Years ago I went to work for Dave and Andy as the first non-Dave-or-Andy editor for the Pragmatic Programmers.

I had been editing web sites and writing books and articles and I really liked what they were building and so I joined them.

I liked their process - both technical and editorial - and learned a lot from editing for them.

At a certain point it was time to move on.

They weren't the company I'd joined years before - they couldn't be. They needed to grow. Growing means they needed to change. Our needs and goals didn't line up anymore and so I needed to move on.

There were things that I wanted to do and it didn't fit with what they needed to do.

There were things they needed to do and I wasn't the right person to do it for them.

I continued to send them authors. I continued to tech review and provide praise quotes for authors that wrote for them.

Just because it wasn't the place for me, didn't mean it wasn't the place for others.

I bought many books from them over the time that I was away and learned a lot from them.

...

So years went by and then I was at the ETE conference in Philly this spring and saw that Andy was also speaking there. I dropped him a note - I'd always liked Andy. We used to talk a lot on the phone. At one point I was trying to launch a new line of books for the Prags and Andy was helping to shepherd me through the process. It took a lot out of both of us.

Anyway, we decided to meet for a drink in the hotel bar.

We caught up. We remembered what we'd enjoyed about each other's company. We chatted about people we knew in common. We talked about side projects we both had.

At the end of the night I mentioned that I was updating my Swift book for Swift 4. There have been a lot of changes to Swift each year but if feels as if the language is settling down so this felt like the right time to offer a print book.

He said that they'd need the rights to distribute the book electronically as well.

OK.

So as of today, you can buy an electronic copy of my book "A Swift Kickstart" from the Prags. It is the same book that you can get from Gumroad and from iBooks. It is available as an epub, mobi, or pdf.

I launched their line of iOS and Mac books when I was there. I'm very happy to be available for sale alongside other titles in their series.

There isn't currently a print version but they have the right to release one if the sales justify it.

If you own it already, don't buy it again, but if you don't, I'd love for you to buy it from one of the three places it's for sale - or tell a friend about it.

I'm working on the next book and will offer that to the Prags as well.