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O’Reilly Media has stopped retailing books directly on its ecommerce store

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Re: O’Reilly Media has stopped retailing books directly on its ecommerce store

#31

Post by michaelmrose »

kin wrote: post #22
dcw303 wrote: post #4

I just posted this on another thread: I just got this via email and I'm very disappointed too. DRM issues aside, Kindle is still terrible for tech books. Code samples, data tables, etc. They all look crummy. The pdf ebooks from the Oreilly store had far superior formatting.

Google Play store offers O'Reilly books DRM free in both PDF and ePub format.

Its amazing that a company whose main product is search has such a worthless search for their store. Its absolutely worthless unless you already know exactly what you want.

You have to use their general search product to find enough info to bring up the exact title you want to buy.

For example you can't on the play store find all the oreilly books that aren't drm encumbered or find all the books on a certain topic in a certain range of years directly via its interface.

Re: O’Reilly Media has stopped retailing books directly on its ecommerce store

#32

Post by manaskarekar »

kin wrote: post #19
clumsysmurf wrote: post #7

This is devastating ... I don't have the income to justify $399/yr for Safari subscription. "the growth of membership on Safari far exceeds the individual units previously purchased on oreilly.com" ... that doesn't explain why the two options couldn't co-exist. "In addition to giving our customers the choice and convenience they expect" ... no, they just took away the choice and convenience I expect. Over time, I've…

But you can still buy their digital copies elsewhere like on Amazon or eBooks or Google Play.

Not early release titles that you could buy as the authors continue working on them (please correct me if I'm wrong).

I have bought book(s) that are still not released and have benefitted from them already.

Also the price difference in those websites vs direct from O'Reilly is quite significant. (Twice or more than twice.)

I would have preferred if they would have raised their book prices but kept the same business model.

Re: O’Reilly Media has stopped retailing books directly on its ecommerce store

#33

Post by douche »

myth_drannon wrote: post #30
troydj wrote: post #10

One of the things I'll miss is the "upgrade a registered O'Reilly print book to an ebook for $4.99" option. Always nice to have both the print and [affordable] ebook versions. Bummer.

Manning gives that you for free

That and their daily half-off sales have resulted in me spending far too much money on their books... At least they generally have good editing and a pretty high quality bar, better than I've seen with Packt or Apress.

Re: O’Reilly Media has stopped retailing books directly on its ecommerce store

#35

Post by gamesbrainiac »

This does not come as a surprise. Packt now has Mapt, and subscription based services such as Pluralsight are showing far healthier profit margins than O'Reilly.

This is just their attempt to get in line with what other publishers are offering.

Re: O’Reilly Media has stopped retailing books directly on its ecommerce store

#36

Post by padthai »

michaelmrose wrote: post #31
kin wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google Play store offers O'Reilly books DRM free in both PDF and ePub format.

Its amazing that a company whose main product is search has such a worthless search for their store. Its absolutely worthless unless you already know exactly what you want. You have to use their general search product to find enough info to bring up the exact title you want to buy. For example you can't on the play store find all the oreilly books that aren't drm encumbered or find all the books on a certain topic in…

Not only the store, Youtube and Scholar do not provide a good search experience either.

I wonder why.

In fact I remember that when Youtube got adquired by Google search got worse.

Re: O’Reilly Media has stopped retailing books directly on its ecommerce store

#37

Post by throwaway7645 »

manaskarekar wrote: post #3

This really sucks. It was my favorite place to buy books. It seemed like the one place that had the model closest to being right. - They used to have an ongoing discount of 45% and more on special holidays. - They were DRM free in multiple formats and they gave you discounts on ebooks if you had purchased the print books. - They had regular updates to ebooks posted in one single list that you could keep up with. I wi…

I like NoStarchPress, but Manning has waaaay more books.

Re: O’Reilly Media has stopped retailing books directly on its ecommerce store

#38

Post by voltagex_ »

kin wrote: post #22
dcw303 wrote: post #4

I just posted this on another thread: I just got this via email and I'm very disappointed too. DRM issues aside, Kindle is still terrible for tech books. Code samples, data tables, etc. They all look crummy. The pdf ebooks from the Oreilly store had far superior formatting.

Google Play store offers O'Reilly books DRM free in both PDF and ePub format.

How? I just bought "You don't know JS: Up and Going" (only $5, so not bad as a test) and I was prompted to download Google Books.

I have stopped buying Kindle books due to no longer being able to back up the files (KFX switched to a new encryption type). I rarely buy technical books, but O'Reilly was my go-to due to actually being able to have the real files offline.

Edit: Okay, Google don't make it easy and there's no way to do it from Android. Go to https://books.google.com.au/books and click on a book in your library. If the publisher has allowed it, there'll be a cog in the upper right corner that will have "Download PDF" and "Download EPUB" available.

Re: O’Reilly Media has stopped retailing books directly on its ecommerce store

#39

Post by porsupah »

manaskarekar wrote: post #3

This really sucks. It was my favorite place to buy books. It seemed like the one place that had the model closest to being right. - They used to have an ongoing discount of 45% and more on special holidays. - They were DRM free in multiple formats and they gave you discounts on ebooks if you had purchased the print books. - They had regular updates to ebooks posted in one single list that you could keep up with. I wi…

Packt is also worth considering, with a similar lack of DRM and multiple formats.

As a nice bonus, every day, they make one title available free - a good means to dip into new technologies just out of curiosity:

https://www.packtpub.com/packt/offers/free-learning

Re: O’Reilly Media has stopped retailing books directly on its ecommerce store

#40

Post by manaskarekar »

porsupah wrote: post #39
manaskarekar wrote: post #3

This really sucks. It was my favorite place to buy books. It seemed like the one place that had the model closest to being right. - They used to have an ongoing discount of 45% and more on special holidays. - They were DRM free in multiple formats and they gave you discounts on ebooks if you had purchased the print books. - They had regular updates to ebooks posted in one single list that you could keep up with. I wi…

Packt is also worth considering, with a similar lack of DRM and multiple formats. As a nice bonus, every day, they make one title available free - a good means to dip into new technologies just out of curiosity: https://www.packtpub.com/packt/offers/free-learning

Yes, I have bought books from them in the past. Thanks.
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