Explains step-by-step how to get started and offers proven techniques for promoting long-term business growth, with emphasis on creative software design, publicity, and customer support.

Shareware Heroes is a comprehensive, meticulously researched exploration of an important and too-long overlooked chapter in video game history Shareware Heroes: Independent Games at the Dawn of the Internet takes readers on a journey, from the beginnings of the shareware model in the early 1980s, the origins of the concept, even the name itself, and the rise of shareware's major players – the likes of id Software, Apogee, and Epic MegaGames – through to the significance of shareware for the ‘forgotten’ systems – the Mac, Atari ST, Amiga – when commercial game publishers turned away from them. This book also charts the emergence of commercial shareware distributors like Educorp and the BBS/newsgroup sharing culture. And it explores how shareware developers plugged gaps in the video gaming market by creating games in niche and neglected genres like vertically-scrolling shoot-'em-ups (e.g. Raptor and Tyrian) or racing games (e.g. Wacky Wheels and Skunny Kart) or RPGs (God of Thunder and Realmz), until finally, as the video game market again grew and shifted, and major publishers took control, how the shareware system faded into the background and fell from memory.

Eric.Weblog() has 50,000 regular users; consistently included on the list of the most popular feeds in bloglines.com Sink founded a company that was named to the Inc 500 Book explains tough topics like marketing and hiring, in terms that programmers understand—all sprinkled with a touch of humor

* Written by an expert with more than 30 years of experience in every role in the IT industry, this book confronts development process problems head-on, and it tackles the critical steps that must be taken to ensure success * Dives into topics such as identifying opportunities, planning for success, building an appropriate business model, assembling a team, developing software, managing teams, and successfully marketing and selling the product * The book fills a void in the current market, and is an ideal read for all IT professionals

One of America's most successful shareware authors reveals the secrets to turning programming skill into profits, including what kinds of programs are the hottest, which distribution channels are most effective, how to advertise and promote shareware, and how to manage a shareware business. The disk includes bulletin board and shareware vendor listings, articles, and sample programs.

The Writer's Bible is a popular textbook, guide, and mentor to fiction, entertainment, and nonfiction writers in the new and print media. The book helps writers write their business plan as well as acquire skills. It's a career planning and writing-skills textbook and a popular book for authors headed for print-on-demand and traditional publishers as well as the electronic media. If you write fiction, nonfiction, drama, learning materials, multimedia, and digital media or for the Internet, you'll find the information in this book useful and timely. Here's how to be your own manuscript doctor and mentor, plan your writing career, acquire the skills to turn your writing into salable work, and acquire knowledge of how print-on-demand publishing works compared to traditional publishing, whether you write for the Internet and the new media (digital media) or for traditional publishing companies or yourself. Plan your writing career and get the skills you'll need to move ahead in the current atmosphere of the literary arena and the world of information dissemination and re-packaging. Every writer needs a Bible and role models as well as a map to navigate places that buy author's works.