O’Reilly Media has stopped retailing books directly on its ecommerce store • Hacker News Board

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

#131

Post by ekidd » Thu, Jun 29, 2017, 10:50 AM UTC

I've bought well over a hundred O'Reilly books over the years, and after 2002 or so, I bought almost all of them as DRM-free PDFs. But in recent years, I've only averaged an O'Reilly book or two per year, because they've been slow to publish books on new technologies I cared about.

I find that, with few exceptions, Kindle programming ebooks are annoying and unpleasant. Some of the "textbook"-mode ones (where you can highlight diagrams and not just text) are tolerable on a Chromebook in tablet mode, but just barely.

And there's no way I'm going to pay $399/year for Safari, not when I'm currently spending $0-50/year, and certainly not for the privilege of using what people tell me is a mediocre mobile app. So going forward, this means that I'll buy maybe one O'Reilly book every other year through Amazon.

Does this also mean that O'Reilly is no longer going to be offering "early release" books for people who don't buy Safari? I think that something like 90% of my technical book purchases in the last 10 years were early release.

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

#132

Post by manaskarekar » Thu, Jun 29, 2017, 10:57 AM UTC

billpollock wrote: post #87

throwaway7645 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like NoStarchPress, but Manning has waaaay more books.

Good books take time. We're not in a rush to make lots of them.

Thank you for nostarchpress.

Also thank you for the humble bundle, please keep them coming!

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

#133

Post by delhanty » Thu, Jun 29, 2017, 11:22 AM UTC

Giving the authors zero prior notice - that's rude!

As a long-term buyer of lots of O'Reilly ebooks - it's disappointing, but it's their prerogative if they want to exit the market. It's not like we entered into some lifetime contract where they agreed to sell me ebooks forever.

From O'Reilly 's point of view, this looks rational though.

Joel Spolsky [1] and Jeff Attwood [2] called it in 2008:

>What is stackoverflow.com?

>Nothing, yet.

>But here’s the concept:

>Programmers seem to have stopped reading books. The market for books on programming topics is miniscule compared to the number of working programmers.

Then they made doubly sure by making SO a huge success!

In music publishing, most of the money in the mainstream has moved from music sales to live performances, with streaming subscriptions bring up the rear.

Isn't the same thing likely happening here with O'Reilly's conference business probably dwarfing everything else?

[1] https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2008/04/16/stackoverflowcom/

[2] https://blog.codinghorror.com/programmers-dont-read-books-bu...

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

#134

Post by Buttons840 » Thu, Jun 29, 2017, 11:29 AM UTC

ilamont wrote: post #17

One other thing worth mentioning: Publishers (and authors) were notified of the change today . It's akin to an app store suddenly announcing a major shift in the business model and payouts to app developers, effective immediately. For my company, the single-title sales are often greater than Safari subscription income, and I am not sure sending visitors to Amazon is going to make up for the lost sales on O'Reilly. I…

I suspect a lot of authors care about making their work available without DRM. They are creative, tech savvy, and desire to share their knowledge (they are writing a book after all); it seems they would care about DRM issues. Guess those who do won't publish with OReilly anymore.

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

#135

Post by Buttons840 » Thu, Jun 29, 2017, 11:35 AM UTC

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…

Hello OReilly author. May I ask: did you consider DRM issues when choosing to publish with OReilly and would you choose to publish with them again after this change?

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

#136

Post by imgabe » Thu, Jun 29, 2017, 11:36 AM UTC

clumsysmurf wrote: post #50

kin wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon sells Kindle versions so there's DRM. But, Google Play store offers PDF and ePub versions of O'Reilly books.

There are significant problems with both options. For Amazon, when you buy an eBook, you are essentially given a license to use it. Amazon can revoke that - we've all heard of people moving to another country to see their entire library disappear, only (hopefully) remedied after enough hell was raised on some website. As for Play Books, lets imagine you are a Android developer working on the next great thing, and you…

It's trivial to remove the DRM from Amazon books and save a copy.

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

#137

Post by CtrlAltT5wpm » Thu, Jun 29, 2017, 11:43 AM UTC

imgabe wrote: post #136

clumsysmurf wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are significant problems with both options. For Amazon, when you buy an eBook, you are essentially given a license to use it. Amazon can revoke that - we've all heard of people moving to another country to see their entire library disappear, only (hopefully) remedied after enough hell was raised on some website. As for Play Books, lets imagine you are a Android developer working on the next great thing, and you…

It's trivial to remove the DRM from Amazon books and save a copy.

It's no longer so trivial since Amazon moved to the KFX format.

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

#138

Post by chrsw » Thu, Jun 29, 2017, 11:48 AM UTC

The last couple of O'Reilly books I purchased from Amazon were of poor quality. The content was fine but the physical item was shocking. They were probably print-on-demand books made on the cheap. But the retail price was what you'd expect from a high end tech publisher. I should have returned them. The books look like they were printed on a consumer grade inkjet. I had heard that the books purchased directly from O'Reilly didn't have this problem. They've even taken away that option now. Looking back, this had to be expected. The writing was on the wall when they switched from a lay-flat binding for most or their titles to the cheaper, much hard to read while coding, perfect binding.

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

#139

Post by lando2319 » Thu, Jun 29, 2017, 11:54 AM UTC

ChickeNES wrote: post #106

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…

I won't buy another Pragmatic Press book after buying the Practical Vim second edition Kindle book only to find that the cursor positions are missing throughout the entire book. I posted on their forums about it only to be told that they had submitted the update and it was out of their hands. It's now been a year and a half and the update still hasn't appeared, and as I waited for the non-existent update to appear, I…

that is unacceptable, there is an entire chapter on cursor positioning, must be pretty boring without the cursor.

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

#140

Post by gtirloni » Thu, Jun 29, 2017, 11:54 AM UTC

asdefghyk wrote: post #74

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…

RE " .... $399/yr for Safari subscription ..." I only pay $199/yr After the 1st year they sent me this offer ....

They have some summer sales where the price drops to $199/yr for the first year too.

Still, that's a sizable amount in some countries. They could offer direct discounts to students or people from these countries (but I can't find that anywhere, they seem focused on selling to academic institutions only).