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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

#151

Post by Finnucane »

A few weeks ago O'Reilly sold its interest in the Pubfactory platform and the developers who work on it to Sheridan, a printing services company (presumably Sheridan wants to beef up its own digital portfolio). Whether this is cause or effect here, I couldn't say, but it would seem to be related.

One makes a guess that as digital delivery becomes a bigger part of the pie for them, the cost of managing physical inventory becomes more burdensome to them. So they said, screw it, we'll join the Borg and be assimilated.

(Personally, I get access to the Safari online service through the library at work, so I don't have to worry about it too much).

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

#152

Post by rexreed »

troydj wrote: post #55

Maybe if we all start sending tweets to @timoreilly he will reconsider this very unfortunate decision...

From what I understand he hasn't been making day-to-day decisions for O'reilly for at least 10 years. He's just the owner and figurehead.

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

#153

Post by j_s »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #93
SomeHacker44 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Subscription services like Netflix are cheap. Vastly cheaper than Safari. Furthermore, Netflix allows two viewing streams simultaneously, 24 hours a day, and all five members of my household have their own profiles. We almost certainly spend more hours as a family on Netflix than we do reading O'Reilly books (especially since it's mostly just me who does that, and sometimes my son when we're doing programming togethe…

The economics are different, Safari is a niche product and will always be more expensive than something aimed at the general consumer.

How different are the operating costs? What is cost-per-user? Is the smaller audience just an excuse to squeeze for more net revenue?

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

#154

Post by jonlucc »

syshum wrote: post #128
tallanvor wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

The current price is $400 per year not $199, if you get a discount or have a grandfathered rate that should not be used as a talking point to defend their pricing as a person signing up today will not get that rate. So you have to base the argument on today's prices...

You'd think they'd use this opportunity to run a sale for Safari to ease the transition for people who aren't yet on the platform. Maybe they didn't expect this to cause any problems?

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

#155

Post by chasing »

nightski wrote: post #114
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.

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 ve…

> 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.

It would be, but that's not how it works.

I believe you just get to keep using whatever you were using when you stopped payments. You have access to minors updates to that version, but not to major updates from version to version.

I think it's a smart balance.

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

#156

Post by throwaway2016a »

Buttons840 wrote: post #135
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?

I'm a relatively old author (my only book with them was published almost 10 years ago) but they did contact me a few years later and asked me if I would allow them to "experiment" with selling a DRM free version of my book.

I gladly said "yes"

Even then, all books were on bittorrent within weeks regardless of if you have DRM or not. As a victim (so to speak) of piracy I'd rather provide more convenience to the customer over ineffectively making life harder for the pirates.

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

#157

Post by chasing »

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…

> Buy it once, own it. Did you ever see me subscribe to Safari? No? Ever wonder why not? For the same reason that I don't use Adobe products anymore except Lightroom...

I like subscriptions, to be honest. I don't need to "own" all this stuff (whatever "own" might mean) -- tech books and specific versions of software tend to have a relatively short shelf-life and I like both O'Reilly's, Adobe's, and JetBrain's models of paying a predictable fee every month and having access to everything they provide. To me it's very freeing.

The last time I purchased an O'Reilly book, digital or physical, was probably... 2002?

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

#158

Post by mark_l_watson »

chasing wrote: post #157
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…

> Buy it once, own it. Did you ever see me subscribe to Safari? No? Ever wonder why not? For the same reason that I don't use Adobe products anymore except Lightroom... I like subscriptions, to be honest. I don't need to "own" all this stuff (whatever "own" might mean) -- tech books and specific versions of software tend to have a relatively short shelf-life and I like both O'Reilly's, Adobe's, and JetBrain's models…

I agree with you. I have a Safari subscription and I have mostly stopped buying computer science text books (I buy only 7 or 8 a year now). Now instead of looking on stack overflow or doing a web search, I login to Safari, find a recent book, and read the parts that are useful/interesting.

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

#159

Post by mark_l_watson »

gtirloni wrote: post #140
asdefghyk wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

I signed up for $199/year, and I think that as long as I keep my membership ongoing, then it is $199/year forever.

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

#160

Post by nobleach »

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…

Oh that's terrible! I bought the 1st edition in print, and I can't imagine who ridiculous it would be without the cursor.
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