If you’re the kind of person who prefers to read a physical book vs. online books, then you’ll be happy to know that the A Byte of Python book is now available as a printed hard copy.
The best part is that the hard-working translators can also publish their translations and sell the printed copies, benefiting both the readers and the translators.
I had received many requests from readers for hard copies of the book and I’m glad to finally get this working. Interestingly, I was previously trying to get the book printed via CreateSpace because the book would automatically get listed on Amazon.com (since CreateSpace is owned by Amazon). However, their process was not streamlined and confusing. Worse, I couldn’t get the PDF in their required size formats because of a bug with mwlib.rl.
I got tired and decided to try Lulu and I was very surprised. They are miles ahead in terms of usability of their service as well as wide range of options and sensible defaults. For example, it was a pain waiting for manual approval of the book by the CreateSpace staff and it is an unnecessary delay every time I upload a new version. On the other hand, Lulu made it very easy to design a rudimentary cover using their process. Overall, I was able to make the printed copy available for purchase in a single evening.
Of course, all this is possible because of the ability to generate PDFs from a wiki, thanks to the nice people at PediaPress.
Update: For Indian readers, the book is now available via pothi.com.