35 Books All Freelance Web Developers Should Read
Posted July 30, 2010 in Tools/Resources 40 Comments »
If you follow me on Goodreads, you know that I absolutely love to read. I’ve always been a big reader, but since I’ve become a freelance I’ve made sure to read even more than usual, in the field of business, development and the web in general.
Reading is essential to any developer’s improvement. While blogs and magazines are great to read for a quick update, nothing replaces a good informative book. Even though web development isn’t the most interesting topic to read about, I’ve been able to find a lot of interesting and informative books over the years that have helped me to improve both my dev and business skills.
Books That I Liked
- Six Pixels of Separation by Mitch Joel
A great business book on how to use social media to connect with your users, improve your business image and repair customer relations. - Digging Into WordPress by Chris Coyier and Jeff Starr
This book is a must-have for any WordPress fan. Without being overly technical and with a ton of great humor, Chris explains WordPress from the basic setup to some great advanced functions. The actual printed book is really pricey, but well worth it!. - The Smashing Book by Smashing Magazine
Printing issues aside, The Smashing Book contains several great articles on a wide range of web topics, from design, to development to usability practices. - 10 Steps To Powerful Self Promotion For Creatives by Alex Mathers
A great eBook all about marketing for creative types. It covers several topics on how to setup your social media profiles, how to market yourself online and off and how to approach advertising. - The Designer’s Guide To Marketing & Pricing By Ilise Benun
Another great book for any designer or developer, The Designer’s Guide contains a ton of informative and helpful forms for the beginning or rebranding freelancer. - Purple Cow by Seth Godin
Marketing genius Seth Godin goes into great detail in this short book about how to stand out from every other business and get noticed. - Trust Agents by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith
Learn how to become visible on the web by using social media and marketing principles from Chris Brogan. - Rework by 37signals
A must have book for any developer, Rework is one of the best business books I’ve read. It’s geared towards app developers, but will work for any business or freelancer and contains lots of great unconventional wisdom and funny swearing. - Advanced CSS by Joseph Lewis
It’s tough to find a good coding book if you already have a lot of experience in the development world, but Advanced CSS contained a lot of great information on microformats, mobile development, CSS3 and more. A bit dry in some parts, but a recommended read nonetheless. - Linchpin by Seth Godin
Seth’s newest book, Linchpin touches on the subject that we’ve been trained all of our lives from kindergarten on to blend in and be a busy worker bee. Linchpin explains the importance of sticking out and being indispensable in today’s tough market. - Getting Real by 37signals
Similar to Rework, Getting Real was their first book for app developers. While somewhat similar in content, Getting Real is a bit more technical. Plus, it’s free to read online! - WordPress & Ajax by Ronald Huereca
This eBook goes into depth about using Ajax and WordPress together. Easy to read and contains several great examples, including using Ajax in plugins and functions. - 41 Questions To Ask Before You Start A Web Project by Justin Davis
I know Justin personally and he’s an awesome UX expert. His new eBook is a quick read and contains several sections of questions for beginning web projects. Mostly geared to business, but would make a great potential client questionnaire for any freelancer. - HTML5 For Web Designers by Jeremy Keith
The book from A List Apart, HTML5 For Web Designers is a must-read for any front-end dev. Only 85 pages long, but chock full of great information. The chapters on the history of HTML and the W3C are my favorites. - Beginning iPhone 3 Development by Dave Mark and Jeff LaMarche
If you’ve been interested in iPhone development, start with this book. Even if you have no Objective C experience, the chapters are easy to understand and the apps are fun to build.
Books I’ve Yet to Read
I’ve purchased several of these books and the rest are all on my wish list. According to several of our readers, all of these books are must-reads, so I can’t wait to get to them!
- jQuery: Novice to Ninja by Earl Castledine
- The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
- Nudge by Richard Thaler
- Crush It! by Gary Vaynerchuk
- Made To Stick by Chip Heath
- Website Owners Manul by Paul Boag
- More iPhone 3 Development
- Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh
- Making Ideas Happen by Scott Belsky
- Designing With Web Standards by Jefferey Zeldman
- Handcrafted CSS by Dan Cederholm
- Practical Guide To Designing For The Web by Mark Boulton – Free!
- The Wealthy Freelancer by Steve Slaunwhite
- The Unlimited Freelancer by…FreelanceFolder!
- Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug
- Bulletproof Web Design by Dan Cederholm
- Smashing WordPress by Thord Helengren
- HTML Dog: Best Practices Guide by Patrick Giffiths
- No Logo by Naomi Kelin
- Building Findable Websites by Aaron Walter
Your Books
What are some of the awesome web development or business books you’ve read?
Share your favorites in the comments.
Image by Dennis from Atlanta
About the author: Amber is a freelancer with over 10 years of experience and specializes in clean, semantic and valid 1.0 Strict XHTML, CSS and Wordpress development. She also writes a web development blog on her portfolio at www.amberweinberg.com and just launched a web app for developers at www.codesnipp.it.
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40 Comments
Jordan Walker
July 30th, 2010 at 8:53 amThe classic Designing Web Usability: The Practice of Simplicity – Jakob Nielsen
Angie Papple Johnston
July 30th, 2010 at 9:28 amI actually just ordered #4 yesterday – I can’t wait till it gets here! I’m extra excited now that I’ve seen someone else say it’s awesome. :) Thanks for sharing this list!
