
O’Reilly Media has stopped retailing books directly on its ecommerce store - stock_toaster
https://www.oreilly.com/ideas/were-reinventing-too
======
SomeHacker44
Sent this to Support at O'Reilly after reading their (to me, insane) e-mail.

Hi O'Reilly,

Just so you know - you've completely lost a customer. After years - decades
really - of a highly dedicated customer (whose friends have written books you
have published) you threw it all down the drain in one e-mail.

I will never purchase another book published by O'Reilly, or any company
associated with O'Reilly, or associated with O'Reilly himself or any of the
executives at O'Reilly. I sure as heck am not going to buy any technical books
from O'Reilly by Amazon.

The things I liked from O'Reilly, now gone, are:

1\. PDF, ePub and Mobi formats, all DRM free, so I could read them in the
ideal format for each device I read them on. And, I have a lot of devices:
several Macs and PCs, several iPads, several Kindles (used almost exclusively
for fiction as technical works are horrible in non-PDF), several phones of
various kinds. I could put both the ePub and PDF into iBooks (not my favorite
app, but it does sync) and read the ePub on the subway if I wanted, and the
PDF on the desktop and iPad (cause, as I said, ePub is terrible for technical
books). I like my fully properly typeset color, indexed PDFs!

2\. Buy it once, own it. Did you ever see me subscribe to Safari? No? Ever
wonder why not? For the same reason that I don't use Adobe products anymore
except Lightroom (which is still a purchase not a subscription), and why I
dropped JetBrains when they moved to their subscription model and then re-
joined them when they went to "Subscription + keep your start of subscription
version forever". I don't rent stuff. I buy it and own it. Plain and simple.

I'm glad that there are other publishers out there like Pragmatic Press and
Apress that have been publishing good content, because you just lost a highly
dedicated customer who always shopped O'Reilly first even for non-O'Reilly
books. Congratulations, and shame on you.

~~~
chasing
> Buy it once, own it. Did you ever see me subscribe to Safari? No? Ever
> wonder why not? For the same reason that I don't use Adobe products anymore
> except Lightroom...

I like subscriptions, to be honest. I don't need to "own" all this stuff
(whatever "own" might mean) -- tech books and specific versions of software
tend to have a relatively short shelf-life and I like both O'Reilly's,
Adobe's, and JetBrain's models of paying a predictable fee every month and
having access to _everything_ they provide. To me it's very freeing.

The last time I purchased an O'Reilly book, digital or physical, was
probably... 2002?

~~~
tomku
I don't mind subscriptions, but a key difference between O'Reilly's
subscription model and Adobe/Jetbrains is that my Jetbrains and Adobe
subscriptions (both of which I'm happy with!) get me access to the exact same
thing I used to pay hundreds of dollars a year for, just on different terms.

Safari is quite radically different from the O'Reilly products I used to pay
for. I'm forced to use a browser or their proprietary mobile app to read the
books. Only the mobile app support offline reading. It's a completely
different value proposition - it costs much more than I would normally spend
on O'Reilly ebooks each year, but it would get me access to many more tech
books than I'd normally buy or read. Unlike ebook purchases, if I stop
subscribing I lose access to everything.

I think it ends up being a good value if you reference a wide variety of books
and a very poor one if you have narrower interests. I'd be more interested if
they offered a plan that fit my usage profile. I don't care about access to
thousands of books with no restrictions, I'd be happy to have access to maybe
two to four full books (of my choosing) at a time for a more modest monthly
fee. Maybe a credits system like Audible? I think there's a lot of ways to
design an ebook subscription service that are more customer-friendly than
forcing everyone into an expensive all-or-nothing choice.

~~~
tracker1
For me it was even worse, their mobile app's cache would bork fairly
frequently, and the app would misbehave until I cleared it, and on android, it
isn't exactly an accessible option, you have to go through layers of settings
menus, scroll forever for the app you're looking for to finally clear it.
Third time it happened, I cancelled my Safari account.

I _want_ to like Safari as an option, but it's way too limited for me. Frankly
I'm only buying 2-3 books a year now, mostly relying on technical articles or
online documentation (bad as that may be). I may go through another burst
reading 8-10 books over a summer again, but not at the moment.

Although this change doesn't affect me, I mostly bought print books via Amazon
anyway, because I find digital copies harder to recall/work through.

------
clumsysmurf
This is devastating ... I don't have the income to justify $399/yr for Safari
subscription.

"the growth of membership on Safari far exceeds the individual units
previously purchased on oreilly.com"

... that doesn't explain why the two options couldn't co-exist.

"In addition to giving our customers the choice and convenience they expect"

... no, they just took away the choice and convenience I expect.

Over time, I've favored different formats based on what devices I have owned,
and bugs in the apps themselves (OS X 10.11 Preview had terrible PDF rendering
for non-retina devices). So there goes my choice on what I want to buy when,
and what format to use where.

I hope this doesn't encourage InformIT, Manning, PragProg or RockyNook to go
down these roads. Until then, I guess they will get my money.

