Pragmatic Fridays

Today we launched a new Pragmatic Bookshelf line, the Fridays. A Friday is a small, focused, PDF-only book. We've tried to make them easy to read on screen, and they have lots of hyperlinks, both internal and external.

They address a very specific need: getting targeted and timely information out in a professional, edited format but without the overhead and ceremony of a full-blown paper book. They're easier to write (because they're shorter, and they have a single topic), and they're easier to publish (because they're just a single format). As a result, they're a lot less expensive than the full books (typically they'll be in the $7.50 to $10 range).

We've just announced our first Friday: Rapid GUI Development with QtRuby by Caleb Tennis. We've got more in development (including an interesting book on the Google Maps API, a book on Ruby Best Practices, and one on preparing Rails Applications for Deployment). If you feel you have a Friday in you, drop us a line.