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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

#231

Post by ffernand »

Tim O'Reilly mentioned on twitter that he's not opposed to selling PDF's via a third party bookstore.

https://twitter.com/timoreilly/status/880472045137670144

I can only hope that a statement like this isn't used to pacify the masses until this issue is relegated to obscurity. In the mean time, I'm looking at other publishers (thank GOD that many of them I heaven't heard of are discussed here) for content and refuse to pay for a $400/yr safari subscription while NEVER REALLY OWNING ANYTHING.

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

#232

Post by stephanakib »

newscracker wrote: post #80

I'm terribly disappointed, and that's putting it mildly. I have bought many eBooks from O'Reilly and have also provided feedback repeatedly that the main reasons I buy from O'Reilly are DRM free books in different formats (especially PDF and ePub, which I use). It's the same set of reasons I buy books from Apress, Pragprog, NoStarch, Packtpub and Manning (to name a few others). I have tried Safari Online through an e…

FWIW informit.com has the same model. We have regular holiday sales (including a 4th of July sale starting tomorrow), update our eBooks, and offer the different DRM-Free formats including PDFs.

Informit.com is a Pearson owned site and sells the following tech imprints: Addison-Wesley, Prentice Hall, Sams, Microsoft Press, Cisco Press, Pearston IT Certification, Big Nerd Ranch, Peachpit, Adobe Press, and New Riders.

And we currently have no plans to change that model-just make it better!

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

#233

Post by stephanakib »

manicdee wrote: post #29

"Seeing as 40% of our customers buy pink things, we are reducing costs by selling only pink things." The whole point if going to O'Reilly was DRM free books that I can use on my various devices (iPad, Sony Reader). Guess it's off to Apress in the future. Can't load Kindle or Kobo books into the Sony.

FWIW informit.com has the same model. We have regular holiday sales, update our eBooks, and offer the different DRM-Free formats including PDFs.

Informit.com is a Pearson owned site and sells the following tech imprints: Addison-Wesley, Prentice Hall, Sams, Microsoft Press, Cisco Press, Pearston IT Certification, Big Nerd Ranch, Peachpit, Adobe Press, and New Riders.

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

#234

Post by stephanakib »

foobardeveloper wrote: post #91

Is there any alternative to Safari Books Online which has both beginner and advanced content, video and books ? (If yes, I want to move away from Safari on grounds of principle)

Informit.com is a Pearson owned site and we sell the following tech imprints for all levels: Addison-Wesley, Prentice Hall, Sams, Microsoft Press, Cisco Press, Pearston IT Certification, Que, Big Nerd Ranch, Peachpit, Adobe Press, and New Riders.

We have regular holiday sales (including a 4th of July sale starting tomorrow), update our eBooks, and offer the different DRM-Free formats including PDF, MOBI and EPUB.

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

#235

Post by ilamont »

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…

So I went into my O'Reilly publisher dashboard to examine purchasing trends over the last 6 months (in my earlier comment I noted monthly sales for individual titles are often more than Safari revenue).

Since November 2016, Safari sales have actually picked up a lot, sometimes 2x or 3x the same level as one year earlier, and there were no individual ebook sales in April 2017.

As a publisher, I'm impressed, but there could be other factors that explain these trends. I am also apprehensive about whether the upward Safari trend will continue ...

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

#236

Post by torstenvl »

avuton wrote: post #171
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.

You're talking about the change from Netscape Communicator 6+ to Firebird and eventually Firefox in ~2003. That was a positive change.

I'm talking about the the change from Navigator 4.x to the MAS-based buggy crashy slow XUL monstrosity in 1998-2000. That was a terrible change, it killed Netscape as a company, almost gave Microsoft complete control over the future of the Web, and ended up necessitating Firebird/Firefox.

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

#237

Post by rollover »

stephanakib wrote: post #228
starsinspace wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are the PDF eBooks watermarked?

Yes they are watermarked for security

A digital watermark is automatically inserted customer information into a purchased product to restrict it's usage only to the buyer of that product. To me that's exactly like Digital Rights (Restrictions) Management. Calling something that contains digital watermarks DRM-free is deceptive to the customer. But long story short, if it contains watermarks I don't buy it.

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

#238

Post by rollover »

starsinspace wrote: post #208
AndyHunt wrote: post #192

Well, O'Reilly seems to be focusing on the large, corporate market, with a broad array of topics, so from that perspective this move makes perfect sense as a small, simple optimization on their part. At Pragmatic Bookshelf, however, we focus on the individual, highly skilled developer looking to improve their skills and those of their teams. We don't offer a broad array of tech topics, just the ones we feel are impor…

Question: do you consider giving up on the soft-DRM (watermarking of PDFs) too? Lack of DRM (both soft and hard) was for me the biggest feature when buying from O'Reilly. It's what made it quite unique and why I bought most of my tech-related eBooks there. I had a somewhat unpleasant surprise when I bought books directly from your website and found them to be watermarked. Didn't see that written anywhere on the site…

The watermarking is the sole reason I don't buy ebooks from PragProg.

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

#239

Post by Frogolocalypse »

kronos29296 wrote: post #111
KGIII wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

The DMCA is an american law. Last time I looked, I don't live in america.

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

#240

Post by youngtaff »

jazzyk wrote: post #176
youngtaff wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Some pay speakers but plenty of conferences cover travel and expenses (not enough though)

Oredev in Malmo are a O'Reilly sized conference that not only pays travel etc. but also book it all for you

It's not just large swanky conferences, believe community events like CSS / JS conf cover costs as it helps get diverse speakers (and ultimately it shows you respect the speaker)

Let face it O'Reilly are profiting off their speakers hard work and without speakers there is no conference

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