The nature of the technical book industry has changed a lot over the years. Humungous reference tomes, like Programming Perl and The C++ Programming Language, have become relics of a different age, with their reference material more conveniently looked up online nowadays.

Though ebook versions may still be viable, these old-fashioned mega tomes are too heavy to carry around, plus you would need (prohibitively expensive) hardback versions to comfortably read them in your study.

Slim, boutique books with small print runs, such as the excellent Modern Perl by chromatic, still appear to be economically viable. At least, I recently bought a physical copy of the 254-page A Tour of C++ (2022) and enjoy reading it in bed (reading physical books in bed is less likely to harm sleep patterns than reading on an electronic tablet) ... while I never open the mega tome The C++ Programming Language any more.

From my mandatory Perl Book Links reference, my favourite Perl book nowadays is Modern Perl by chromatic.

Update: might be interesting to compare the answers in this node to these two nodes from 2007:

In reply to Re: Who still uses the camel book? by eyepopslikeamosquito
in thread Who still uses the camel book? by starX

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