I was contacted a couple of months ago by Five Simple Steps, a publishing company specialising in books on web design and development. They told me that they would soon be launching a new series of books, called Fast Reads.
The idea behind Fast Reads really resonated with me: ultra-focused, digital only, and able to be read cover-to-cover in about twenty minutes. A quick, approachable, readily digestible briefing on a very specific topic, so you can go from zero to informed within a lunch break or a brief commute.
It’s no secret that I constantly write in Markdown, which is John Gruber’s brilliant solution for the problem of keeping files in readable, portable formats, but also allowing for useful structure and formatting. In a nutshell, Markdown lets you write plain text in a way that’s not only readable as-is, but can also be converted to HTML.
If you’ve ever emphasised a phrase *like this*, you’ve used Markdown. If you’ve ever used a series of asterisks to create a makeshift horizontal separator, you’ve used Markdown. If you’ve ever made a list by starting each line with a hyphen or a number, you’ve used Markdown. It’s intuitive, it follows very common conventions, and it’s simple to learn and use.
I write every article on this site (and my articles for publication elsewhere, in magazines and online) in Markdown. All my notes are in Markdown files. My weekly members-only newsletters begin life as Markdown files. I even think in that format.
It was fitting, then, that I was offered the opportunity to write a Fast Read – the first in the series, no less – about using Markdown. I gladly accepted, and I’m pleased to announce that the book is now available.
It’s called Writing in Markdown, it’s about 5,000 words long, and you can read it cover-to-cover in around twenty minutes. It costs £2.50 (or around $3.80, or €3.50, depending on exchange rates etc), and it’s available now.
When you buy the book, you get a bundle containing ePub/iBooks format, PDF, and mobi/Kindle format. They’re DRM-free.
Topics covered include:
- What is Markdown?
- Why use Markdown?
- Basic syntax and building blocks
- Advanced matters, like extra features in alternate Markdown systems
- Editors with Markdown support, on various platforms
- Converting Markdown to HTML
- A suggested style guide
Even the book itself was written in Markdown, which seems entirely appropriate.
I very much hope you’ll enjoy it. You can find out more about the book here.