Best-selling Women Authors Power Peachpit's Publishing Success
Technology has traditional been a male-dominated market sector. But when it comes to explaining all that complicated stuff, no one does it like the women writers of Peachpit Press. In fact, they're the ones that make the complicated stuff - from Web design and graphics applications to programming languages and more - not only comprehensible but truly fun to learn and use.
Peachpit Press, the Berkeley-based computer publisher operating since 1986, has been a Pearson company since 1996, and has dominated the field of graphics publishing for more than a decade. During that time, Peachpit Press has had more women write more best-selling computer books than any other technology-based publisher.
Nancy Aldrich-Ruenzel
Nancy Aldrich-Ruenzel took the helm of Peachpit in 1996 and steered the company through five years of unprecedented growth. She is also a vital part of what makes Peachpit tick: a strong author community, dedicated staff, and the desire to make sure Peachpit continues to be one of the most successful computer book publishing ventures. Nancy has served on the boards of international graphics organizations, chaired and presented at graphics and digital design conferences and judged traditional and digital design and illustration competitions.
"Peachpit's publishing mission is to help people learn - no matter what their learning style. And my mission, as I see it, is to ensure Peachpit is a place where authors and staff members really love to work."
Lynda Weinman
Known to Web designers everywhere, Lynda Weinman is a Web design guru. She runs her own training center in Ojai, California, and is author of Peachpits' best-selling Lynda.com Hands-on Training series. Lynda's Web site (www.lynda.com) garners over one million independent viewers each month!
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Robin Williams
Writing as a single mom with three kids, Robin has become one of the most popular tech writers around with The Little Mac Book - currently in its eighth edition with more than 1 million copies in print. She has now written over twenty best-selling and award-winning books including the classic 1994 Non-Designer's Design Book.
Elizabeth Castro
Elizabeth Castro's HTML 4 for the World Wide Web: Visual QuickStart Guide has topped every major booksellers' best-sellers list and remains one of the most popular computer books of all times, having taught hundreds of thousands how to make their first Web page. Elizabeth was the technical editor for The Macintosh Bible (fifth edition) and the founder of Página Uno, a publishing house based in Barcelona, Spain.
Elaine Weinmann
Elaine Weinmann's best-selling books on QuarkXPress, Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop have helped establish the Visual QuickStart Guides as the most popular teaching method available on the market today. Her trinity of best-sellers includes book on QuarkXPress, Illustrator, and Photoshop. Her recipe for success: "Our books are like computer cookbooks. The instructions have to be clearly written, they must be tested very carefully for errors, and the ingredients and measurements must be accurate - or the cake will be a flop."
Maria Langer
Maria Langer flies a helicopter. She rides in the rodeo. And when she's not taming a beast - mechanical or mammal - she's busy writing books on the MAC OS and MS Office applications. Her reviews and articles pop up in all the computer magazines and professional journals, and in her spare time she teaches software and hardware troubleshooting in a classroom environment. Her latest book, Mac OS X 10.2 Visual QuickStart Guide, is her fiftieth title in 12 years!
Peachpit Press Facts:
ˇ Peachpit Press is 82% female - with 39 total employees.
ˇ Aldrich-Ruenzel is the only woman publisher - and officer - in the Pearson Technology Group.
ˇ Five of Peachpit's seven managers are also women.
ˇ Peachpit Press is celebrating its 15 year anniversary this year