It’s been a few months out since A Book Apart closed shop. I’m sad about it, of course. You probably are, too, if you have one of their many brightly-colored paperbacks sitting on a bookshelf strategically placed as a backdrop for your video calls.
It looked for a bit like the books would still be available for purchase through third-party distributors who could print them on demand or whatever. And then a redaction on A Book Apart’s original announcement:
UPDATE:Â Ownership and publishing rights for all books have been given back to their respective authors. Many authors are continuing to offer their work for free or in new editions. Our hope is that these books will continue to live on forever. A Book Apart no longer sells or distributes books, please reach out to authors for information about availability.
Oh, snap. The books are on the loose and several authors are making sure they’re still available. Eric Meyer, for example, says he and co-author Sara Wachter-Boettcher still figuring out what’s next for their Design for Real Life title:
One of the things Sara and I have decided to do is to eventually put the entire text online for free, as a booksite. That isn’t ready yet, but it should be coming somewhere down the road.
In the meantime, we’ve decided to cut the price of print and e-book copies available through Ingram. [Design for Real Life] was the eighteenth book [A Book Apart] put out, so we’ve decided to make the price of both the print and e-book $18, regardless of whether those dollars are American, Canadian, or Australian.
Ethan Marcotte has followed suit by listing his three titles on his personal website and linking up where they can be purchased at a generous discount off the original price tag, including his latest, You Deserve a Tech Union.
Others have quickly responded with free online versions of their books. Mat Marquis has offered JavaScript for Web Designers free online for a long time. He helped Chris Coyier do the same with Practical SVG this past week. Jeremy Keith put out one of my personal ABA faves (and the first ever ABA-published book) for free, HTML5 for Web Designers.
What about all the other titles? I dunno. A Book Apart simply doesn’t sell or distribute them anymore. Rachel McConnell sells Leading Content Design directly. Every other book I checked seems to be a link back to A Book Apart. We’ll have to see where the proverbial dust settles. The authors now hold all the rights to their works and may or may not decide to re-offer them. Meanwhile, many of the titles are listed in places like Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Nobile, etc.
Thanks for all the great reads and years, A Book Apart! You’ve helped man, many people become better web citizens, present company included.