I’m pleased to announce the update to Paperless is now live both in the Apple iBookstore and in PDF form.

Why An Update?

It always made me a little crazy with my prior books that I couldn’t update them. I was in Barnes and Noble just the other day looking at a copy of iPad at Work on the shelf. By and large, the book held up pretty well. However, there are a few areas in it that I would desperately like to update. Of course that’s not possible given that most of the copies are sitting on people shelves and I don’t have control over the digital copies either. The ability to update a book was one of my big motivations to self-publish.

The Paperless Update

As soon as Paperless shipped, I began making a list of things I wanted to update. I found a couple of amusing/horrifying typos. But moreover, the workflows evolved. I became even more reliant on OCR technologies and some of the software got better, including the TextExpander 4.0 update. I also received a lot of feedback from readers with questions that should’ve been addressed in the book. For instance, exactly how do you compress a PDF file to save size?

The update includes several new screencasts and updates prior screencasts. It also includes additional sections addressing the above questions and more. (For instance, I added a section pointing out similar applications to Hazel and TextExpander on the Windows PC side of the fence.) This is an update, not a second edition. A lot of the book remains the same.

Getting the Update

To get the update in iBooks, delete the current version of the book on your iPad, go to the iBookstore, and re-download. Apple will already remember that you purchased it and you will not have to pay again. In the process, you will lose annotations that you made to the prior version. Sadly, there is no delta update mechanism for books. We are pioneers together.

If you purchased the PDF version, go back to your original confirmation email and just downloaded again. If you’ve run out of download tokens, send me a note.

While it’s downloading, you may want to go eat a cookie or, better yet, make some cookies from scratch and then slowly eat them. The book file even bigger than it was before. The download is going to take a while. It took me 30 minutes this morning.

I hope everyone enjoys the update. I put a significant amount of work into preparing it and I love the fact that I can write books this way. Sometimes I think I’m living in the future. Don’t be surprised if there’s another update to Paperless sometime next year.

What’s Next?

On the general topic of the Field Guides, the next book is so close to submission that I can taste it. I’ve written it with a co-author, someone most readers of MacSparky will already know and love. I can’t wait to tell you more. Stay tuned.