Jillian Nichols
July 30th, 2010 at 10:39 amI’m reading Designing with Web Standards by Zeldman now, great stuff! I also want to read Handcrafted CSS. I love keeping this all organized on Goodreads, too.
Something you may want to fix here – Digging Into Wordpress is co-authored, also by Jeff Starr. I think it’s hands down the best Wordpress book out there!
BebopDesigner
July 30th, 2010 at 11:17 amBrilliant! I have only a couple of these. Now I know what else I should get. Thanks for the tip.
Cheers
Debbie Campbell
July 30th, 2010 at 12:30 pm‘The Elements of User Experience’ by Jesse James Garrett and ‘Designing the Moment’ by Robert Hoekman, Jr. are also good reads for designers and developers.
Alex
July 30th, 2010 at 12:38 pmHey there,
thanks this big collection. There are books I would agree with in terms of must-read, i.e. “Getting Real” (finished reading and felt motivated & powerful like Superman), “Digging into WordPress” (still reading), “The Smashing Book” (still reading), “Made to stick” (eager to start reading), “The Unlimited Freelancer” (still reading), “Professional Webdesign” SmashingMag eBook (still reading), “jQuery – Novice to Ninja” (eager to start reading).
Moreover, I’ve enjoyed reading “Sexy Webdesign” by Elliot Jay Stocks – although it was the German translated version the humor between the lines was quite obvious.
Also, I’d like to mention “The Web Style Guide” (also available online) – http://gd.tuwien.ac.at/languages/html/webstyle/wsg3/index.html
So far, enjoy reading.
PS: Thanks for your “Goodread” hint! Just joined :)
Kind regards,
- Alex
Bexxie
July 30th, 2010 at 12:53 pmGreat list! I’ve read a few of these. Rework is awesome! You should definitely read Crush It. If you like audiobooks, Gary Vaynerchuk reads it himself and goes off the script a lot. You can definitely tell he’s very passionate about what he’s doing. I started reading Nudge but I’m finding it a bit slow. Anyone else read it?
I’m gonna check out those Seth Godin books you mentioned. Thanks for putting this together!
Lee Gustin
July 30th, 2010 at 1:03 pmgreat list, I will be sure to grab a few of these that sound interesting.
I actually have a similar post on my blog of “21 Must-Own Books For Every Designer”
http://blog.leegustin.com/books
thanks for the book ideas :)
Barry Madden
July 30th, 2010 at 1:04 pmGreat selection of books, some i’v not heard of before :D i like to keep my reading list organised using Shelfari :D http://www.shelfari.com/barrymadden/shelf
David
July 30th, 2010 at 2:18 pmTotally in agreement on Rework by 37 Signals. It’s a short read, but indispensable in terms of valuable info and in-your-face commentary. I read it in one sitting. I plan to read Linchpin next — I have to read Seth’s Blog daily.
TheAL
July 30th, 2010 at 4:25 pmI would like to get and read more business/marketing books. But right now I have about 6 Drupal books lined up, at least one Wordpress book, and it really wouldn’t hurt me to get a huge, honking jQuery book (I’ve read some DHTML books and learned raw javascript mostly online, so I should probably get books for that and Ajax first). If I read one book a day, in full, I could never read all of the books I want to. So many!
Fitri NL
July 30th, 2010 at 8:22 pmNice! Thank you for the list :)
Stephanie
July 30th, 2010 at 8:51 pmThis is an awesome list and I’m definitely saving the link to give to my husband, who’s a full-time web developer. He works with Silverlight/WPF so are there any good Silverlight books that you’d suggest? :)
Robbie
July 30th, 2010 at 9:03 pmThanks for the list, I’ll check these out.
I already have that jQuery Novice to Ninja one, about to start int.
Best,
Robbie
Megan Tremblay
July 31st, 2010 at 4:24 amWow so many books. But among the list what are the top 5 you can recommend. Their are many who cannot afford to buy all those books. most freelance web developer is depending on tutorials and free webinars.
Thomas Craig Consulting
July 31st, 2010 at 6:16 pmDesigning with Web Standards is a must, digging into Wordpress is good also. So many excellent books out there and I think you’ve capture the key ones.
Hyder
August 1st, 2010 at 2:33 amThanks for this wonderful list Amber Weinberg :-)
nick Burd
August 1st, 2010 at 5:40 pmI’m in love with Sitepoint books. <3
Scott
August 2nd, 2010 at 5:02 am“Rework” is a great book, easy to read, informative and surprisingly entertaining I really enjoyed it. Also agree with Debbie Campbell about the “Elements of User Experience” which is another short read but has lots of great stuff in it. Cheers for a great collection.
Seon Poppcile | web designer Bournemouth
August 2nd, 2010 at 4:13 pmAwesome resource – thanks for posting, i;ve read a few of these but i think i will be adding a few more to my list – firstly Linchpin by Seth Godin, looks awesome!
Seon
Andrew Pryde
August 15th, 2010 at 9:12 amI can recommend jQuery Novice to Ninja as I am reading it atm and am really impressed by it even coming from a programming background I don’t find it to slow nor to presumptive.
@Prydie
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