Charles Petzold

Sometimes people email me with questions about foreign-language editions of my books: Will such-and-such a book be available in such-and-such a language? And inevitably the answer is: I have no idea. Any decision to translate and publish the book in another language is negotiated between my publisher and the foreign-language publisher, and generally I don't hear about it. Sometimes the translator will drop me a note, but most often not. My royalty statements split out non-English editions, but there's no further break-down, so it's impossible for me to tell where the sales are coming from.

I've occasionally ordered translated copies of my books from Amazon.de (Germany), Amazon.fr (France), and Amazon.co.jp (Japan), where it's real fun to negotiate the pages, but sometimes a nice person at Microsoft Press gets ahold of a copy of one of my translated books and sends it to me, and that's how I got a copy of the new German edition of Applications = Code + Markup, which looks like this:

It almost has the same title! I particularly like how they wrap stylized 3D letters of my last name around the spine and front cover. (My last name is German, if you were wondering: My paternal grandfather was born in Germany but came to the U.S. in the early years of the 20th century wrapped in a small blanket and carried by his mother.)