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O'Reilly No Longer Selling Individual Books, Videos Online

Posted by BeauHD on from the end-of-an-era dept.

dovf writes: Just got an email from O'Reilly Media that as of today, they are no longer selling individual books or videos online -- rather, they are encouraging people to sign up for Safari. They are continuing to publish books and videos, "and you'll still be able to buy them at Amazon and other retailers." They also make it clear that we will not lose access to already-purchased content, updates to such content, etc. More details can be found in the FAQ. No mention, though, of whether the content sold at these other retailers will remain DRM-free... From the FAQ: "You can buy all of the books (ebooks and print) at shop.oreilly.com from Amazon and other digital and bricks-and-mortar retailers. We're no longer selling individual books and videos via shop.oreilly.com -- but we are definitely continuing to publish books and videos on the topics you need to know. And of course, every O'Reilly book and video (including O'Reilly conference sessions) is available instantly on Safari." The only mention of "DRM" in the FAQ is in regard to what happens to the digital content you have in your account at members.oreilly.com. According to O'Reilly, "Your DRM-free ebooks and videos are safe and sound, and you'll continue to have free lifetime access to download them anytime, anywhere."

82 comments

  1. what a coincidence by veron.claudio · · Score: 5, Insightful

    what a coincidence! I am no longer buying O'Reilly books, videos. win-win.

    1. Re: what a coincidence by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Be honest. You just steal them from download sites.

    2. Re: what a coincidence by veron.claudio · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I have legally bought a generous amount of O'Reilly ebooks. I read mostly on my kindle and the mobi files where always quite good. also, no DRM at all. Also, being a regular customer gave you a 50% discount or someething, so the price was quite reasonable. And saved you a whole evening fishing for a 'free alternative' of exactly the book i wanted, in mobi/epub format. If it existed at all. The money/time/effort/content quality tradeoff was quite good, in my case. Now, O'Reilly is mostly an endless flow of the latest of the latest of the newest and up and coming fad and rehash tech of the week. Not much interesting to me anymore. I don't really need 'buying' a book (at most) of that every month, month after month. I think the authors of good books really deserve my money. O'Reilly now? not so sure.

    3. Re: what a coincidence by ma1wrbu5tr · · Score: 1

      I sit 10 feet away from 2 Perl books I got from O'Reilly circa 2000. They were immensely helpful. Not all titles I got were that way. Safari is a great deal for enthusiasts, educators, and employers though I'd still like to see an ultra low cost option for casual nerds. I still prefer paper to screen as it is easier on the eyes. Glad to see they are still selling on Amazon.

      --
      Why can't we go back to using jumpers to configure slot adapter cards? Why? I say!
    4. Re: what a coincidence by ma1wrbu5tr · · Score: 2

      As an aside. I find that I can still get used copies of recent O'Reily titles elsewhere online.. in print with free shipping. What? I'm pathologically cheap.

      --
      Why can't we go back to using jumpers to configure slot adapter cards? Why? I say!
    5. Re: what a coincidence by cayenne8 · · Score: 4, Insightful
      Hmm...I"ll miss this.

      I still have a LOT of O'Reilly books....back from learning Linux, setting up apache, email servers, etc.

      I must say, I did then and STILL prefer most of my book, especially tech stuff on dead tree format.

      I can mark the dead tree books up, highlight pages...and strangely enough, I can usually thumb to the pages I need to reference again MUCH faster in a real book than trying an ebook or website on a real computer......I mean, I can usually "see" the page in question in my head on a real book.

      This is much like how I did in school...I could see my notes in my head during tests...complete with notes and doogles in the margins.

      I just can't do that on digital format books....

      --
      Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
    6. Re: what a coincidence by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      what a coincidence! I am no longer buying O'Reilly books, videos. win-win.

      Why do you lie like that? Really, I'm genuinely curious.

    7. Re: what a coincidence by Morpf · · Score: 1

      You can totally bookmark and annotated PDFs with doodles or texts. Doing this all the time.

    8. Re: what a coincidence by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 0

      Maybe he's sitting or standing instead?

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    9. Re: what a coincidence by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't know about the previous person, but I bought 6 O'Reilly electronic books at Christmas. I've even downloaded a few updates. The best part about them is being able to put the PDFs on whatever machine I own, where I am working on something, rather than having to deal with stupid DRM entanglements or dedicated hardware. If I have to deal with the kind of DRM crap that is all too common on Amazon, then I guess I'll just stop buying the electronic versions and go back to paper. If I don't have decent control over how I can use something then it is worth a lot less to me and I won't buy it.

