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Wired Magazine Profile of Tim O'Reilly
An anonymous reader writes "Best-selling author Steven Levy has a new profile of techincal publisher Tim O'Reilly over at Wired." From the article: "... O'Reilly himself has operated for years under the radar. Most nontechies, if they know him at all, know him by the eponymous name of his publishing company. It has a 15 percent share of the $400 million computer-book market but casts a much bigger shadow. O'Reilly books tend to colonize entire sections at Borders and Barnes & Noble, their distinctive cover design as recognizable as the Tide circle on a box of detergent or the Apple logo on the lid of a PowerBook. In serif type over a glossy white background, there is the title, often naming a computer language or protocol familiar to codeheads and gibberish to everyone else (JavaServer Faces; Essential CVS; Using Samba, 2nd Edition). The illustrations are realistically rendered pen-and-ink drawings of animals."
In the past, when I'd needed a book on subject X, I'd just go the bookstore and pick up the OReilly Subject X In A Nutshell or the Definitive Guide To Subject X. Lately, I've been burned by a few duds. The quality over at ora.com is slipping. Now, they're only producing something like two orders of magnitude more books than they were 10 years ago, but still, it makes me sad. They're on the same level as Wrox now. Not that there's anything awful about that, Wrox is pretty damn good, but they've lost the default go-to position, for me at least.
...are nothing short of incredible and life-saving. I use my Python Pocket Reference almost daily, and it has been an invaluable resource. O'reilly is, and should be, the first place to look for technical writing, and almost always surpasses the competition in quality, clarity, and accuracy.
I am Spartacus
I always felt a reluctance to the O'Reilly book because I thought they were published by Bill O'Reillys publishing company (I'm not a big fan of Bill O'Reilly).
I always saw those books and thought "hell no, I won't support that son of a b***h".
After reading this story today I might actually tak a look at his books.
Waiting for you by the bridge
I've worked in the computer book publishing market for a long time - the 15% share is because they're successful only in a very small segment of the market. In fact, you'll start seeing a lot more "Windoze Wanker" books out of them soon - they see MS products (and consumer titles) as the areas where they can grow their business. It will be interesting to see if the technical audience that has formed the O'Reilly core will remain faithful as they "dirty" themselves publishing "Windoze" titles.
They're kind of the Apple of computer book publishers - even when they publish a stinker (and they do it not too seldomly) they'll get lots of glowing remarks from the O'Reilly faithful.
Your mind looks a little cramped. Why don't you stretch it a little?
Well, before I trash Wired too badly, I have to say that I had a subscription ever since issue #2, until some time around early 2000, when I finally decided it "jumped the shark" and wasn't worth the space it was taking up on my bookshelf, much less the subscription price.
.com area millionaires, inflated I.T. salaries overall, and a tendency to glorify modern art and flashy/trendy doo-datd and gadgets poisoned Wired. The "fluff" became the "substance". The magazine got really thick in '99 with glossy full-page color ads for multi-thousand dollar designer watches, luxury cars and clothing. Then when it all came crashing down, the magazine went on a diet - losing about half of its thickness overnight. And quality never really came back..... You could comb a good article or two out of one, here or there. But it was best suited as something to download into your PDA for free using AvantGo, or via web links to specific articles of interest.
When it got started, I really enjoyed it. If nothing else, it seemed like most issues contained 1 really good interview with someone of importance in the tech. sector. It was the type of in-depth "we describe the person's character and workplace/home life in so much detail, you feel like you're watching this unfold on TV rather than reading" article, that really got them to make some statements that gave you insight into *why* they got where they were at that time, and where they thought their business was heading in the future. Plus, it had none of the editing you'd expect other mainstream rags would have done if they had conducted the same interview. (If the guy said "My main competitor fucked up!" - they printed it.)
They also seemed to be strong in scooping other science and tech. magazines on news about a new invention or interesting implementation of an existing technology (especially in medicine and biotech).
But it seemed like the combination of