Hurry! The free Modern Perl ebook giveaway only lasts until the Singularity!
Given the imminence of Perl 5.14, would you like to see an updated version of Modern Perl for the new stable release? The electronic version have a few bug and typo fixes not in the printed version, and this seems like as good a time as any to do a second printing.
(And, yes, the title gently mocks the breathless advertising of certain "traditional" publishers who seem to need to brag that they too once in a while give books away out of magnanimity. That portion of the publishing industry will continue to die as authors realize exactly how bad their royalty arrangements are. I personally earn more money from a purchase of Modern Perl made through an Amazon.com affiliate link than I would have earned in royalties from any of my other publishers. You'd think finding a way to compensate authors more equitably would be a priority to anyone who loves the printed word.)
Of course! But does this mean the book will start tracking future releases as well? I don't want you getting burned out.
Who knows what next year will bring? Even so, the scope of the changes between Perl 5.12 and Perl 5.14 seems small enough that a month of editing should be more than sufficient. That's another nice feature of yearly releases.
I second sigzero's enthusiasm. Baen Books, of course, gives e-books away (some in full, some only the first half) not out of magnanimity but out of crass commercialism: they find that doing so increases book sales overall.
When a new version of the PDF is released, will there also be a diff-style document for people who read the first version and would like to get up-to-date on the changes in the git repo without needing to reread the whole thing?
That's a good idea.
If I tagged the repository, someone who isn't me could make such a thing far sooner than I'm likely to get around to it.
I'm personally not in a hurry, probably will wait until 5.14.1 is out before starting to use it. But it'd be nice to read up on the new features from now.
Btw, any news on major upcoming Linux distros including 5.14 yet?
Yeah, version tags would solve the problem very nicely, allowing everyone to create a full diff or build an edited delta document. :)
I'm curious: does the affiliate link pay you if a used book is purchased, or only a new book?
All sales on Amazon.com, whether through their store itself or hosted stores, pay referral fees as a percentage of the sale price. It's very convenient.