    10. Re: what a coincidence by Frosty+Piss · · Score: 1

      You can still buy the Dead Tree format at Amazon.

      --
      If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
  2. I guess I'm confused.... by Drakonblayde · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This sounds like they're just not going to be selling stuff directly anymore outside of Safari.

    If I can still purchase individual titles via Amazon, especially for Kindle, then I can honestly say this is non-news to me

    1. Re:I guess I'm confused.... by tepples · · Score: 4, Funny

      This sounds like they're just not going to be selling stuff directly anymore outside of Safari.

      Where does that leave people who use something other than a Mac or an iPad to read O'Reilly material? Or does Safari not require Safari?

    2. Re:I guess I'm confused.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      Same name, two different things.

      O'Reilly's Safari is a service that lets you read books online. It has a free trial period, then you have to pay for it.

      Apple's Safari is a web browser.

    3. Re:I guess I'm confused.... by lucm · · Score: 1

      And they both suck.

      --
      lucm, indeed.
    4. Re:I guess I'm confused.... by iampiti · · Score: 1

      What I don't see anywhere (and so I suppose is a no) is whether they're going to continue selling drm-less individual books somewhere. I have an ereader that's not a Kindle and I don't wanna be tied to a specific company/device so having drm free epubs and pdfs is essential for me. If they're not gonna sell them anywhere is over for me

  3. No more PDFS? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Does this mean you won't be able to get PDFs of their books anymore?

    Amazon's mobi files are nowhere near as good as reading an O'Reilly book as a PDF.

    1. Re:No more PDFS? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Looks like you can't. Oh well, good things don't last forever.

  4. Print quality has gone downhill by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Like many others probably do, I remember the O'Reilly of the 90s, when they made high quality acid-free print books with lay-flat binding.

    I ordered a couple of books direct from their online store a few months ago, and it's obvious that making a high-quality print book isn't a priority for ORA anymore. Now they do print-on-demand on crappy paper stock, standard binding, and the type is inexcusably blurry; not sure if it's font aliasing or ink bleeding on the cheap paper. Needless to say their prices haven't gone down along with the quality though.

    So yeah. Regardless of this decision, I won't be giving any more money to ORA. There are way better technical publishers nowadays who still care about making a good print product.

    1. Re:Print quality has gone downhill by ZayJay · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I tell you what though, as a ten-year Safari user, its a better deal than you may think. They have tons of other publishers (Wiley, et al) available. Its pretty damn handy to be able to access virtually any relevant tech title on demand.

    2. Re: Print quality has gone downhill by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The quantity of information on Safari on phenomenal, but ever since they converted Safari to Safari Queue, they've made the interface godawful and just about unusable

    3. Re: Print quality has gone downhill by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I just signed up for a free trial, and I agree. There may be content on there, but the interface is shit.

    4. Re: Print quality has gone downhill by lucm · · Score: 2

      Amen to that. I had a subscription at work and at first it was pretty decent, but of course they had to make it useless. I think I'd rather read somehting printed in draft mode on recycled paper than use that thing.

      --
      lucm, indeed.
    5. Re: Print quality has gone downhill by ZayJay · · Score: 1

      Yep. No argument there.

    6. Re: Print quality has gone downhill by ZayJay · · Score: 1

      I should add that I have made the UI work for, but it was unjustifiably difficult to do so

    7. Re: Print quality has gone downhill by ZayJay · · Score: 2

      "Work For ME", I intended to say

    8. Re:Print quality has gone downhill by chrism238 · · Score: 1
      > I tell you what though, as a ten-year Safari user, its a better deal than you may think.

      Agreed; and as a Professional Member of the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM), your annual subscription provides you with an included subscription to Safari.

    9. Re:Print quality has gone downhill by El_Muerte_TDS · · Score: 1

      Plus, ACM costs only $100 a year. Sure you only get a fraction of Safari's content.
      But $400 a year for a full Safari subscription is just expensive. I do not read that many of those books a year. Why doesn't safari offer the 5/10 slot bookshelf anymore? This is what you still get via ACM and I suits my consumption.

    10. Re:Print quality has gone downhill by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I pay $200 a year. They had a 50% promotion a while back. The $200 stays the same as long as I keep renewing.

