Charles Petzold Rides Again (+ praise for Kindle and O’Reilly)

[Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes]

Like many I suspect, Charles Petzold’s “Programming Windows” was one of the most important books on my shelves for a long time, and it has been a long time since it was updated. With the advent of .NET many perhaps thought a new edition would never come (or indeed be needed). But a 6th Edition is on it’s way, and can be had for an absolute steal under a very creative pricing structure unveiled by O’Reilly.

The new edition is not yet published (not yet even finished being written), but you can already purchase the book in it’s current, albeit incomplete, form for just $10 (until May 31st). After that the price goes up at various stages as new updates are scheduled to be released, until it reaches “full price” in November.

But if you buy the book now, at that $10 price, not only do you get the current content, but you will also receive all the updates, including the full edition when it is finally published!

Did you spot that price. $10

One more time… $10

This applies to the eBook editions only I should point out. Which brings me to the next point of this post.

Kindle

I recently purchased a Kindle Touch and have instantly fallen in love with it. So I was initially disappointed when I found out that the amazing pricing on the new Petzold tome was only available by purchasing direct from O’Reilly themselves.

This meant none of the slick, friction-free integration with my Kindle Library that was one of the key reasons for choosing the Kindle in the first place.

Or so I thought.

O’Reilly are fully on top of the digital revolution in publishing. When you purchase eBook editions from them, you get your purchase available (for life) in a bundle of different formats, including PDF, ePub and (crucially for Kindle users) the Kindle compatible “mobi” format.

Using the “Send to Kindle” facility of the Kindle eco-system, I am able to download my O’Reilly eBook then upload it to my Kindle Library. Not quite the “one-click” experience of Kindle Store purchases, but with the drag/drop convenience of the “Send to Kindle” uploader application, it’s almost as good, including the ability to deliver uploaded content over wi-fi to selected Kindle Reader applications and Kindle devices that I have registered, as well as adding the content to my Kindle Library in the cloud.

But that’s still an aspect of the Kindle Library more than O’Reilly.

O’Reilly

Where O’Reilly score Brownie Points is in making your purchase DRM free, which is what makes this possible with the Kindle. But O’Reilly’s largess doesn’t stop there.

To purchase from O’Reilly you need to register an account (as is pretty standard these days). However, once you have your O’Reilly account opened not only can you buy books and ebooks from them, but you can also register any existing PRINT editions of their books that you may already own (and I have a fair few!!).

Once you have done that, you can then purchase the eBook editions of those books (where available) for just $5.

Let me say that again.

$5

And it doesn’t end there. If, like me, you actually like to have the dead-tree editions of your most treasured volumes as well as the convenience of the ebook editions, you can get discounts of 40-50% on any later editions there may be of your registered print editions!!

This perhaps doesn’t come as news to many of you, but it was a very welcome discovery for me, and I thought I would share it with you.

It shouldn’t perhaps surprise anyone that a publisher specialising in the technology/software field would be on top of this in the way that they appear to be, but it certainly is welcome nonetheless.

Nothing in it For Me

I should add that I obviously get nothing for singing the praises or otherwise “promoting” either the new Petzold book, or Kindle or even O’Reilly, other perhaps than the warm, inner glow that comes from perhaps bringing something to people’s attention that they will appreciate.

So, if that’s the case the only donation you should feel obliged to make is a simple expression of “thanks” in the comments to this post. 🙂