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Wendy Richardson is the creator of Nerdy Books, a series of tip books that initially sought to provide handy, pocket-sized reference/training guides to popular computer programs. A long-time software instructor, she founded her own training business, Software School Inc., in 1994, and released the first Nerdy Book, Just the tips, man™ for Microsoft Word® 2000, six years later. After co-authoring numerous "Just the tips, man" software titles, she decided to apply the user-friendly format to her real passion, the environment. As with every Nerdy Book, her mission is to compile a lot of relevant, useful information in a single volume—and to make absorbing and applying it enjoyable and fun.
Wendy's initial introduction to green causes was through her husband, a committed environmentalist. Her own reading and research convinced her that small, incremental changes by large numbers of people can make a huge difference for our planet. The hurdle, in her mind, was how to rescue environmental information from books that were too long, too strident or too just plain dull. She wanted to provide a concise answer to the essential question: What can I do right now? Drawing on years of answering a very similar question from thousands of software users (“How do I do this faster/better/more easily—right now?”), Wendy wrote this book.
One thing Wendy didn’t want to do was simply state the obvious: hang dry your clothes, turn off lights, buy a hybrid, recycle everything. Instead, her goal was (and is) to give you the tip and then back it up with statistics, examples and a nerdy character commenting on the tip in question. The statistics in this book can be depressing at times—and the tips themselves can require readers to buck the waste-generating system—but the characters are there to help you along.
Wendy resides with her husband in New Jersey, where she stays more than busy writing books, running two companies, raising two kids, coaching two basketball teams, gardening, cooking and playing basketball.