    11. Re:Print quality has gone downhill by dffuller · · Score: 1

      I'm curious, who do you consider to be way better these days? I'm certainly willing to try somebody else.

    12. Re:Print quality has gone downhill by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Honest question: who are those publishers? I don't buy books often, but when I do, I want it to be a lasting investment, both physically and academically. If you wouldn't mind sharing, I'm sure others would appreciate it.

  5. People still buy O'Reilly door stoppers... by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 2

    These days I only have three O'Reilly dead tree books on my shelf: "Learning The Bash" by Cameron Newham, "Mastering Algorithms with C" by Kyle Loudon, and "Revolution In The Valley: The Insanely Great Story of How The Mac Was Made" by Andy Hertzfeld.

    Two out of three books are still useful. When I go to Silicon Valley Comic Con next year, I'll have Steve Wozniak sign the Revolution book (he wrote the forward). I couldn't afford this year since he was raising money for a dog park charity by charging $100+ for his signature.

    1. Re:People still buy O'Reilly door stoppers... by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 2

      FOREWORD, you fucking moon-faced mongoloid cretin. For such a prolific "author", you sure write like s a MONG!!!!

      I did that on purpose. I like to keep my audience ribbited.

    2. Re:People still buy O'Reilly door stoppers... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You don't have the intelligence to do such a thing on purpose. You simply don't know how to spell. Your lips move when you type.

    3. Re:People still buy O'Reilly door stoppers... by lucm · · Score: 2

      Why are you making fun of the "forward" thing? Isn't the fact that he can't afford a $100 expense funnier?

      --
      lucm, indeed.
    4. Re:People still buy O'Reilly door stoppers... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Of course my lips move, I use voice to text. I am also deaf so I have problems hearing whatever you say.
      -cdr

    5. Re:People still buy O'Reilly door stoppers... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I would like to buy your signature. How much would that be?

    6. Re: People still buy O'Reilly door stoppers... by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

      People not buying things is generally a sign of perceived utility being lower than the price, not always a sign of absolute lack of money.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    7. Re:People still buy O'Reilly door stoppers... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not really. I would never hand over *my* 100$ to a fucking Silicon Valley millionaire for *his* project! *YOU* pay for it!

    8. Re: People still buy O'Reilly door stoppers... by lucm · · Score: 1

      Then the way to say is not "I can't afford it", it's "I don't want it".

      --
      lucm, indeed.
    9. Re:People still buy O'Reilly door stoppers... by lucm · · Score: 1

      The guy got screwed out of his Atari money, then out of his Apple money. He needs those $100.

      --
      lucm, indeed.
  6. Safari is good but expensive by mcguirez · · Score: 0

    Safari is good service but relatively expensive, the price O'Reilly gives (after a bunch of click-thrus) is $399/year. Maybe in the past when the primary independent learning route was through books - it was a better deal (and indeed I did subscribe) but for the past decade or so books rank a distant third behind online documentation and discussion.

    Why do you suppose Safari was for sale?

    --
    When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras
    1. Re: Safari is good but expensive by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Safari is good service but relatively expensive, the price O'Reilly gives (after a bunch of click-thrus) is $399/year.

      You can't afford a hundred $4 books. Or ten $40 books to be generous?

      That actually says more about you than O'Reilly.

    2. Re: Safari is good but expensive by mcguirez · · Score: 1

      Afford: yes.

      Good value? No.

      --
      When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras
    3. Re: Safari is good but expensive by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That actually says more about you than O'Reilly.

      So, golddigger are you?

    4. Re: Safari is good but expensive by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

      How many of those books are non-crap? How much time do you have to go throught a hundred non-crap books in a year anyway?

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    5. Re: Safari is good but expensive by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The moment someone makes fun of you for not spending money (any sum of money)I invariably realize they are either A) Rich, B) a complete ass or C) all of the above.

      I may find something affordable, but if someone else doesn't, either they can't afford it--and it's a jerk move to point it out; or they find it not worth the money--and in the end that's their opinion.

  7. Peachpit ebooks by myid · · Score: 2

    I'm sorry that they've stopped selling ebooks. It's really convenient to read reviews of an ebook, check out a few pages of it, pay for it, download it, and start reading it. I"ll do a free trial of Safari, and see if I like it.

    Another option for buying ebooks is Peachpit Press. On the bottom right corner of each page, they put "From the Library of (your name)", which isn't too distracting. However, I haven't been able to find as many technical books that I want by Peachpit as by O'Reilly.