~~~
gregjwild
We (Manning) are in the process of diversifying our options :)

~~~
grad_ml
Just wanted to add, I absolutely love manning tech book's quality. After
buying few books from packt, I'm never going back to them.

~~~
gregjwild
Always good to hear positive feedback :) Thanks! Any particular books you've
enjoyed recently?

~~~
grad_ml
I'm in first few chapters of Relevant search book. So far, great!

------
ilamont
One other thing worth mentioning: Publishers (and authors) were notified of
the change _today_. It's akin to an app store suddenly announcing a major
shift in the business model and payouts to app developers, effective
immediately.

For my company, the single-title sales are often greater than Safari
subscription income, and I am not sure sending visitors to Amazon is going to
make up for the lost sales on O'Reilly. I would have much preferred if
O'Reilly sent customers directly to my publisher's website, for people who
want to purchase PDFs or ebooks from other vendors besides Amazon.

Reading utility nonfiction/technical titles are not the same as binge-watching
Netflix or plugging into a Spotify playlist all day. Readers have very
specific needs and learning priorities, and the all-you-can-eat model doesn't
work for everyone.

~~~
TheAceOfHearts
I actually really like Safari books online, the all-you-can-eat subscription
style matches my usage perfectly. My experience has been that most technical
books aren't worth reading cover to cover, but many make for great references.
When researching certain technical topics, I just open dozens of books and
skip straight to the relevant sections.

~~~
clumsysmurf
But even if you like the subscription model, you are forced to consume the
content a certain way. If I wanted to read on my Android tablet, presumably
I'd use the Safari app ... which barely has a mediocre rating.

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.safariflow...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.safariflow.queue&hl=en)

~~~
pasbesoin
The app has been half-crap for a long time. Bugs that have gone unchanged for
years.

For example, the page you (re)open to has a tiny font(s) size(s). Scroll away
from it, and you get a readable font size. Scroll back, and that page is tiny,
again. Sometimes, it takes scrolling to the start of the next section to get
the normal font size. Or the previous section, or page. Anyway, everytime you
relaunch the app and pick up where you left off, that page has a tiny,
unreadable font size. My fix for it now is to pop the table of contents
popup/list, find and go to the previous section, and then scroll forward to
the page I was at.

I also like to read on it with a dark background and light text. Sometimes the
border is dark, as well -- as expected and desired. Other times, it's white --
its brightness decreasing readability. Solution for this? Kill and relaunch
the app. I've noticed some vague sense of correspondense of this behavior with
how I'm using/opening/reopening the app at the moment the undesired behavior
occurs, but I haven't defined it fully and keep forgetting what I do happen to
notice.

There are other irritations -- also longstanding ones in the web interface.
Those are the ones I happen to remember, at the moment.

Anyway, I like having access to the library -- although more and more new
titles seem not to be O'Reilly nor Addison-Wesley or the like, but what seem
to be more "second tier" titles.

At the same time, if I'd taken the dollars spent on Safari and just bought
titles, well... I'd have a lot of titles that will never "go away" on me.

P.S. I have the "traditional" O'Reilly subscription. I gather there is now a
second type of subscription and app. Unlimited local downloads (accessible
only through the app), unlike the 3 or less at a time that the "traditional"
subscriptions provide. And some sort of epub or somesuch format that may allow
some more formatting choices O'Reilly wanted or somesuch. But a more limited
selection of titles, and no titles that insist upon other formats, such as the
Addison-Wesley titles. So I gather, second-hand.

Anyway, I'm talking about the "traditional" subscription and corresponding
Android app.

------
peterarmstrong
This is very disappointing. When discussing the space, I liked to point at
O'Reilly, Manning and the Prags as examples of tech publishers that did a good
job directly selling ebooks. I've bought many books from all three of them.

(Disclosure: Manning author twice, Leanpub co-founder.)

Now, at Leanpub we're going to be rolling out our own courses in the next
couple months, so we agree with O'Reilly that there are lots of great ways to
produce and distribute learning material. However, the book is the best, most
general and timeless way. We're committed to selling DRM-free ebooks in PDF,
EPUB and MOBI directly from on our own site for the long term.

The ebook world should not just give up and sell everything through Amazon. I
like Amazon--they do a great job of focusing on customers, I have Amazon
Prime, and I'm really happy that Jeff Bezos is a good owner for the Washington
Post. But we should not let Amazon become the only seller of ebooks.

