Internet Handbooks is a new series of practical guides for beginners and intermediate users. They offer well-illustrated manuals which show you where to find online resources in all sorts of disciplines and subjects.
The initial focus is on writing, business, and technology - but it is obvious that the approach is likely to spread more generally as more people need guides like these to help them find their way through the overwhelming sense of information overload which pervades the Internet.
This volume is aimed at writers, editors, agents, and anyone else interested in the business of writing, publishing, and the book trade.
It covers search engines, portal sites for books and publishing, newsgroups, libraries, and mailing services. All these are nicely illustrated with screenshots of the sites discussed.
There are full listings of book suppliers, from Amazon to Waterstone's; dealers in secondhand and rare books; library suppliers; magazines; and online texts (downloadable) in all genres from children's books to science-fiction and Tolkein.
It's a generous listing, with no sense of snobbery, and includes writers' associations, periodicals and agents. This is in an oblique way an alternative online version of the Writers' and Artists' Yearbook - which is praise indeed. The last part of the book is given up to a description and full details of publishers in the UK, Europe, USA, Australia.
The strength of this book is its breadth of coverage. If you're interested in exploring the manner in which the Net intersects with the world of publishing, this book is the print version of a major portal site.
