Write back cover copy

[emilyriederer]

Back-cover copy should not exceed 350 words. Because this copy will be made available to search
engines, there are some important guidelines:

1. The first few sentences will have the greatest impact.
2. Discuss your book, not the area.
3. When you list a feature, include the benefit or why a reader would want this feature.
4. Use key words in the book title, chapter titles, and the back-cover copy. If you were looking for a book
   in this area, what words would you include in your search? Avoid being cute if that means using words
   you would not use while searching.
5. If this is a new edition, describe what is new.

The first paragraph states what type of book this is, what is distinctive, and what the prerequisites are. Try
to include what is distinctive in the first sentence. Explain how your book helps the audience solve a
specific problem and this will make the audience clear. A potential reader does not need general
information about the field.

The second paragraph give more details. You can also state what the benefits are; after reading chapters,
what will you be able to do that you previously could not. You can use paragraphs or bullets. Include
what supplements or web materials will be available.

The third paragraph in a few sentences provides biographical details that establish you as an authority in
this area. Include your name, title, affiliation, and any impressive facts. What are your main research
areas, have you edited any journals, won any prizes, published other books, or taught online or short
courses? Details about your Ph.D. or visiting positions usually should not be included.

Note on the preface: If you will offer supplementary material on a website, try to include your address
and ours. Ours may be more stable and we can change our link to your site if necessary.

[emilyriederer]

Here is a first draft for feedback. I borrowed heavily from the Preface for paragraph 1 and About for paragraph 3. This is 300 words so there is some room to spare. I am not sure if I have the right bullets now, and if we should have fewer longer ones or more shorter ones. Please let me know what you think!

---

R Markdown is a powerful tool for combining analysis and reporting into the single document in the spirit of literate programming and reproducible research. Since the birth of the rmarkdown package in early 2014, R Markdown has grown substantially from a package that supports a few output formats (such as HTML, PDF, and Word) to an extensive and diverse ecosystem that enables the creation of books, blogs, scientific articles, websites, and more. Due to its rapid success, this ecosystem is hard to learn completely meaning that R Markdown users, from novices to advanced users, likely do not know all that these packages have to offer. The R Markdown Cookbook confronts this gap by showcasing short, practical examples of wide-ranging tips and tricks to get the most out of these tools.

After reading this book, you will experience how to:

• Enhance your R Markdown content with diagrams, citations, and dynamically generated text
• Streamline your workflow with child documents, code chunk references, and caching
• Control the formatting and layout with Pandoc markdown syntax or by writing custom HTML and LaTeX templates
• Utilize chunk options and hooks to fine-tune how your code is processed
• Switch between different language engineers to seamlessly incorporate python, D3, and more into your analysis

Yihui Xie is a software engineer at RStudio. He has authored and co-authored several R packages, including knitr, rmarkdown, bookdown, blogdown, pagedown, tinytex, and xaringan, etc. He has published four other books, "R Markdown: The Definitive Guide", "Dynamic Documents with R and knitr", "bookdown: Authoring Books and Technical Documents with R Markdown", and "blogdown: Creating Websites with R Markdown".

Christophe Dervieux is an active member of the R community. Working with R since almost 10 years, he is interested in helping others get the most from R. As an R developer, he is a regular contributor to several R packages, such as “bookdown”, “rmarkdown”, and “knitr”.

Emily Riederer is an active R user and developer. She has previously contributed to “knitr” and is best known for her article on “R Markdown Driven Development” based on her experience driving R adoption in industry.

[yihui]

That was quick! I'd reduce my bio (in particular, not to mention so many packages since the space is limited), and avoid adjectives like "prolific" and "leading" :) I just revised it by myself.

Overall it looks good to me (John will make suggestions if he has any). I forgot to mention that if you want examples, here are two that I wrote for the other two books:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fylqGKUwlUlnBjqyaIqdqsgopfKehIuUktOWCqiw_k4/edit?usp=sharing
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LZ0c9eChidPincW6x8gNO6LDnrrYFMSLsGvgTlC0l9I/edit?usp=sharing

[emilyriederer]

@cderv - per John's email, can you please add on to my post above to include a summary of your bio?

[cderv]

Here is a suggestion. #243 (comment) What do you think ?

We are now at 314 words. You have some left for you @emilyriederer but you may need to reduce the first part to get under the 350 words.

[cderv]

Thank you @emilyriederer !