Stay tuned for something else we're planning in this regard in a few weeks...

~~~
bigtunacan
I stopped using Leanpub as soon as you started charging author's an upfront
fee of $99 PER BOOK to even start writing a book on your platform.

------
manaskarekar
This really sucks.

It was my favorite place to buy books. It seemed like the one place that had
the model closest to being right.

\- They used to have an ongoing discount of 45% and more on special holidays.

\- They were DRM free in multiple formats and they gave you discounts on
ebooks if you had purchased the print books.

\- They had regular updates to ebooks posted in one single list that you could
keep up with.

I wish I had purchased all the books on my wish-list before this was
announced.

The Safari subscription model makes no sense to my use-case.

I guess that makes Informit.com and No Starch Press my goto book stores. Also
Manning and Apress, but their selection is weaker.

~~~
porsupah
Packt is also worth considering, with a similar lack of DRM and multiple
formats.

As a nice bonus, every day, they make one title available free - a good means
to dip into new technologies just out of curiosity:

[https://www.packtpub.com/packt/offers/free-
learning](https://www.packtpub.com/packt/offers/free-learning)

~~~
coredog64
Packt is very hit or miss. Some titles are awesome, and others read like a
collection of SO answers and out-of-date official documentation.

------
BurritoAlPastor
Here's something interesting to know - O'Reilly's online store wasn't an in-
house operation. They contracted with an ecommerce company called MarketLive,
and then all the ebook stuff was an extensive (and, as far as I know, tightly-
coupled) customization. But all the add-to-basket and order-processing and
order-confirmation-emails stuff was through MarketLive.

This is significant because early last year MarketLive was purchased by
private equity, merged with some other ecommerce companies, and relocated to
Texas. So it's quite possible - and here I have no particular knowledge - that
the MarketLive platform is being deprecated or entirely abandoned, and this
was a more attractive option for O'Reilly than trying to rebuild all that
stuff on a different platform.

~~~
toyg
O'Reilly have always been pretty transparent with their readers; I'm sure if
they'd come clean on this people would have given them the benefit of the
doubt. "Sorry, in a few months we are scaling down the website because our
supplier is borked, bear with us." Man, I'm sure someone would have helped
them for free / cheap.

Trying to cover a supplier issue with bullcrap about "market trends" is not
great; doing it from one day to the next is just terrible for customer
relationships.

~~~
emodendroket
Why can't both things be true? It could very well be the case that they would
have been happy to carry on with the market if it still all worked, but they
didn't feel like they could justify the trouble of migrating it to a new
platform.

------
chrsw
The last couple of O'Reilly books I purchased from Amazon were of poor
quality. The content was fine but the physical item was shocking. They were
probably print-on-demand books made on the cheap. But the retail price was
what you'd expect from a high end tech publisher. I should have returned them.
The books look like they were printed on a consumer grade inkjet. I had heard
that the books purchased directly from O'Reilly didn't have this problem.
They've even taken away that option now. Looking back, this had to be
expected. The writing was on the wall when they switched from a lay-flat
binding for most or their titles to the cheaper, much hard to read while
coding, perfect binding.

~~~
ivanr
Yes, they're print-on-demand books, printed by Lightning Source (the last time
I checked). They're not cheap to print, at least not at the list price; I
don't know what deal O'Reilly might have. However, they're vastly more
convenient because Lightning Source will ship them directly to retailers so
publishers don't need warehouses. If I'd have to guess, I'd say that O'Reilly
might be printing a small initial batch for each book, switching to
exclusively POD once the run has depleted.

Source: I also use Lightning Source for my tiny publishing operation. Yes, the
quality is not the same as the traditionally printed books, although
personally I don't think they're that bad (those I've seen, anyway). In my
case, as a small publisher, I would never be able to afford to operate
warehouses profitably, because we only have a couple of books. We actually
tried, but it was too expensive and time consuming at low volumes. We also
stopped selling paperbacks, because it's very difficult to complete on the
shipping costs with the likes of Amazon.

~~~
currysausage
My "JavaScript Definitive Guide" ordered from Amazon.de (and printed by
Lightning Source UK, if I recall correctly) was of shocking quality too. I
returned it and got a more expensive copy from my local bookstore, printed by
Lightning Source International. Very sharp type.

~~~
ivanr
That's generally a big problem with print-on-demand: they literally print one
copy at a time, so you have to rely on the printer to do quality control well.
Even if you're checking regularly (as we did in the early days), you can never
know if the next copy they print will be bad in some way. Not to mention that
they also have multiple facilities, so you'd have to place orders all over the
world.

There's also a separate problem of pirated printed books, which are of very
poor quality.

------
michaelmrose
Amazon is a terrible place to buy books. Its difficult to discern which books
are encumbered by drm and further even if the publisher provides the book drm
free its damn difficult to get at the unencumbered ebook file. I bought such a
book and spent an hour of my life and talked to 3 separate employees and the
best I could do was a refund after talking to 3 apathetic employees.

