Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Half-price Ebooks for Day Against DRM

nostarch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 64 posts

Re: Half-price Ebooks for Day Against DRM

#31

Post by freehunter »

kajo wrote: post #26
Tepix wrote: post #13

It's sad that O'Reilly books are no longer available without DRM or subscription.

O'Reilly had the serious flaw that you could just claim you own a book by adding its IBAN to your account's library and thus being able to "upgrade" it and obtain the ebook version for $5. I wonder why that worked as long as it did.

Because enough people would still buy them at full price, and if you were willing to scam your way into a $5 ebook, at least you're paying something for it instead of just pirating it.

I always saw it as a way to turn pirates into paying customers, and the would-be pirates still felt like they were getting a good deal. It's a win-win.

Re: Half-price Ebooks for Day Against DRM

#32

Post by WesleyLivesay »

soapdog wrote: post #27
_e wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For technical books, I can't replicate the experience of writing notes in the margins (with a pencil of course) of a paper book versus anything ebook readers offer. Yes, I can't grep or query a paper book but the learning process seems more fluid as the book becomes my own reference source.

You might not like it but many ebook readers have annotation support. Usually you can highlight text and add notes. In the case of Kindle, you can later find all your highlights and notes on: https://kindle.amazon.com/your_highlights There are browser add-ons that make this page better and easier to export. One example is http://www.norbauer.com/bookcision/ which will allow you to download your notes in XML, JSON or…

Thank you for linking to that export utility!

I use Kindle Highlights very heavily while doing research, I then export them for use while writing. That extension will save me a bunch of time.

Re: Half-price Ebooks for Day Against DRM

#33

Post by emodendroket »

dudul wrote: post #14
ballenf wrote: post #7

The biggest issue I have with publisher websites is the lack of a strong review ecosystem. I've started looking at Amazon or industry blogs for reviews and recommendations, but that gets frustrating and is slow. Just wonder if the publisher could arrange to get rights to it's books' reviews across seller sites and aggregate the results. The truth is, apart from occasional sales like this, the publisher sites are rare…

"The truth is, apart from occasional sales like this, the publisher sites are rarely in price competition with any other sellers." Is this really true? I usually by ebook/pbook combo and I find that I get a better deal directly on the publisher's website. Amazon is a non starter for me because I don't buy into their ebook format. "ebook" to me means epub and pdf.

> Is this really true? I usually by ebook/pbook combo and I find that I get a better deal directly on the publisher's website. Amazon is a non starter for me because I don't buy into their ebook format. "ebook" to me means epub and pdf.

OK, well, it's not true if you discount the biggest and cheapest competitor out of hand.

Re: Half-price Ebooks for Day Against DRM

#34

Post by PhantomGremlin »

Am I dense? When does this "day" start?

Browsing with Safari 10.1.1 I see a standard website with standard pricing. I would think that if this were something being promoted there would be a very prominent statement. But I don't see anything?

I tried adding a few books to my cart, but they also seem to have regular pricing.

The only thing that says "half-price" is the HN title???

Re: Half-price Ebooks for Day Against DRM

#36

Post by Scipio_Afri »

dabber wrote: post #2

Packet Publishing has 50% off as well: https://www.packtpub.com/

The few books I've dug into from them on python are good and recommended by the 6.00 series of MIT MOOC on python. Also, free book of theirs is offered everyday on their website. I'm not sure how long that is going to keep happening cause I can't imagine them having enough books to keep doing that with forever.

Re: Half-price Ebooks for Day Against DRM

#37

Post by Finnucane »

jp_sc wrote: post #24
Finnucane wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am involved with ebook production for an academic publisher. I sometimes joke that I am going to have "that doesn't work on the Kindle" engraved on my tombstone.

A post listing some of these things (things that doesn't work on the kindle, not tomb stones) would be very interesting

For instance, if a book has an embedded jpeg, you can tap it and enlarge it to fill the screen. But if it is SVG art (as we often use for line art like charts and maps), it will not scale. Why not? I don't know. There is no support for MathML, or for scripting of any kind. Support for embedded video is poor. Page lists are suppressed in favor of Amazon's own proprietary system. Note that epub readers like Calibre and Apple iBooks can manage these things. It is intrusive about formatting: it may decide that your lists need to be bulleted whether you want them or not. It always underlines links, which is a pain with note callouts. These behaviors may be inconsistent across devices.

Adobe Digital Editions supposedly supports most of the epub standard, but is a buggy mess, esp. the Windows version.

Re: Half-price Ebooks for Day Against DRM

#40

Post by itamarst »

kod wrote: post #38

The Linux Programming Interface by Kerrisk is probably the best book of its kind. Even better than Stevens' Advanced Programming in the Unix Environment, although obviously linux specific. https://www.nostarch.com/tlpi

Yes, it's wonderful. But personally I'd recommend getting the paper version.
Post reply on HN