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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

#211

Post by chasing »

jlangr wrote: post #201
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…

The subscription model makes sense for the vendors--I get that it costs money to put out new versions and support things. For me, it depends on the "stuff" and its longevity. E.G. for JetBrains, I'd rather pay ~$600 once and for all, since I doubt I'll move off of it any time soon. Instead, to get updates, I'll now pay $299 per year in perpetuity (after yr 2). So if I use it 10 more years, I plunk out almost $3000. E…

Out of curiosity, do you use many pieces of software regularly that you last updated in 2007? Would you use IntelliJ 2007 for work today?

I don't know: $3k for ten years of updates to a key tool I use for work -- that seems low. Like, well below my budget for coffee.

$2k/yr total does seem high. That's higher than my costs for my various work-related subscriptions. But if that $2k provides tools you convert into 50x or 100x that in income... I mean, it seems like money well spent.

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

#212

Post by clumsysmurf »

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'…

There is always the chance of counterfeit books. No Starch had that problem, mentioned here a while ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13924546

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

#213

Post by grad_ml »

_oya8 wrote: post #165
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…

We (Manning) are in the process of diversifying our options :)

Just wanted to add, I absolutely love manning tech book's quality. After buying few books from packt, I'm never going back to them.

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

#214

Post by starsinspace »

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'…

I have very mixed experience with print-on-demand too. Bought a Microsoft Press book that turned out to be printed on demand... the print quality is bad (looks like a printer set to thrifty "save toner" mode). Together with their choice of a rather anemic font for the text, it's just not nice to read at all. The bad legibility really impacts the joy of reading it.

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

#215

Post by j_s »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #195
j_s wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

From the businesses perspective what it costs doesn't matter (as long as they cover their costs), it's about what value the customer perceives and hence how much they are willing to pay.

Exactly! I didn't want to give Safari some sort of a "niche market" pass on a high price without some sort of breakdown on their operating costs (which I don't think will ever see the light of day).

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

#216

Post by starsinspace »

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.

> On the flip side, I totally understand them going DRM-only for digital publishers.

Has the introduction of evermore draconian DRM in movie disc formats prevented them from appearing on pirate sites?

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

#217

Post by gregjwild »

clumsysmurf wrote: post #210
_oya8 wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We (Manning) are in the process of diversifying our options :)

This sounds somewhat ominous ... will Manning keep the option of DRM-free individual book purchases going into the future?

Not at all :) I was responding to the criticism of O'Reilly reducing to just two choices - Safari or Amazon.

We're committed to DRM free options wherever possible. We're coming up with some new stuff, but DRM free pdfs and epubs are pretty much our core business.

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

#218

Post by gregjwild »

grad_ml wrote: post #213
_oya8 wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We (Manning) are in the process of diversifying our options :)

Just wanted to add, I absolutely love manning tech book's quality. After buying few books from packt, I'm never going back to them.

Always good to hear positive feedback :) Thanks! Any particular books you've enjoyed recently?

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

#219

Post by Spivak »

starsinspace wrote: post #216
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.

> On the flip side, I totally understand them going DRM-only for digital publishers. Has the introduction of evermore draconian DRM in movie disc formats prevented them from appearing on pirate sites?

Does DRM claim to accomplish that? Sure, they appear eventually but it does slow people down and raises the technical knowledge bar required to do so.

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

#220

Post by bigtunacan »

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 find subscriptions to be a mixed bag. For something like TV/Movies subscription makes sense in general. Most consumers will watch once and then watch something else and this subscription rental service is cheaper than direct buying what you would use.

With technical books, this is a pretty hard sell at the Safari prices. The lowest cost option is $39/month for one user. It's pretty difficult to justify that as I need to read a minimum of one technical book per month, and all of those books would have to be ones available in Safari.

I've used Safaribooks in the past because an employer paid for the team, and I thought it was quite good, but it isn't good enough to replace all of my technical book needs, nor is it worth $39/month.

I, like the parent, have directly purchased quite a few books directly from O'Reilly online in the past. The nice thing was that unlike Amazon I could count on updates if there were corrections and such. Now I will just look elsewhere for books and O'Reilly just loses my money.

Also; IMHO, the O'Reilly article is nothing but PR spin. How is this reinventing anything? Safaribooks has been around for 16 years as a subscription service. There is nothing new here; all they did was kill off a sales channel. That's pretty much the opposite of invention.

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