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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

#111

Post by kronos29296 »

KGIII wrote: post #69
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…

Calibre will enable you to remove DRM. It is both handy and quick.

Which is totally illegal by the way.(I think due to DMCA)

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

#112

Post by jamespo »

subpixel wrote: post #64
EwanToo wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is surely the unspoken element of O'Reilly's change here, piracy of technical PDFs is rampant.

The thing is, by making pdfs harder to get through legit channels they are going to increase traffic through illegitimate channels. It's not about how many files are available, it's about how many people are looking for them.

Not if they stop making PDFs full stop

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

#113

Post by detaro »

ehnto wrote: post #99
SomeHacker44 wrote: post #52

Sent this to Support at O'Reilly after reading their (to me, insane) e-mail. Hi O'Reilly, Just so you know - you've completely lost a customer. After years - decades really - of a highly dedicated customer (whose friends have written books you have published) you threw it all down the drain in one e-mail. I will never purchase another book published by O'Reilly, or any company associated with O'Reilly, or associated…

It is worth noting JetBrains still offer buy it once and own it licenses, and even their subscription grants you an eternal license to the particular version you were on when you stopped subscribing.

> then re-joined them when they went to "Subscription + keep your start of subscription version forever".

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

#114

Post by nightski »

ehnto wrote: post #99
SomeHacker44 wrote: post #52

Sent this to Support at O'Reilly after reading their (to me, insane) e-mail. Hi O'Reilly, Just so you know - you've completely lost a customer. After years - decades really - of a highly dedicated customer (whose friends have written books you have published) you threw it all down the drain in one e-mail. I will never purchase another book published by O'Reilly, or any company associated with O'Reilly, or associated…

It is worth noting JetBrains still offer buy it once and own it licenses, and even their subscription grants you an eternal license to the particular version you were on when you stopped subscribing.

I'm pretty sure it's to the version that is 12 months behind when you stopped subscribing. You have to subscribe for an entire year to own the version when you started.

So if you subscribe for 12 months, and then cancel, you actually have to revert back to a version 1 year old. It's pretty messed up.

Plus the updates have REALLY been lacking. They have missed the quarterly releases regularly and it just feels like very little has actually been added.

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

#115

Post by kronos29296 »

kin wrote: post #27

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.

Only thing that will change with DRM is less Google-fu and more Pirate-fu which people with good google-fu also have in abundance.

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

#116

Post by kronos29296 »

jamespo wrote: post #112
subpixel wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, by making pdfs harder to get through legit channels they are going to increase traffic through illegitimate channels. It's not about how many files are available, it's about how many people are looking for them.

Not if they stop making PDFs full stop

Yeah stop book photocopying by not publishing books is the best way to do it. Then they are no longer book publishers just another website with a premium subscription.

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

#117

Post by timwaagh »

well i mostly bought their titles from bookstores in deadtree format so it does not really affect me. as long as they continue to publish good stuff and the bookstores have their books (which has become more of a problem lately) i will probably buy a few once in a while. still this is a most unwelcome deterioration. it just puts them in the category of companies that like to squeeze every dollar out of their users, which is not good because they used to enjoy a very good reputation which justified their high pricetag.

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

#118

Post by reitanqild »

pirocks wrote: post #62
SomeHacker44 wrote: post #52

Sent this to Support at O'Reilly after reading their (to me, insane) e-mail. Hi O'Reilly, Just so you know - you've completely lost a customer. After years - decades really - of a highly dedicated customer (whose friends have written books you have published) you threw it all down the drain in one e-mail. I will never purchase another book published by O'Reilly, or any company associated with O'Reilly, or associated…

Random question: What did you switch to when you dropped JetBrains, and did you notice a productivity drop?

Former user of Eclipse an IntelliJ, now Netbeans:

For some people (like me) Netbeans is awesome. I love the fact that it can use pom as its own project model and IMO it aligns better with OS keyboard shortcuts (Win and Linux at least) than VS, eclipse and IntelliJ).

Be prepared for weird reactions though: it seems everyone "knows" it is awful.

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

#119

Post by ehnto »

detaro wrote: post #113
ehnto wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is worth noting JetBrains still offer buy it once and own it licenses, and even their subscription grants you an eternal license to the particular version you were on when you stopped subscribing.

> then re-joined them when they went to "Subscription + keep your start of subscription version forever".

Oh, yeah I missed that. Cheers!

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

#120

Post by tallanvor »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #109
throwaway2016a wrote: post #21

O'Reilly author here. This is the email we got today. Sounds like they also plan to offer courses through Safari as well. ------------------------- I'm writing to let you know about some changes—including new opportunities for you—at O'Reilly. First, as of today, we are discontinuing fulfillment of individual book and video purchases on shop.oreilly.com. Books (both ebook and print) will still be available for sale v…

Netflix and Spotify operate completely different business models, and their customer base has completely different needs and requirements. They're also much cheaper. Safari has always been an also-ran side platform. The "growth of subscribers" on Safari may exceed direct sales, but what's driving that growth? Is it really because Safari is Just That Awesome? Does the management team have any idea? This is a classic e…

I mean, "much cheaper" doesn't mean much. I pay $199/year for Safari. It's more expensive than Netflix or Spotify, sure, but still only $17/month.

And regarding Safari being an "also-ran side platform", I'm wondering if maybe you were thinking of the old SafariBooksOnline platform. They switched to Safari a couple of years ago which is definitely more modern and cheaper, although it does do away with the tokens you would get every month to download whole books or chapters.

For me, this doesn't trash their reputation or otherwise make me think less of them. They've obviously decided that direct fulfillment was too much of a hassle and that other retailers could do a more efficient job. I guess I might feel different if I bought a lot of books from them, but having used their subscription service for around 8 years now, I just don't need to buy tech books anymore.

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