81–90 of 260 posts
The $399/yr doesn't make sense for a lot of people. It definitely is too high a price point for me as I only read 1 or 2 O'Reilly books a year at most. It's nice to have a copy lying around for reference years later. On the flip side, I totally understand them going DRM-only for digital publishers. O'Reilly PDFs are way too easy to find for free with minimal Google-fu.
Having purchased many books thru O'Reilly, and now using Safari Online - I'm a huge fan of this move. Feels to me like going from iTunes to Spotify, or Netflix DVDs to Streaming.
I'm not. I purchased many books from O'Reilly as well, but the number is more like 4-5 books a year. Even with just 4-5 books a year I still usually end up with a book left unread or unfinished every time. Spotify/Netflix makes perfect sense for a subscription model because of the way we consume musics/videos. The same can't be said for technical books. Not for $399 a year anyway. With that price point, seems like th…
I guess the main difference is not that the price ratio between subscription and individual items is off, but rather that most consumers don't want 1 book a month. It's a bummer that they don't give people an option, but I'm still a fan of Safari...and I hope this move will mean they drastically improve the Safari app, much like Netflix has doubled down on Streaming now that they don't do DVDs.
I don't know how the math works, but ACM members currently get free access to Safari. You can sign up for ACM for $99 a year.
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Amazon selling PDFs? Brick and mortar selling PDFs?
Amazon sells Kindle versions so there's DRM. But, Google Play store offers PDF and ePub versions of O'Reilly books.
> We do not currently have the DRM free PDF versions available from any online re-sellers.
> We currently have the Kindle versions of our title available on Amazon.com and the ePub version at Google Play or IBooks for your mobile devices. We do not currently have the DRM free PDF versions available from any online re-sellers.
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.
I'm terribly disappointed, and that's putting it mildly. I have bought many eBooks from O'Reilly and have also provided feedback repeatedly that the main reasons I buy from O'Reilly are DRM free books in different formats (especially PDF and ePub, which I use). It's the same set of reasons I buy books from Apress, Pragprog, NoStarch, Packtpub and Manning (to name a few others). I have tried Safari Online through an e…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not. I purchased many books from O'Reilly as well, but the number is more like 4-5 books a year. Even with just 4-5 books a year I still usually end up with a book left unread or unfinished every time. Spotify/Netflix makes perfect sense for a subscription model because of the way we consume musics/videos. The same can't be said for technical books. Not for $399 a year anyway. With that price point, seems like th…
I guess I'm an anomaly in that I read far more books than watching movies, but I agree that most consumers will want a variety of music and shows, unlike books. However, isn't the price point ($35/month), which is 4x more than Spotify, roughly in line with the price for a single book, which is roughly 4x an album. I guess the main difference is not that the price ratio between subscription and individual items is off…
When I read technical books, its going to be because there is a specific thing that I want to learn, and when I'm done with the books, I expect to have a new skill under my belt that I can start polishing. I certainly don't do this at a rate of 1 book a month.
Yeah, the fact the pricing is offered at rate that is way more than most people's (including mine) purchasing habit is a bummer, but the inclusion of DRM meaning that you lose access to your "purchase" once your subscription ends is the deal breaker for me.
The fact there is a lot more content in the Safari offering may look like a good value in the marketing copy, but that just means more noise to filter through for me. I only have limited amount of time to spend on consuming content after all.
This is significant because early last year MarketLive was purchased by private equity, merged with some other ecommerce companies, and relocated to Texas. So it's quite possible - and here I have no particular knowledge - that the MarketLive platform is being deprecated or entirely abandoned, and this was a more attractive option for O'Reilly than trying to rebuild all that stuff on a different platform.