    1. Re: Peachpit ebooks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      You can also get technical ebooks on www.informit.com which are DRM free. Peachpit is a related site both owned by Pearson.

    2. Re: Peachpit ebooks by mihaic.ro · · Score: 1

      More information on DRM-free ebooks sold at informit.com: http://www.informit.com/store/...

  8. I liked getting PDF format ebooks by cruff · · Score: 2

    I can read PDFs on the systems I need to use without too much hassle. Now it appears that I won't be able to get them from O'Reilly or elsewhere for a one time charge. Signing up for Safari doesn't sound like a great deal to me. Anyone have experience with Calibre for reading ePub on desktop systems? Is it s reasonable alternative to PDF?

    1. Re:I liked getting PDF format ebooks by lucm · · Score: 2

      Anyone have experience with Calibre for reading ePub on desktop systems? Is it s reasonable alternative to PDF?

      I use it. It's not all that great, the resize is weird and overall it feels like using something from 1998. And there's a lot of bloat; there's even a built-in browser to "shop" on sites like Google Books, and half the links don't work. They could get rid of 90% of the "features" and it would be a big improvement. But when there's a lot of graphics it's the lesser evil.

      Whenever possible I use Kindle; the fact that the highlights are stored in my Amazon accounts is fantastic. I used to take notes or jump around to/from the browser whenever I would find an interesting reference in a book; now I just highlight it and later I can go to my highlights page and see them all at once. Also on Amazon many books can be rented instead of purchased, especially textbooks. When there's a lot of diagrams, though, it's not that good.

      --
      lucm, indeed.
    2. Re:I liked getting PDF format ebooks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Okular is my favorite desktop ePub reader. And it also does PDF, djvu, etc. beautifully.

    3. Re: I liked getting PDF format ebooks by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

      So far, Epub Reader on Firefox has been the one thing that hasn't sucked for me. It's not perfect but also not the kind of clusterfuck that many standalone "ebook readers" actually are.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    4. Re:I liked getting PDF format ebooks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      eBooks.com still offers EPUB and high-quality PDF versions of all O'Reilly ebooks, DRM free. There's no sign f this changing any time. More about this: http://about.ebooks.com/drm-free-oreilly-ebooks-available-ebooks-com/

  9. Safari has books now? by HalAtWork · · Score: 1

    I opened Safari and don't see all these books that are supposed to instantly be available like these O'Reilly guys are talking about

    --
    Twinstiq, game news
    1. Re: Safari has books now? by that+this+is+not+und · · Score: 1

      I think I still have a Safari installer for Windows on my hard drive in the downloads folder. It's from around 2012, before Apple stopped producing a Windows version.

    2. Re:Safari has books now? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They mean "safari books online" :https://www.safaribooksonline.com/
      which is a service you subscribe to in order to access digital content in any web browser
      it has nothing to do with the Safari browser from Apple

    3. Re:Safari has books now? by spacepimp · · Score: 1

      subtlety is lost on the internet.

    4. Re:Safari has books now? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Maybe they need to pick a more unique name

    5. Re:Safari has books now? by dffuller · · Score: 1

      They had the name first.
      Web Browser: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
      Online Books: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

    6. Re:Safari has books now? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Wow they really dropped the ball on that

  10. O'Reilly is about overpriced conferences, not book by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    O'Reilly years ago moved their focus to overpriced conferences and away from books. O'Reilly's business goal is to be a "thought leader", not someone who pays his authors well and provides a valuable editing service. The books are obviously get-it-out-quick efforts to cash in on the latest fad. The quality is totally hit or miss, with no editorial input evident. Expect plenty of errors. Tim O'Reilly has in the past said the useful life of a technical topic book was months (vague recollection), so that explains the scant support they get.

  11. So where can you get pdfs? by Jeremy+Erwin · · Score: 1

    I'm not too keen on the kindle versions of O'Reilly books, and have bought certain books from their shop specifically because they offer PDFs, Technical books often rely on formatting conventions which are are more sophisticated than what a kindle can handle.

    (I still prefer paper copies for some stuff, but they take up space, and some of them are less than portable.)

  12. Safari's Android app from hell! by jarle.aase · · Score: 2
    Safari is a great service with lots of books. But their Android app is a disgrace!

    For example - if it works at all, it will connect to safaris defunct back-end upon start-up, and then block the UI thread until the connection times out(!). More times than not, I have to switch off wi-fi on my tablet in order to read downloaded content at all.

