The Busy Coder's Guide to Android Development and the rest of CommonsWare's books are published via the Warescription program.
For a one-time fee of $20, you get the current edition of the books, plus six months' of new books, book updates, and other ways to get help with your Android programming questions.
Each of CommonsWare's books is distributed as a digital book, in PDF, EPUB3, and MOBI/Kindle formats.
When you join the Warescription program, you will be able to download the books in their current version. You will also be able to return to your Warescription page to download updates to the books as they are released, until your Warescription term ends. As new books are released, you will be able to download those new books as well, until your Warescription term ends. Whatever you download, you keep, even after the Warescription lapses.
Stack Overflow's android tag
is the single largest collection of Android development questions and answers.
However, your questions may "get lost in the shuffle". Members of the Warescription
program can, once a week, "bump" a Stack Overflow question, to make sure that
Mark Murphy takes a peek at it. He may be able to answer it, or suggest ways to
improve the question or places to research to find answers.
Mark Murphy holds office hours online chats with Warescription members, to answer any Android development questions that he can. Usually three hours' worth of chats (in one-hour blocks) are held per week. The chat transcripts are archived for your use. Chats are held at various times of the day, on weekdays and Saturdays, to try to offer convenient times for as many people as possible.
The CommonsWare Community Discourse site offers discussion groups. In particular, the Android Development category is available for subscribers to post questions about anything related to the books or anything else in Android app development. Existing subscribers can follow these instructions to get posting access to this category.
To join the Warescription program, you can create an account on the Warescription site. From there, you can subscribe via credit card, debit card, or PayPal. Once you have subscribed, that same site will be where you download the book updates, join the office hours chats, and take advantage of the other Warescription benefits.