I recently received notice from the publisher that iPad at Work is getting a second printing. Thanks everyone who bought the book. I am quite proud of it. Also, if you know anyone getting a new iPad this holiday season, please point them toward the book. You can get it in the iBookstore, Amazon, and most major brick and mortar booksellers. I was in Barnes and Noble today and saw it on the shelf.

Adam Christianson is one of my very favorite people in the Mac community so when he asked me to come on his podcast and talk about getting work done on the iPad, I jumped. We did a one hour show where we talked about some of the points Adam raised at a recent talk he gave on the subject and some of the content I included in the book.

My most recent book, iPad at Work, is now available on Amazon and the iBookstore. A Kindle version is due any day. Moreover, the book has wide distribution in brick and mortar booksellers, including Barnes and Noble. Indeed, this evening I stopped by a local Barnes and Noble and saw my book on the shelf. It was one of the most rewarding moments of my life.

iPad at Work is 344 pages of the how and (more importantly) why of getting work done on your iPad. The book includes 24 chapters of app recommendations, tutorials, workflows, and advice. I poured my heart into this nerd opus. Here is the chapter list:

1. iPad Fundamentals
2. Useful Utilities
3. Security
4. Internet
5. Cloud File Storage
6. Email
7. Contacts
8. Calendars
9. Video Conferencing
10. Remote Access
11. Travel
12. Enterprise
13. Writing
14. PDFs
15. Reading
16. Notes
17. Brainstorming
18. Presentations
19. Task Management
20. Calculators and Spreadsheets
21. Graphics and Diagrams
22. Databases
23. Project Management
24. Time and Billing

There is also an appendix with specific app recommendations for education, law, medicine, construction, real estate, and information technology. I put a lot of time and effort into these 110,000 words and I’m very proud of this book. Merlin Mann wrote a very kind (and humbling) foreword.

I applied several lessons from Mac at Work to this new book. iPad at Work makes extensive use of QR codes so you can jump to App Store links and websites with little trouble. I’ve also included my own workflows in this book. If you want to read the book electronically, the iBookstore version includes tapable links to the App Store and websites. (The Kindle reader does not support this feature.)

I did a series of podcast interviews about the book. The first released this weekend on my friend Victor Cajiao’s Typical Mac User podcast.

My sincere thanks goes to everyone for supporting my efforts to write iPad at Work. I hope the book scratches your itch.

Things are coming along nicely on the new book. I learned many lessons with the first one that are all getting incorporated into this new one. I’m also making the book even more useful for analog and digital readers alike with QR Codes and hyperlinks respectively.
Right now the word count is at 62,000 and a few of them are even pretty good ones. Most of that is, however, rough text, and there really are no short cuts. Writing a book takes a lot of time. My deadline is the end of August and I expect the next eight weeks are going to be busy.

When I announced the new book, I promised I wouldn’t torture MacSparky.com readers with the tedious (and often) boring details of writing a book. I have, however, received several e-mails asking me to share some of the workflows so I will make occasional post about what I’m up to.

Writing a tech book is fairly straightforward. There are no plot twists, things usually move linearly, and the butler never did it. So outlining such a book is not that difficult. I started in iThoughts HD with a single entry in the middle, “iPad at Work.” Then I started adding branches. Most of the rough work was done at Peet’s over tea.

When things started shaping up, I synced the file (as OPML) over Dropbox to my Mac and looked at it in OmniOutliner Then I sent it back to the iPad and iThoughts HD. With Mac at Work, this work was about 90% OmniOutliner and 10% mind map (MindNode Pro is my favorite mind mapping app on Mac OS X). With this new book, those numbers reversed. I attribute this to the iPad (which didn’t exist when I outlined Mac at Work), which makes mind mapping more intuitive (for me). Either way, the big outline is done and looks great. Here it is from MindNode Pro on the Mac.

Once I was happy with the outline, I saved the OPML file on Dropbox and imported it into Scrivener, which built the book file. I’ll write more about those steps in a future post. The word count is now 10,000 and I’m having fun.

MacSparky.com is sponsored by Bee Docs Timeline 3D. Make a timeline presentation with your Mac.

I’m thrilled to announce I’m hard at work on a new book.

It’s called “iPad at Work.”

People liked the first book so Wiley asked, “may I have another?” and I said, “Yes.” This book is a natural sequel to Mac at Work and I’ve been talking to Wiley about it since I agreed to do the first one. Because Mac at Work was such a unique book, I had to keep it secret. With this one, I get to blab about it from the beginning.

iPad at Work will have some of the same structure as Mac at Work. I intend for the chapters to be self-contained bits of productivity bliss based upon specific work tasks. The outline is still fluid as I sort through all the ways you can use an iPad to get work done. Overall, I’m looking forward to the second book even more than the first. This time there is no fear, just joy.

To do it right is going to take some time. (I still have a day job, this site, and a podcast after all.) If the stars line up, it looks like this book will get released some time around October.

There are a few things I plan on not doing in relation to iPad at Work:

• I do not intend to slow down MacSparky.com this time. I’m having more fun than ever writing for the site;
• I do not intend to endlessly bore you fine readers with the minutia of the writing process and the toils of the tortured author;
• I do not intend to drop out of the Mac community while I dig in.

Finally, I want to thank everyone who provided so much encouragement and support with Mac at Work. While writing a book can be vexing, hearing from readers all over the world who tell me how the book helped improve their lives makes it all worth it and gives me the motivation to kick ass on iPad at Work. So gang, mark your calendars and hold me accountable.