immediately after i wrote

“disintermediating technical publishers”

, i thought about how i had failed to stress that i was primarily
writing about the reference books as epitomized by
the camel book

, and that the future for
oreilly

lay in the
hacks series

and their
pogue press offerings, which have attracted my attention and dollars lately.

.

kellan

comes
to a similar conclusion

and makes an astute observation about the
hacks series

:

“The Hacks books are short, relevant, and fun. They
build on the what I consider to be the best O’Reilly book ever, the
Perl Cookbook, but corrected for the accelerated, networked world
we live in.”