Last November I shared news of the imminent start of work on the new, third edition of my book ‘Data Visualisation: A Handbook for Data Driven Design’. Originally published in 2016, I worked on a second edition that was published by Sage in 2019 and then last year they kindly invited me to revisit the text once again with the aim of publishing a third edition late this year.
I’m happy to say the book is now available for pre-ordering on Sage’s website ahead of the planned publication month of November. There is often a slight lag between the official publication date for the UK, and the book being available to buy across all regions as well as all other (non-Sage) book store platforms. So that’s just to say November’s release date could drift more into December for some buyers and in some regions. It does feel like a very good Christmas present for your nearest and dearest is all I will say…
And what better way to get on top of your Christmas shopping plans than taking advantage of a promo code that will discount the book’s listed price by 25%. At checkout you can use UKAUTHR25 to reduce the price, but note this is only applicable for use when pre-ordering the book via Sage’s website.
The book’s availability will gradually emerge across other common book-buying platforms (such as Amazon) and I will soon update my website’s main Book page to include relevant links to those outlets.
Although the book includes the same chapter and overarching structure, I would suggest it represents a larger shift in content than the equivalent difference that emerged between the writing the second edition in contrast to the first. When commencing the writing work I found myself amending almost all of the text (even if in some cases it was just cosmetic refinements) and around 90% of the figures included are updates and/or fresh examples. I wanted this book to showcase the contemporary practice and diversity of the field that exists today and to reflect my latest thinking in how I think about the challenge of articulating the critical thinking processes behind developing data visualisations.
Suffice to say that, with this announcement of my third edition being available for pre-order, I would urge anybody who is interested in getting my book to just wait a little while for this edition to come out and to advise against buying the second edition which will of course soon become outdated. That’s not to say the edition is a bad edition! Far from it, I was very proud of that work, especially given the context I was facing at the time, but this new edition will clearly represent the freshest perspective of how I look at today’s data visualisation practice.
A key point to make about the book’s formats is to clarify that hardback copies are intended for libraries whereby there is greater need for them being physically robust to protect the condition of the book for long term usage. Far fewer hardback copies are printed which means the individual unit cost is higher than would normally be found with the higher volume print runs of the paperback version. Digital versions of the book will also be published and I’ll share info about those when I find more out myself.
Finally, over the coming months ahead of its release, I will be running a series of creative contests for participants to win free copies of my book and I will publish details of those in due course.