Edd Dumbill's Weblog: 'books' articleshttp://times.usefulinc.com/2006-05-22T19:19:52ZEdd Dumbilledd-web@usefulinc.comGive me books, twicehttp://times.usefulinc.com/public/read/8532006-05-22T19:19:52Z2006-05-22T18:47:50ZThe point of PDF books isn't to throw away the paper ones, it's to get them delivered faster.
<p>Two books have recently been published that I want to read.</p><ul><li><a href="http://pragmaticprogrammer.com/titles/fr_rr/index.html">Rails Recipes</a> (Chad Fowler)<br /></li><li><a href="http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/web2apps/index.html">Building a Scalable Web Application</a> (Cal Henderson)</li></ul><p>The first of these I took delivery of instantly in PDF form, and a paper copy will make its way to me in due course so I have it as a handy reference.</p><p>The second of these is going to take 12-14 days from Amazon (5-7 days if ordered through O'Reilly's UK distributor Wiley).<br /></p><p>There's been a <a href="http://www.loudthinking.com/arc/000580.html#comments">lot of talk</a> on David Heinemeier Hansson's blog about PDF publishing, but to me it's simply a way of getting me the information I need quickly. Normally, I want the paper copy too.</p><p>Another small but significant benefit is that PDFs weigh very little! Having just taught a <a href="http://xtech06.usefulinc.com/schedule/detail/188">Rails tutorial</a> at XTech, I can vouch that there was no way we wanted to carry around 30+ copies of the Rails book on the offchance attendees wanted to buy it. </p><p>Whereas some publishers have experimented with certain product lines available only as PDFs, I can't quite shake the feeling they're offering an inferior product in which they are not confident enough to commit to paper.</p><p>My suggestion is that PDF and print is not an "either/or" choice, but an "and/or".</p><p><a href="http://times.usefulinc.com/2006/05/22-books-now-please#disqus_thread">Join the conversation about this post</a></p>