    Whenever I need new books, I often end up searching for the book on safari, and then on Kindle. By the time I have found my book on the Kindle shop, read the reviews, purchased and downloaded the book - the safari search has still not displayed the first matches. This happens more often than not. If I /get/ lucky and find a book, there is a 70% chance that I the first 5 download attempts will fail. There is no re-try if I start several downloads - so I have to search for the books again all over.

    If I really need to find something on Safari, from the Andrioid app, I usually start / kill the app around 20 times before I get any luck with the safari back-end.

    Last time I looked, they had more 1 star reviews in the Google store than any other app I have ever installed. And the sad thing is that they (Safari) don't give a shit. The problems are only getting worse over time. I have used the service for 4 years - but I don't think I will renew it when the current subscription expires.

    1. Re:Safari's Android app from hell! by gmiller123456 · · Score: 1

      I use their Android app and don't have any of these issues. In fact I consider it the best reader for technical/math books that I've used as it doesn't screw up the formatting as much as others. Maybe you need to upgrade the app, users from more than 2 years ago are the only ones allowed to use their older app. The new one is Safari Queue

    2. Re:Safari's Android app from hell! by jarle.aase · · Score: 1
      I'm using Safari Queue. The old app had none of these issues.

      I am in Europe however. May be they simply don't have the bandwidth to serve international users.

  13. O'What? And what's Safari by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Give it 5-10 years and there will be a new generation of programmers that have never heard of either. Kids want things right now and easy to use. The new interface to Safari is the opposite.

    Yet another company suicide. And all the higher ups will declare victory and pay themselves well for modernising before taking that golden parachute.

  14. Funny and delusional by lapm · · Score: 1

    So Oreilly hates money? I have bought huge pile of their individual ebooks over the years.. Im sure some bean counter somehow has had mistaken idea that they can convert xx% of individual buyers to monthly subcriptions... I do hope this backfires on them badly.. Safari is very good for professionals that can tax deduct it easy. Not so god for hobbyist that has other hobbies competition that money as well.

    1. Re:Funny and delusional by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I too have bought probably 100 or more EPUB books from the O'Reilly site because I refuse to pay an on-going rent (Safari) for books I want to own, and because I hate the walled garden that the proprietary Kindle format represents. Below is an email I sent in with my thoughts:

      ~~~~email~~~~
      To: support@oreilly.com
      Subject: deeply disappointed with O'Reilly

      WHY DID YOU REMOVE THE ABILITY OF YOUR CUSTOMERS TO BUY EPUB EBOOKS FROM YOUR WEBSITE ?!?!?!?!

      I have bought almost 100 ebooks in EPUB format from the O'Reilly store because having the books in electronic form is incredibly convenient, and because I hate the vendor-lock-in of Kindle ebooks. Now you have apparently removed my ability to continue buying EPUB ebooks from the O'Reilly website. How does a business make such a drastic change that so negatively impacts customers' purchasing abilities?!!??

      If the reason for the change was to force your customers to rent books (i.e. Safari) instead of owning books, you will fail with me. I don't believe in paying an on-going rental fee to access books I want to own, and I will NEVER sign up for Safari. This leaves a really bad taste in my mouth, and I am hugely disappointed with O'Reilly.
      ~~~~ end email ~~~~

      I got a standardized response (you can use Safari, Google books, and iBooks going forward) that revealed they didn't actually read what was in my email. Sad.

  15. Petition for DRM-Free PDF Ebooks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I've setup an "idea" on the O'reilly support website to bring back DRM-free PDF ebooks - please consider upvoting:

    http://support.oreilly.com/oreilly/topics/bring-back-pdf-ebooks

  16. DRM by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If you're forcing DRM down my throat, then this will end with me deleting my account and finding the books elsewhere; just like with steam.

  17. I guess it is back to piracy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Now that I can no longer purchase DRM free eBooks, I guess I'll have to get my DRM free eBooks the old fasioned way...for free.

  18. More about why O'Reilly shuttered its shop by Idmat · · Score: 1

    "O’Reilly has always been a privately held, self-funded company, and it’s a distinction we wear with pride. We don’t have any investors but our customers, who fund us by buying our products and services. That keeps us attuned to what the market is really telling us...The formats may change, but the mission stays the same." Read the whole post from O'Reilly's president at http://oreil.ly/2t9RnXP

  19. Excellent by cruff · · Score: 1

    Thanks for the pointer.