Books by Andreas

Insider SEO & PPC, by Andreas Ramos and Stephanie Cota. How to use search engines to get qualified leads, prospects, and customers by building and managing SEO and PPC campaigns. Interviews with Google, Microsoft, Clicktracks Web Analytics, and others. 26 case studies. 47 tips & tricks.

(Second edition. Jain Publishing, 2006. 256 pg., 35 illustrations, tables, index. ISBN 2006 978-0875730882). Available at Amazon, Borders, Barnes & Noble, and so on.

Insider's Guide to SEO, by Andreas Ramos and Stephanie Cota. This was the first version. After a year, we updated it as a second edition (see the book above).

(Jain Publishing, 2004. 114 p., illustrated, with index and tables. ISBN 978-0875730516)

Hands-On Web Design, by Andreas Ramos. This came out in February 1996 and was one of the first books about HTML and web development. By 1998, there were hundreds of books on HTML, but I was one of the first. The book sold very well.

(Jain Publishing. 1996. 160 pages and 83 illustrations. ISBN 978-0875730769)

PCs for You and Me: Guide to DOS and Windows, by Andreas Ramos. This was a great book, but too late for the market. Windows came out in August 1995. So did Netscape. Within months, nobody cared about Windows anymore. The hot topic became HTML and web design.

(Jain Publishing. 1995. 326 pages with illustrations. ISBN 978-0875730622)

Your Second Manual, by Andreas Ramos. I wrote this in Denmark in 1989. The Atari ST was the top computer in Europe from 1986 to 1992. My book was noted as "Most Significant Product" by a leading UK computer magazine and I was "Man of the Year" by a computer magazine in Spain. This was before email and I got dozens of letters from readers every week. I even appeared in a Danish cartoon strip for several years. The book sold over 25,000 copies at $45 each. Published in Danish, Swedish, English, Spanish, French, German, and Finnish.

(Indigo, Denmark. 1989. 224 pages with illustrations. ISBN 87-89488-01-6)

The Berlin Wall. Edited by Cindy Mur. The book presents three original source materials and three academic articles about the Berlin Wall. The three source documents are a speech about the Berlin Wall and freedom by John F. Kennedy (president of the United States), a secret speech to the Soviet Communist Party by Nikita Kruschev (premier of the Soviet Union), and my account of the Fall of Berlin Wall.

(Greenhaven Press, 2003. 96 pages. ISBN 978-0737713510)

Grammar for Writing: Complete Course. By Phyllis Goldenberg, Elaine Epstein, Carol Domblewski, Martin Lee, Beverly Ann Chin. This is a standard American high school text book. They also republished my Berlin article.

(Sadlier-Oxford, 1999. ISBN 082150312X)

The Cold War: Chronicles of America's Wars, by Josepha Sherman. Another republication of my Berlin article.

(Lerner Publications, 2003. 96 pages. ISBN 978-0822501503)

Complete Idiot's Guide to Technical Writing, by Krista Van Lann and Catherine Julian. Yeah, I'm in an Idiot's Guide. Is this a good thing or a bad thing?

(Alpha Books, 2001. 352 pages. ISBN 0028641469)

Writer as Publisher: Independant Publishing, edited and produced by Andreas Ramos and Stephanie Cota. Stephanie Cota and I arranged a day-long seminar for independant publishing by writers. We recorded the seminar and produced the book and four-CD set. We also set up an ecommerce site for this project. The books and CDs were published by the NWU.

(National Writers Union 2002. 60 page book and four audio CDs with five hours of audio. ISBN 0-615-12260-4)

Breaking Into Technical Writing, edited by Andreas Ramos. I organized and led annual seminars on technical writing. I also produced the books for these. These were published by the NWU.

(National Writers Union NWU, 2000. 90 pages with illustrations and index.)

Work in the New Economy: Flexible Labor Markets in Silicon Valley. By Chris Benner. A book on the economics and strategies of contractors in Silicon Valley. I was interviewed for this and made comments on the draft manuscript.

