Sometime soon our first short (50-100 pages) PDF product — Pearson’s brand name for this type of product is “Short Cuts” — is expected to be available for sale.

We decided to capitalize on the recent release of SUSE Linux 10.1 and come out with a concise electronic guide — called SUSE Linux 10.1 Kick Start — to what’s new in SUSE 10.1, how to get it installled and configured, how to set it up as a complete desktop operating system, and how to troubleshoot common problems.

Jem Matzan (who produces The Jem Report) wrote the PDF/guide/shortcut (don’t yet know how to refer to these things exactly), and I think he did a great job of writing something that adds value above and beyond the excellent SUSE documentation and that’s something SUSE users are going to willingly pay $7 or $8 for.

Plus we’re doing a lot of interesting things on the design and production end of things to make the PDF much easier to read on-screen than the typical ebook, and to take advantage of the medium to make the information inside more readily accessible through a variety of different avenues — to allow more random access for the reader.

It’ll be very interesting to see how it’s received.

Technorati Tags: e-books, Linux, Short Cuts, SUSE, SUSE 10.1