Flemington, NJ (August 7, 2001) – Following the success of the print versions of its “Just the tips, man” series of computer flip-books, Nerdy Books announces the release of its first four titles in electronic format.

Just the tips, man for Word 2000, Excel 2000, PowerPoint 2000 and Windows Me are now available for immediate download at www.nerdybooks.com for $9.95. Those who want the e-books but have slower connections can purchase the e-books on CD-ROM for the same price (plus shipping).

In both cases, the e-books are in Adobe Acrobat format (PDF), which is the industry standard for distributing electronic documents. (A full copy of the free Acrobat Reader is included on each CD). The e-books have an automated installation, which copies the PDFs onto a user’s computer and puts shortcuts on the Start Menu and, optionally, the Desktop. This lets even a novice user be productive immediately.

Are e-books risky for publishers? According to co-author Bob Flisser, the potential benefits outweigh the risk. “Once you convert your book into electronic format, there will be a certain amount of piracy, guaranteed. But it doesn’t have to be a big problem. Our printed books retail for $15.95, but our e-books retail for only $9.95. At that price, the incentive for widespread piracy is relatively low, but it means that many more people will have access to our books. Shipping books can be expensive, especially to other countries. But now, even people on other continents can get the benefits of Nerdy Books for the same price as people down the street and without a long wait. With the CD-ROMs, it’s cheaper to ship a four-pack of e-books on a single disc than it is to ship four printed books.”

Wendy Richardson, who wrote the books with Flisser, likes the benefits that e-books have over printed books. “Printing a 300-page book in color is prohibitively expensive. But our e-books are in full color – it doesn’t cost a penny more to make a color e-book. You can also search for words or phrases you need, and the table of contents, index and cross-references at the bottoms of many pages are all clickable. You can find what you’re looking for faster than in the printed versions.”

Ms. Richardson also likes the idea of electronic Nerdy Books working together with the software. “Let’s say you’re trying to figure out how to apply color schemes and templates in Microsoft PowerPoint. If you have our Just the tips, man for PowerPoint 2000 open, you can just press Alt + Tab to switch back-and-forth between PowerPoint and the necessary pages of our e-book.”

About Nerdy Books and the Just the tips, man series
Founded in 1999, Nerdy Books publishes the Just the tips, man series of computer books and e-books for Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Windows. Their Word 2000 book has four pages of five-star reviews on Amazon.com.

For additional information, visit www.nerdybooks.com.

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