

O’Reilly purchases Pearson’s stake in Safari - lukethomas
http://radar.oreilly.com/2014/08/safari-acquisition.html

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Joeri
I use safari books a lot. There is a lot of information in all those books
which is either not found online at all, or is very difficult to
uncover/assemble. If google doesn't have my answer, safari most of the time
does.

I hope they don't change it too much, as I quite like the service as it is.

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absherwin
They're lowering prices by 50% for the next day. Two interpretations:

-They want to take advantage of the publicity to sign up as many people as possible, hoping a decent percentage stay at the higher rate.

-They hypothesized the price was too high and are testing the effect of lowering it.

I suspect it's a latter with the former as a fallback benefit. Their most
recent product change coincided with a 20% price decrease. O'Reilly wants to
focus on making the best product possible, even if the higher expenses and
lower prices mean reduced profitability in the near-term because he sees how
huge this can be in the long-term if done right.

Pearson likely doubted the wisdom of short-term sacrifice which is how each
side leaves feeling happy.

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incision
Sounds good to me.

I'm generally happy with Safari, have been a subscriber for many years, and
consider it indispensable. On the other hand, I've faced nothing but
disappointment and frustration with the Pearson operated sites I've been
forced to interact with for school.

It's hard for me to imagine Pearson having any sort of positive influence on
the product.

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zetazzed
Does this mean that Pearson books will start disappearing from Safari?

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dfan
The O'Reilly press release in the linked URL says: "Pearson will remain a key
strategic content partner of Safari. All their current materials remain
available, and their future books and videos will be added to the service."

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turingbook
Why did Pearson sell the stake if the business of Safari is good?

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planckscnst
Because O'Reilly paid what its value was. It seems like O'Reilly started
regretting having Pearson as a partner and just wanted to buy it back so they
could do what they really want.

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angrymouse
It was never a happy partnership, more of a relationship out of necessity.

Pearson once had a team called the "O'Reilly Killers" whose aim was to compete
in highly lucrative fields and well send a hammer blow to O'Reilly's
diminishing revenue per title (dropping since the dotcom bubble). It may have
been more of a mindset that an actual ambition to send O'Reilly out of
business but that was the team's name (the name was retired when they joined
forced according to Tim).

In regard to the birth of SafariBooks, apparently the story goes that the CEO
of Packt chatted to Tim O'Reilly about future of books and ebooks and
suggested that an online library would be something developers would use in
the future. Tim offered to split the cost and risk having thought about the
product and how to bring it into life (it represented a significant risk if no
one brought the service as development cos was high) but the CEO of Packt
didn't like the cost and risk so Tim, forced to find other partners went to
his arch-nemesis Pearson.

Pearson having made tons of money out of subscriptions to libraries and
institutions instantly saw the value of the proposition and took the risk (at
worst, they would be down what they could afford and O'Reilly would be at
risk) and that is how apparently the two enemies became uneasy allies.

O'Reilly have not seen their revenue per title average return to pre dotcom
burst levels (currently around 80-100K per book on average in revenue) but
they have seen great returns on SafariBooks and they get to monetize rival
content so this move signals to me that they see it as their future beyond
"just" content development.

\-- if you are wondering what Packt did, they made their own cheaper version
of SafariBooks on their own which only featured their own books called
PacktLib.

\-- sources: Worked in tech publishing for a few years, had a few chats and
was told of some chats as well as [http://radar.oreilly.com/2013/09/how-i-
failed.html](http://radar.oreilly.com/2013/09/how-i-failed.html) which is a
great read from an interesting man

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bsilvereagle
> if you are wondering what Packt did, they made their own cheaper version of
> SafariBooks on their own which only featured their own books called
> PacktLib.

I've found quite a few Packt books on SBO. I'm kind of surprised they are
publishing titles there since they have a competing service.

~~~
angrymouse
In the early days of the PacktLib product Packt refrained from allowing their
content being placed on SafariBooks however their product made little and
SafariBooks was generating very large revenues for partners so they went all
in and that's why they are now a large part of SafariBooks.

You can even buy Packt ebooks from the O'Reilly site now which shows the
extent that Packt benefits from selling its content through O'Reilly (and
indicates how much it lost out on by not being the other half of SafariBooks)

