View from the Potting Shed

This week I received a package from Hodder Education in the post. It contained my complimentary copies of Teach Yourself Mahjong (Third Edition) by David Pritchard. And me. (ISBN-13: 978-0-340-92726-7, ISBN-10: 0-340-92726-7.)

While I’ve probably blogged this before it’s probably worth repeating that the reason I came to update the third edition was that the original author, David Pritchard, died suddenly in December 2005.

As I’d done some consultancy work for Hodder earlier in the year they approached me to write the update, following Mr Pritchard’s original update plan. The copyright of his work remains with his family, I believe, who also receive any royalties, while I get the copyright for the portions that I wrote:

I provided around 70 updates on the second edition and two new chapters, one on Chinese Official International Rules and another on mahjong on computers and the internet, which is one of the most comprehensive accounts of this subject in any mahjong book today. It was a lot of fun to write, and a lot of hard work and discipline, but certainly worth it.

Among the pile of free copies that Hodder kindly sent me is one marked “correx” in which I’ve to scribble any corrections for the next reprint. I’ve spotted a few already. If only I’d a copy of Teach Yourself Publishing and Teach Yourself Proof-reading to help me.

Teach Yourself Mahjong is available at all good bookstores, including Amazon UK.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 10th, 2007 at 4:36 pm and is filed under General, Mah Jong, Writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.