Publishers, please, please allow us to buy electronic versions of your books. Just make it reasonably cheap ($5-10 instead of the full $50?) and in multiple formats (PDF and HTML are my favorites), and I will gladly buy them. I have a lot of trouble paying $50 just for a paper version of a book. Is there a chance this could be profitable?
The thing I love most about free books is not that they are free, but that they are generally available in electronic formats that I can then use on my many devices. I can read them on my laptop without having to carry around twice the weight, have them for reference on my desktops without having tons of shelf space and copies for work and home, and have them on my iPod Touch for reading in bed or on the train.
It's particularly an issue with large technical books, as they tend to be big and heavy and won't fit in my bike bag the way an iPod does.
This should be available as an electronic book from Apress, too - all formatted and pretty and whatnot. When the book is shipping, you'll be able to get a professional digital version if you wish. Of course, if you want to take this markdown and make a PDF of it, do feel free.
Because the majority of the percentage of the price goes to the publisher, not the author. Since the publisher is incurring less cost for producing an electronic copy, they should charge less.
The paper is cheap. With print-on-demand, there is no worry about printing too many copies, or storing them.
Paying the editor, someone to typeset the book, someone to redraw the diagrams, technical reviewers, and so on gets expensive, though. I think authors should get more money (as an author), but the publishers do theoretically add value.
(Without the publisher, your book is just the man page or a blog post. And despite the time required for the author to prepare those materials, people are entirely unwilling to pay for them.)
Friends of Ed offers one of their web development books on their website each Thursday as a $10 eBook. Apress also has a daily $10 offer, but Apress's are often outdated or about non-web technologies.
The thing I love most about free books is not that they are free, but that they are generally available in electronic formats that I can then use on my many devices. I can read them on my laptop without having to carry around twice the weight, have them for reference on my desktops without having tons of shelf space and copies for work and home, and have them on my iPod Touch for reading in bed or on the train.
It's particularly an issue with large technical books, as they tend to be big and heavy and won't fit in my bike bag the way an iPod does.