The beta for Programming Phoenix >= 1.4 is expected by the middle of May, 2018. The Ecto book should be out just before that. These are of course estimates, because writing books is nothing like a software project 
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And yes, upgrades within an edition are always free. And when you buy a beta book, you get all the later releases of that book for free. For upgrades to a new edition, it can vary book-per-book. Usually we try to make it either free or 60-80% off. It depends on how much work the author(s) have had to try, we want to be fair to them and them incredible amount of time and dedication it takes to put a book out.
