Sanctuary Publishing, an arm of the Sanctuary Group (Sanctuary Records is also part of the company), has a book coming out next month called "The Art of Downloading Music." The small, 287-page book covers the very basics of downloading music, from connecting to the Internet to a section titled "war on the Web: The Law of Downloading" (which, interestingly, doesn't actually mention any applicable laws).

It's an interesting project in that the book cover is a slightly-larger-than-life photo of an iPod and the author, producer Steve Levine, is a technical advisor to Apple. It's not as much an overview of downloading as a paean to Apple.

The Apple bias creates a few problems. One, the book comes off like $10 promotional pamphlet for iTunes and the iPod. The hard bias alone takes away credibility. Levine inserts just enough commentary on other music services and technologies to deflect such criticism, but anybody with even the slightest knowledge of digital music would know better. Which leads to the second problem: The book is for beginners, which is strange because iTunes and the iPod are so incredibly user friendly that they don't require an entire book. This is a topic that doesn't call for in-depth knowledge...just download and listen. It's not like the book's brief history of digital music and its overview of the iTunes interface is all that fascinating.

Lastly, there's a temporal issue here. By its very nature, the information in this book could be out of date by early next year. Today the information is current, but the landscape of digital music changes so frequently that a second edition of "The Art of Downloading Music" couldn't come fast enough.

Tech-minded people will learn nothing new from this book. Newbies and the less technologically inclined probably shouldn't make the investment of time and money. But it is a cute book cover, isn't it?

The Beggars Group & Matador Records is seeking a Paralegal