Wednesday, December 07, 2005

The single best idea I've seen in publishing lately is the Take Control Ebook series. These are small books focused on very specific technology topics, carefully edited for clarity, and available in downloadable, PDF format. They are designed to read equally well as printouts or -- easier on the forests out there -- on a computer screen. Perhaps the best feature of all, and as far as I know unique, is that the authors keep updating these books as new information comes out and you are provided with free updates in the same way that software is updated. There is a large button on the first page of the PDF which, when clicked, will check over the internet to see if an updated version is available. If so, you can download the latest edition in a few minutes without having to pay anything extra. Not that these books are expensive -- quite the contrary. Most cost in the $5 to $10 range depending on length while special prices for bundles of related volumes can often bring the cost down even more.

The topics in the Take Control series are primarily, but not exclusively concerned with the Macintosh (the publishers are famous in Mac circles for starting the weekly newsletter TidBITS in 1990 and running it continuously since then). The standards for writing and content are extremely high and the regular updates allow the ebooks to be very topical while remaining current. One thing the authors and editors do well is keep the language appropriate to the books' target audiences; that means an introductory book wont leave a new user behind. All in all, these ebooks are an impressive bargain.