Press Release
December 2, 2003
O'Reilly Announces Publishing Agreement with Blogger and Star Trek Actor Wil Wheaton
Sebastopol, CA--Any honest computer geek will admit that his obsessive
coding is, at heart, a futile attempt to create a world as cool as those
depicted in science fiction. New evidence of the symbiotic relationship
between Sci Fi and geekdom surfaced today, as O'Reilly & Associates, the
geek publisher-of-record, announced plans to publish three books by
Wil Wheaton, blogger, geek, and the actor who portrayed Wesley Crusher
on Star Trek: The Next Generation.
"This is a very exciting relationship for me, for several reasons," said
Wheaton. "First, I am a huge geek, and without O'Reilly, I wouldn't know
HTML from LMNOP. I never would have been able to get Linux running, and
Perl would be one of the not-quite-as-good-as-Mrs.-Garrett replacements on
Diff'rent Strokes. Now, I'll be able to get my books into more stores
than I ever was with my own Monolith Press. I can't wait to see how
Dancing Barefoot does when it's got a major publisher behind it."
Wheaton's first two books, Dancing Barefoot and Just a Geek, are almost
unbearably honest tales of life, love, and the rigors of being an ensign
on the Starship Enterprise. First self-published by Wheaton in May 2003
and available only on the Internet and in select independent bookstores,
"Dancing Barefoot" quickly sold out its initial run of 3000. The O'Reilly
edition will be available in
all major bookstores in early 2004.
Just a Geek, coming in Spring 2004, continues the story of Wheaton's
transformation from teen actor to grown-up writer, computer geek, actor,
husband, and stepfather. Along the way, Wil comes to terms with his Star
Trek fame, creates the hugely popular weblog http://wilwheaton.net, and
realizes that playing himself is the role of a lifetime.
In June 2001, Wheaton built wilwheaton.net (also known as WWdN), and soon
garnered a large and loyal readership. The antithesis of the typical slick
celebrity website, WWdN is a highly personal, opinionated, and candid
account of Wheaton's life. It's also a clean, well-designed site built
on code that works. Wheaton shares his hard-won expertise in Wil
Wheaton's Website Design, slated for release in early 2005.
About O'Reilly
O'Reilly Media spreads the knowledge of innovators through its books, online services, magazines, and conferences. Since 1978, O'Reilly Media has been a chronicler and catalyst of cutting-edge development, homing in on the technology trends that really matter and spurring their adoption by amplifying "faint signals" from the alpha geeks who are creating the future. An active participant in the technology community, the company has a long history of advocacy, meme-making, and evangelism.
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