

Modern Perl, the book, is Available. - dtby
http://www.modernperlbooks.com/mt/2010/11/the-book-is-out.html

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agentultra
This is great. I've been anticipating this book for a while. I'm tired of
hearing the same canned complaints about perl. It's a great language. Thanks
for showing us all why. :)

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viraptor
> It's a great language. Thanks for showing us all why.

Which part of the book made you think that? I'm actually curious, since after
a quick browse through, I see a tutorial / well written language reference
mostly...

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another_ali
One question, I noticed that the pdf from from the onyxneon site is 185 pages
long, when a previous draft which i downloaded from chromatic's site was 273
pages long.

Where did all those pages go?

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chromatic
The draft and printed book have 6" x 9" pages, while the free PDFs have letter
and A4 pages.

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russellallen
I wonder for how much longer the 'give away the PDF, sell the print version'
business model will work. Not that I'm complaining!

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simonw
Since most tech books sell way less than 10,000 copies, I imagine this kind of
thing will become more and more common. I believe Mark Pilgrim has frequently
credited giving his books away for free online with increasing his physical
sales.

~~~
jamesbritt
A private conversation with a tech author a few years ago suggested otherwise.

Sorry I don't feel free to give details, but basically his book book was for
sale, then he made it available for free as HTML, and he claimed the drop in
sales on Amazon the next day was quite distinctive. All subsequent versions
were only available for a price, e-book or otherwise.

Still, looking at the anecdotal evidence, I think that some books, books that
work best as references, will loose sales if there's a free online version
since reading it online works so well; it may be better than any other
version. If a book is more complex, requires more close reading, a physical
copy (or at least a better formated PDF) would be preferable to some free HTML
version.

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daxelrod
Since I couldn't find the HTML version hosted anywhere, I posted it myself:

<http://danonline.net/modernperl>

Thank you so much for writing this, chromatic!

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angrycoder
Reminds me a lot of Skeet's "C# in Depth". Thanks for sharing.

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julius_geezer
I'll have to ask the local bookstore.

