years ago) asked me last week to write an article about my book and visual thinking. The article ran in Saturday's paper across the UK, and I received several complimentary notes from readers, which was great.

Then today I got a Google Alert about a blog mentioning me and that article, so I clicked through to Andrew Smith's blog "In Front of Your Nose".

There I saw Andrew's napkin sketch about how he had come to decide to buy my book. It's a great picture, and the accompanying article serves all authors (or hopeful authors) on how complex the process can be by which a potential reader becomes an actual book buyer.

Thank you Andrew for the blog, the sketch, the insight, and above all for the purchase. You'll be happy to know I sent your link through to everyone I know in publishing as a reminder of all the eggs we need to keep up in the air: books, websites, links, blogs, tools, downloads. It all matters and it all adds up.

Thanks again!

Comments

[Lissa Boles]

Dan (& Andrew),

I have been mesmerized by this medium for a while now, but until moment's ago couldn't 'figure out' how to apply it to my work (life coach and workshop faciliator with more than little 'I'm not an artist' thing goin' on).

But between your excellent home page videos and Andrew's post, the proverbial light bulb's gone off: I do believe I've got it!

That said, I do have a question for you Dan: do you ever do any public workshops? In Canada? I'd attend one in a heartbeat, particularly if it also involved an overview of the video capture process...

Lissa

P.S. Have you see the www.commoncraftshow.com produced by Lee & Sachi LeFever?

[Andrew Bruce Smith]

Dan - many thanks again to you for writing the book - as I hope my humble sketch shows it is proving quite inspirational.

Before last Saturday, I definitely fell into the "I can't draw" camp. I considered myself a "words" rather than a "pictures" person. I hated Pictionary.

At the same time, I've always been convinced that a visual approach to problem solving makes more sense. For example, I've been a fan of Edward Tufte's work for over a decade - and yet I could never work out how to practically apply his principles. For the price of a couple of beers, your book has very happily provided the solution ;-)

Will be interesting to see what further reaction your blog post and mine engender - I'll need to find a bigger napkin to update my book buyer process chart!