Those of you who know me (or my work) know that I am best known for the books and articles that I have written about enterprise networking products, such as Exchange Server and Office Communications Server. Even so, I decided to take a break from the norm and write a book on Microsoft Publisher 2010.

The reason why I decided to write this book is because I have always thought that Publisher was, without a doubt, the most underrated of all the products in the Microsoft Office Suite. Publisher has been around since 1991, and yet relatively few people seem to use it. In fact, when I was in college, I was required to take a class on using Microsoft Office, but the instructor didn’t even acknowledge the existence of Publisher. I have always thought that the seeming lack of interest was odd, because you can do some really cool things with Publisher.

I have to confess that Publisher is the only Microsoft Office products that I can really say that I enjoy using. Don’t get me wrong—Word, Excel, Outlook, and the other Office applications are great tools. I couldn’t do my job without them. The thing is that when I am working with Word, Excel, or Outlook, the task at hand feels like work. Let’s face it: Most of the Microsoft Office products are really geared toward producing business documents, and really, how much fun is that?

Publisher, on the other hand, allows for a much higher degree of creativity and expression than the other Microsoft Office products do. I have found creating Publisher documents to be a rather enjoyable process, and the end result is always highly satisfying. Needless to say, I jumped at the chance to write a book on Publisher 2010. Before I get started, I want to take this opportunity to put your fears at rest. I realize that some of you might have panicked when you realized that you bought a book that was written by someone who normally writes hard-core technical material. I’ll let you in on a little secret....

As someone who writes about numerous different subjects, I am constantly having to educate myself on various products and technologies. As such, I read pretty much anything that I can get my hands on. What I have found is that many technology authors like to impress their readers by using a lot of big words, complex acronyms, and convoluted diagrams. This doesn’t really help me, though. My fast-paced production schedule demands that I learn new material quickly. As such, I greatly prefer reading a simple explanation of a technology to one that is overly complex.