• 1/3 of high school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives.
• 42 percent of college graduates never read another book after college.
• 80 percent of U.S. families did not buy or read a book last year.
• 70 percent of U.S. adults have not been in a bookstore in the last five years.
• 57 percent of new books are not read to completion. (1)

Of those who did read books, most read fiction strictly for pleasure. And the #1 selling book genre is “Romance,” which was read by 64.6 million Americans in 2005. (2)

Books + Online Resources > Online Resources

I don’t have to tell you that the web’s technology changes pretty rapidly and sometimes without warning, but it is worth repeating. The web is a very different place than it was ten years ago when I started to learn HTML for the first time. Gone are the table based designs, spacer gifs, bad color schemes, dozens of animated gifs, blinking backgrounds, and scrolling text. Ok, maybe they are not quite gone yet, but a lot has changed. More importance has been put on usability, web standards, and making lots of money.

It is more important than ever to stay afloat on what is happening in the web design community. I doubt you have that problem though because you are reading this article. But what happens though is that most people use the web as their only source of knowledge.

A lot of people are surfing the web searching for a magic pill in the form of a tutorial, article, advice, or tip that will let solve their problems. Good tutorials are abundant if you know where to look. For example, if you want to learn how to make an awesome footer, then go to psdtuts’ tutorial on creating an awesome footer. Now you just need to find equally awesome tutorials to create the rest of your design.

The problem with this approach is that you really don’t understand what makes a design awesome or how to create one yourself from scratch. You will never be able to let go of your need to find the next best tutorial, article, or technique. In a way, what should have been used to help you along is now what you depend on to create good designs. That is if you manage to weave all the fragments together to create a good design.

I think one of the best examples of people relying on supplements rather than building their foundation is the fitness industry. Billions of dollars each year are spent on supplements that promise slimmer bodies and more muscles. Some people get so dependent on supplements such as diet pills that they can’t go back to exercising and dieting without it, because they don’t know any other way to lose fat. In a rush to get to their goals, they skipped over building the foundation of knowledge necessary to achieve their goals and keep it. 97% of people who lose weight end up gaining it all back and more within five years. (3)

How to find good books on anything

There are a ton of books on the same subjects, which makes it quite difficult at times to figure out which book is right for you. When I am looking for books on a new subject area I don’t know anything about, I follow these steps to find the best ones. They have worked well for me over the years.

1. Read Amazon reviews

If you are a fan of books, you probably already do this. But if you don’t read many books, than maybe not. The basic idea is to look up potential books using keywords for what you want to learn. Then read the reviews and ratings to try and sort out the good books from the bad. Before you read the reviews, make sure you know what you want to learn and your current level of knowledge. Or you will risk being influenced too much by biased opinions.

The book reviews are written by people like you and me, with different levels of experience and at times they can just be downright bias in their reviews for different reasons. It is a good idea to read an equal amount of reviews by people who like it (4-5 stars) and those who hate it (1-2 stars). This will give you a better picture if the book is right for you. Don’t buy just yet though, mark down the books you find interesting and make it into a list.

2. Go to the bookstore or library with your list

Grab some coffee, buy it or bring your own home brewed stuff. You don’t have to, but I like sipping on some coffee when reading books. Now go find the books on your list, take a few at a time back to a table. Don’t be afraid to ask for help when looking for something. Sometimes they organize books in ways that makes no sense at all or someone moved it and didn’t put it back (if that is you, I will find you).

I personally believe it doesn’t take much more than skimming through a few chapters in order to get an idea if the book will teach you what you want to learn and do it in a way that you can actually understand. Sometimes a book that receives rave reviews is because the people who review it are all from the same background like “Graphic Design” so when you try to read it, it goes way over your head. I run across books like that all the time, so don’t worry about it and move on to another one.

3. Buy, borrow, or steal the best books

Now that you have filtered your list even more, it is time to get get the books. If you are buying books, I recommend amazon (as if there were any other online book stores, ok there are, but I am biased). Books on amazon are cheaper than books in store, unless you got a coupon. Amazon also gives you an option to buy used books, which works out great sometimes. I have used that option many times with no problem and sometimes I can get books for dirt cheap.

Your other option is to check your local library, they will usually carry the popular titles. And if they don’t, most libraries have a service where they share books with other libraries so you can search that network to find the book you need. If you put enough effort into the search, it shouldn’t be too hard to find the best books. I still use the library all the time so go dust that library card off from 5th grade.

If you have exhausted both options, but are still unable to get your hands on the books you need to improve yourself, then it is time to take extreme measures. Go make friends with other web designers with the intent of stealing their books when they aren’t looking. Not recommended, but hey it’s for the sake of learning! They will understand in the end.

Conclusion

Based on the statistics in the opening paragraph, it doesn’t take much to get ahead of the competition. All you have to do is read a book every few months to improve your skills and you are already ahead of most people. And while there are more information on the web than ever, online resources should be used as a supplement to your knowledge and not how you build your foundation. Reading books are fun anyways, I mean you read this whole article.

Next article will be a list of great books with my opinion about it that you should buy, borrow, or steal. Subscribe today by RSS for free and get more tips on improving your blog design.

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References

1. Survey conducted by Jenkins Group

2. Survey conducted by the Romance Writers of America

3. Government research review Obesity and weight lost