(Blackwell Publishing, 2002. 320 pages. ISBN 0631232508)

Gurus, Hired Guns, and Warm Bodies: Itinerant Experts in a Knowledge Economy. By Professors Stephen R. Barley and Gideon Kunda. Steve Barley is the Charles M. Pigott Professor of Management Science and Engineering and Co-Director of the Center for Work, Technology, and Organization at Stanford University's School of Engineering. Professor Gideon Kunda is at the Department of Labor Studies at Tel Aviv University.

In the 1830s, England was the first to undergo transformation from an agrarian society into an industrialized society. Factories were built, farmers turned into workers, factory owners became as wealthy as aristocrats, workers created unions, and the modern world was born. Industrialization led to socialism, labor strikes, and the communist revolutions in Russia and China. Industrialization also made possible the two world wars.

It's happening again. We are restructuring from industrialized mechanical production into a globalized digital economy. This means workers change from career professionals into freelance computer experts (career jobs are disappearing), jobs (and entire industries) move from the USA to India and China, and the expert knowledge workers become wealthy (think of the guys who run computer companies). In agrarian societies, land was wealth. During industrialization, wealth was based on ownership of factories and mineral resources. In the digital economy, intellectual property (IP) is wealth. The ability to use technology to manage business processes produces wealth.

Silicon Valley is the center of this global transformation. Silicon Valley companies, workers, unions, recruiters, and venture capitalists are figuring out which structures are obsolete and how to build new methods. Startups, VC funding, contractors, and many other new concepts were created in Silicon Valley. For ten years, I was the national director of the NWU, a UAW-affiliated trade union for technical writers. I developed and carried out national strategies to benefit technical writers and the tech writing industry. For example, I was part of the political process to rewrite California's law on overtime. I worked at more than 25 dotcoms and corps as a contractor or tech pubs manager. I also started two companies, nearly set up a startup, and co-founded a VC-funded startup. I'm an advisor to several more companies. As one of the people deeply involved in the economic transformation of Silicon Valley, I was interviewed extensively by these professors at Stanford about my work in Silicon Valley.

Review by Prof. Paul DiMaggio (Princeton University): Few developments have been as heavily hyped and as poorly understood as the trend towards 'contingent employment' among the professional/technical/managerial classes. We know from statistical studies that many professionals, especially technical professionals, are hired as temporary, contract workers--but we have known very little about why they work this way or about the conditions of their labor. Barley and Kunda put flesh on the bones of these skeletal figures, exploring the diversity of motives and working conditions, as well as regularities in how they evaluate jobs, build careers, and navigate tricky relationships with employment agencies, high-tech firms, and professional peers. Gurus significantly expands our understanding of what is sometimes called 'the new economy,' exemplifying the value of organizational ethnography and, especially in its superb account of life in labor markets, contributing distinctively to economic sociology. Moreover, the authors' prose is so clear and graceful that Gurus should become the book of choice for teaching sociology and organizational behavior to budding engineers and natural scientists.

(Princeton University Press, 2004. 352 pages. ISBN 978-0691119434)

Careers Creating Search Engines, by Judith Levin. I'm mentioned in this book.

(Published 2006, The Rosen Publishing Group, 2006. 64 pages. ISBN 1404209573)

Internet Culture. By David Porter. I'm also mentioned here.

(Routledge, 1997. ISBN 0415916836)

National Writers' Union Freelance Writers' Guide. By James Waller for the NWU. Mentioned again.

(National Writers Union, 2000. 264 pages. ISBN 0964420813)

Viral Change: The Alternative to Slow, Painful and Unsuccessful Management of Change in Organizations, by Leandro Herrero. I'm also mentioned in this book.

(Meetingminds, 2006. 392 pages., ISBN 978-1905776016)

Language Machines: Essays from the English Institute, by Jeffrey Masten. And another mention.

(Routledge, 1997. 275 pages. ISBN-13: 978-0415918633)

Our Virtual World: The Transformation of Work, Play and Life via Technology, by Ilze Zigurus and Lakshmanan Chidambaram. The authors discuss the web as virtual environments and our evolving interactions in this changed context. My work on the web is mentioned in the book.

(Idea Group Inc., 2001. 260 pages. ISBN 1878289926)

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