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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."

2 of 82 comments (clear)

  1. 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.

  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.