Tech Publisher O'Reilly Slashes Jobs

An anonymous reader writes "According to the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, geeky tech publisher O'Reilly Media has slashed 14% of its workforce, or 31 people. Founder and tech pundit Tim O'Reilly comments on the layoffs by exhorting people to 'get more with less.' According to the article, 'Just this week... both tech giant Google and book retailer Barnes & Noble announced their first layoffs ever. Other publishing houses, including HarperCollins, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Random House, and Simon & Schuster have frozen salaries or cut jobs, or both.'"

Comments

The big publishing houses

[solder_fox]

There are a few big publishing houses that print a tremendous percentage of our books. Fewer than there were a few years ago, due to consolidation.

But at least one of the six major houses has stopped purchasing new books from authors, either completely stopped or near-completely stopped. Times are tough for everyone but bankruptcy lawyers. (And their times are tougher when ours are better.)

Re:If CEOs spoke the truth

[Bruce Perens]

Uh-huh. It is especially true for folks like me who really just stuck their name on the front of the book for series recognition and didn't do the work. Authors don't need that any longer, if they even did then.

Do you think you might try to do it on your own? Selling online, demand printing, etc? I'd do it that way today if I felt the need to write.

Thanks

Bruce

Re:Look at bookstores and the small tech section

[Frosty Piss]

Do you really use reference books any longer? I just use the web.

Bruce, I know *many* people who still prefer books. For me, I do much of my tech reading in bed and on the toilet. I still enjoy the *paper* in the morning (in bed and on the toilet). I buy a lot of books in e-book form, but I almost always end up printing the, out one-sided on 8.5 by 11, I keep 'em in big ring binders. Maybe I'm a dinosaur, psychologically, I *enjoy* books on paper, I feel they lend themselves to easier study, I can search and cross reference content MUCH faster than diddling around with some PDF or whatever on a laptop. Also, I like to have my references *open* beside me while I'm coding on my large but single monitor.