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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

#171

Post by avuton »

torstenvl wrote: post #12

Deeply disappointing. O'Reilly had some really good things going for it, and it just decided to flush it down the drain. This is on par with Apple moving to butterfly switch keyboards across its entire laptop line, or Netscape deciding to ditch its browser and rewrite it from scratch. Tragic, user-hostile blunders. And it wouldn't completely surprise me if this marked the beginning of the end for O'Reilly.

You remember a different Netscape than I do. Netscape was the kind of browser you hated to recommend to a loved one. The experience was truly subpar. When Firebird was announced, the user experience improved significantly over what Netscape could have ever hoped to attain, though it still took some time before recommending it to a loved one would turn out not to be a mistake.

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

#172

Post by justanton »

I am a Safari subscriber, however I use it only for quick reference or for watching videos.

I've never read a whole book on Safari only for one reason: the HTML formatting in the browser (as well as in the Queue app) is terrible. It still amazes me, how a publisher such as O'Reilly, who by definition should be aware of importance of such things as typography, almost entirely neglected this in Safari. Books in Safari are just stream of text, without a proper layout. I truly wonder, if Safari employees have read a whole book on their platform themselves.

If I needed to read a whole book — I would still buy the paper version directly from the publisher or Amazon.

The news, that O'Reilly is gradually switching towards a subscription-only model in the future, are very disturbing for me.

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

#173

Post by currysausage »

ivanr wrote: post #145
chrsw wrote: post #138

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'…

Yes, they're print-on-demand books, printed by Lightning Source (the last time I checked). They're not cheap to print, at least not at the list price; I don't know what deal O'Reilly might have. However, they're vastly more convenient because Lightning Source will ship them directly to retailers so publishers don't need warehouses. If I'd have to guess, I'd say that O'Reilly might be printing a small initial batch fo…

My "JavaScript Definitive Guide" ordered from Amazon.de (and printed by Lightning Source UK, if I recall correctly) was of shocking quality too. I returned it and got a more expensive copy from my local bookstore, printed by Lightning Source International. Very sharp type.

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

#174

Post by coredog64 »

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

Packt is very hit or miss. Some titles are awesome, and others read like a collection of SO answers and out-of-date official documentation.

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

#175

Post by CtrlAltT5wpm »

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.

Removing DRM is no longer so easy, now that Amazon moved their titles to the KFX format. Last I checked, the only way to do this was a clunky workaround involving either not updating your desktop Kindle software past a certain version, or downloading directly from your account page. The latter option is unavailable if you don't own a Paperwhite.

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

#176

Post by jazzyk »

youngtaff wrote: post #102
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…

O'Reilly is becoming a less and less interesting company to work with but it's not surprising After-all this is the company that's built a multi-million dollar conferencing business that doesn't pay speakers, and often doesn't meet their travel and hotel costs

Not defending O'R, but what conferences pay speakers' fees and reimburse their costs these days?

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

#177

Post by kalleboo »

heartbreak wrote: post #68
SomeHacker44 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(It's the "touch bar" that made this my last Apple laptop until they get rid of it, but true, the keyboard is pretty darn bad too.)

Isn't that an optional feature?

Only on the 13-inch, and even there the non-TouchBar version has some lame limitations (e.g. only 2 USB-C ports and slower WiFi)

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

#178

Post by teilo »

Horrible news. In my experience tech books tend to be horribly formatted in ePUB and MOBI format. They don't have to be, but they usually are.

When I have bought from O'Reilly in the past, I have always defaulted to PDF.

Now, not only does that option go away, everything will be DRM going forward.

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

#179

Post by gglitch »

mark_l_watson wrote: post #158
chasing wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Same. When I got an email yesterday saying that my ACM membership now gives me complete access to the entire Safari platform and all its content, it was like the last several Christmases all wrapped up in one. Just extraordinary how much useful content just became available to me, and all searchable too. Amazing.

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

#180

Post by gglitch »

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…

I pay $99/yr for a professional membership in ACM, and as of yesterday, that membership includes complete access to the entire Safari platform. Get it while it's hot, I guess.
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