(An Interview with Doug Noble of MacBookshop on a better way to find that Mac book you’ve been looking for.)
“Aha!” I said, tucking an elusive novel under my arm and heading for a double almond latte at the Barnes and Noble coffee shop. “At last, the missing Sharyn McCrumb mystery.” One of my favorite authors, I had been looking for this particular book to complete a set of her work for some time. Now, here it was, but with just a single copy in stock. I ordered an iced latte and sat down to read while I waited.
“Coffee’s ready.” I put down my hard-won book, grabbed the coffee and hurried back to the table. Took, maybe, thirty seconds. What? No book? Not on my table. Not on the next table. Not anywhere in the room. I’ve been robbed!
Well, hardly robbed. I hadn’t even paid yet. An idea. Could be someone comes around periodically to gather the strays from the empty tables in the café. But where do they take them? I mean, this is the only copy in the store and I want that book! I hustle up to the counter and, yes, someone does come around to tidy up every so often. But, if I will please tell them the title, the server will see that I get it back.
Tell them the title? You mean… say it right out loud? In front of all these people? I murmur something like “Mumbles of the Mumble Sun.”
“Come again?”
I mumble a little bit louder.
“Say what?”
I fairly shout it out. “Bimbos of the Death Sun!” And immediately launch into an involved explanation that it isn’t a bit like the title sounds. It’s a joke. Tongue in cheek. Really. I don’t read that sort of thing. But it’s too late. The book is retrieved, but my reputation is ruined. I slink off to the check-out lane, book stuffed under an armpit until it’s safely bagged.
Folks, it doesn’t have to be that way. You don’t have to present that lurid title to the check-out girl. There is a better way. The plain brown wrapper of the new millennia. Ordering online.
Not sure of the book’s whole name? It couldn’t be easier. Just bring up YAHOO! at http://www.yahoo.com, type in, um, ‘Bimbos’ and voilà , Amazon.com will come to your rescue with a little dialog box just for you. Click on ‘Bimbos’ and they will do their best to find a match. They will, in fact, do their best to find you a book on anything you type into Yahoo’s search box, including your mother-in-law’s grandmother’s poodle’s maiden name.
But what if you need a Mac book? You don’t have a specific title in mind, but it has to be Mac. You have already fumbled through a couple zillion Microsoft shelves to find the half-dozen remaining Mac books at Barnes and Noble. And when you type in ‘Mac’ at Amazon.com you are presented with two thousand, nine hundred and thirty choices (really), including everything from children’s CDs to everything ever written by anyone ever named Mac.
MacBookshop, an Amazon.com associate, and one of My Mac’s newest sponsors, is your answer. Like everything from shareware to the original Apple computer, MacBookshop was begun to fill a need left unmet by the Big Guys at the top.
(Sort of reminds you of those finches in the Galapagos radiating out to fill every possible niche, doesn’t it. And to witness the expertise–not to mention the exuberance–with which humans have embraced the computer, you’d think we had spent the last million years happily evolving ourselves toward this virtual existence. But, I digress.)
Doug Noble, who founded MacBookshop in 1998, discovered his own empty niche in the rapidly shrinking Mac sections of the local bookstores. How often have you wished for a book on a particular topic and had no idea where to begin? No idea, in fact, if any such book even existed. What the Mac world needed was a bookstore of its own with easy access to all those great books no longer available to us locally. So Doug, that far-sighted Mac-finch, moved in to fill the gap. He had this to say about his company in an email interview:
Susan: What exactly is MacBookshop?
Doug: MacBookshop is an online, all Macintosh, bookstore. As it became harder to find Macintosh books in the local bookstores with the computer section being dominated by Windows, we decided to make it easier for Mac users to find a decent selection of Mac books.
Susan: Great idea and much appreciated. Why is MacBookshop so useful to the Macintosh community?
Doug: While there are many authors writing about the Mac, they often don’t get shelf space. We offer approximately 300 Mac books, organized by category to make finding books easy. For example, we have books on iMacs, Mac OS, Mac reference, PageMaker, FileMaker, Photoshop, Apple Business, Humor, and many other subjects. And they are easy to find too, using our searchable database and the more than 30 other categories in our pull-down menu. Whether you are a Mac programmer, website designer, database guru, or whether you simply use your Mac for word processing, we have books for you.
Susan: That should certainly solve the problem of weeding through Amazon’s 2,030 ‘Mac’ selections, most of which have nothing to do with the Macintosh. Does MacBookshop have any other special features?
Doug: Each book has a short review. We try to review as many books as possible, and if we don’t like a book, we will say so! We are running a contest to give away a copy of a new title every week, so enter our drawing now. Entry is quick, easy and FREE!
Susan: Sounds like fun. We all love something free and easy. And honest reviews are always helpful, especially in an online situation. How are MacBookshop’s orders handled?
Doug: We are an Amazon Associate. Most books are discounted 20%. All orders are handled and shipped by Amazon, so your satisfaction is assured.
Susan: Thanks Doug for making it so much easier for those of us in the Mac world to find all that marvelous, but elusive, information we need to get the best out of our Macs.
And thanks to MacBookshop for showing us once again how the resourceful Mac gurus around the world are able to develop innovative programs that fill those special needs that the Big Guys can’t be bothered with.
MacBookshop will be handling the SUMMER SALE of the “Stocking Stuffer Steve Book” based on the AppleCart columns for My Mac Magazine. For a humorous look at the agony and the excitement we all experienced, from Amelio to iMac, during Steve’s first year back with Apple, check us out at http://www.macbookshop.com.
More information is available on the book through website designer and publisher Tim Robertson’s page at https://www.mymac.com/applecart
Susan Howerter
susan@mymac.com
Websites mentioned:
http://www.yahoo.com
http://www.amazon.com
http://www.macbookshop.com
https://www.mymac.com/applecart
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