As you might have seen in previous posts, I'm writing a book on Tiburon, the next version of Delphi, coming out soon and already previewed. Considering the astonishing amount of new features (Unicode, Generics, Ribbon, New Dataset Remoting, to name just a few major ones), I still need time to finish the book and I doubt it will be ready as the product ships (also because I'm going to take two weeks almost completely off... starting tomorrow) or even close to that date.

An interesting option, at this point, could be to release as soon as possible only the first part of the book (maybe with some extra material in draft format) focusing on Unicode. This part counts now about 80 pages, and adding some related RTL material (like the TStringBuilder class) could easily take it over 100 pages. Of course, I could sell the book at a premium low-price, as it is still some sort of draft. The problems though, is that using Lulu.com I cannot grant readers who want to buy the preview and later the full book a reasonable discount, so I fear you'll have to pay twice. The other drawback, is that releasing the "Unicode section" of the book will certainly slow down the complete project, even if this should have a limited effect.

What do you think? Would you buy the two books or wait for the second? What could help making this a win-win situation? If it is relevant I could try to work out a discount deal, with or without Lulus help... Still, even if I discount (say) half the price of the first book from the second (considering printing costs), you'll still have to pay shipping twice.

BTW, I'm also thinking of a "signed book" deal, a "book + support" deal, and a "book + DVD" deal, but those might take way more time to happen...