The Impending Demise of “PGP & GPG”

At fourteen years old, PGP & GPG is perhaps my oldest title still in print. And soon, it will be no more.

The theory in the book is still good, but GnuPG has changed in the last decade and a half. The PGP version discussed in the book is no more. Best practices and use cases have changed. I’d guess half the chapters have some utility, while the other half have none.

So the book is being deliberately eased out of print. It predates Kindle, so there won’t even be an ebook version available.

My No Starch books normally sell out their print run, get reprinted a few times, and fade into Out Of Print status. But PG3 never sold out its initial print run.

I’m glad we did it. No Starch Press is one of the few publishers who would take a chance on such a title back in the heady days of 2005. (The book came out in 2006, but the decision to take that chance was in 2005 or maybe even 2004.) But it was not a commercial success.

If you want to be a completist collector: grab this book while you can. Soon, it will be no more.

I expect the price of used copies to immediately skyrocket, of course. Because that’s what rarity does.