Good stuff. And I was curious after seeing this if "Learn ... the Hard Way" was a brand that that Zed Shaw had trademarked or otherwise intended to keep exclusive. (Not that there necessarily would have been anything wrong with that, but still curious.)

But to my surprise, Shaw not only isn't proprietary about the brand, it looks like he is going out of his way to help other people appropriate it:

  https://gitorious.org/learn-x-the-hard-way

"This is a skeleton LaTeX project that makes it easier to start working on a “Learn X The Hard Way” book. You simply clone this repository, change a few base files, and then you can start writing. It will also come with a small “meta book” that gives you advice for writing and publishing your book."

Very cool. While it seems that Steve Losh didn't use the actual templates above (he picked markdown instead of rst), it's neat that the overall style itself is designed to be reusable.

Best of luck with the new book!