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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."

7 of 82 comments (clear)

  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 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.

    2. 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.........
  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?

  3. 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.