As far as I'm concerned there is not one thing good about the entire platform.
I hate the reader, I hate their tablets, I hate their ebook store, I hate
their reader app.

They don't provide a damn thing that isn't inferior to other options and have
no particular benefit to helping you use their wares in an open fashion. They
are only interested in options which lock you to their platform.

Its as if walmart was only interested in selling you dvds that work only in
terrible walmart branded dvd players that require you to use walmarts
subscription service instead of netflix.

~~~
SomeHacker44
I don't mind buying pure-text books from Amazon. That basically means novels.
I don't even mind the DRM so much, as I read the book once and then don't
really care, and because I have almost never had problems with the fact that I
have literally over a dozen Kindle devices and Kindle-app running devices.

However, technical, computer, electronics, physics and math books are almost
all uniformly terrible from Amazon (or even epub). These are long-term
references that need a proper print layout option (PDF) and be unencumbered by
DRM. A 2002 edition of Mastering Regular Expressions is virtually totally
applicable today, 15 years later - but imagine if I had bought this in a DRM'd
Sony version, or a Palm .prc (now part of Amazon)? I'd be SOL.

------
Lendal
I'm a Safari online subscriber myself, but I think this decision is a huge
mistake. I also own books that I purchased from O'Reilly and I still use those
books. Just because I don't continue to re-purchase them doesn't mean I don't
use them or will never purchase another. I use them on a daily basis. I also
use Safari on a daily basis. Why can't they see that there is a need for both
models?

I rent things, _and_ I own things. Just because I rent some things doesn't
mean I want to rent _everything_. By the same token, just because I buy things
every day doesn't mean I never want to rent anything.

We are truly living in the Idiocracy.

~~~
walterbell
Online reading enables tracking, the data has value.

~~~
gregjwild
Data has value, but not as much value as repeat customer loyalty.

~~~
walterbell
Yes, the comments in this thread provide valuable data, if the O'Reilly
marketing department has the appropriate parser.

------
newscracker
I'm terribly disappointed, and that's putting it mildly. I have bought many
eBooks from O'Reilly and have also provided feedback repeatedly that the main
reasons I buy from O'Reilly are DRM free books in different formats
(especially PDF and ePub, which I use).

It's the same set of reasons I buy books from Apress, Pragprog, NoStarch,
Packtpub and Manning (to name a few others).

I have tried Safari Online through an employer subscription, but I just cannot
get used to reading long books on a browser and hence don't use it (don't even
talk about apps on other platforms). I need my books in specific formats that
I can use in book reading apps across different platforms. I don't like being
connected all the time just to read a book. For me reading books is mostly an
offline-like activity (except if I have to search about something online).

Books are also very different from other kinds of media that are more of an
ephemeral nature, like music, movies, TV shows, etc. Though many technical
books might become outdated quickly, there are many books that do contain
almost timeless pieces of information and wisdom. _I don 't buy books on
Amazon. I don't buy books in Apple's iBooks store. There is no way to know
upfront if something has DRM or not. I don't like supporting DRMd content for
books._

O'Reilly, if you're reading this, your decision to stop selling eBooks like
you used to is a very poor one for your readers. You may end up making more
money from unused Safari subscriptions, but you won't have the fan following
you had before.

As for comparisons with Pluralsight, I despise such models that are filled
with DRM and restrictions.

To Apress, Pragprog, NoStarch, Packtpub, Manning and others - please do not
change your models and remove DRM free eBooks in multiple formats from your
stores. I, for one, will stop buying whenever something like that happens.
Subscription models are very poor in user experience and don't provide
adequate freedom to read whenever/wherever.

~~~
gregjwild
We (Manning) have no intention of ceasing DRM free book distribution. If
anything, we're in the process of diversifying ways you can consume our
content :)

~~~
SirWhiteRabbit
An idea by the way: i would love to see more conceptual books at Manning. This
is great to have content on a specific tool or library. It would be so great
to also have more classic teaching books :)

------
throwaway2016a
O'Reilly author here. This is the email we got today. Sounds like they also
plan to offer courses through Safari as well.

\-------------------------

I'm writing to let you know about some changes—including new opportunities for
you—at O'Reilly.

First, as of today, we are discontinuing fulfillment of individual book and
video purchases on shop.oreilly.com. Books (both ebook and print) will still
be available for sale via other digital and bricks-and-mortar retail channels.
Plus, every book and video will still have a product page on oreilly.com,
offering customers two options for getting the content they want: Safari
membership (starting with a free 10-day trial) and, for books, a "buy from
Amazon" button.

Why the change? It's clear that we're in the midst of a fundamental shift in
how people get and use content. Subscription services like Spotify and Netflix
are the new norm, as people opt for paying for digital access rather than
purchasing physical units one by one. We've already seen this in our own
business—the growth of subscribers on Safari far exceeds the individual units
previously purchased on oreilly.com. That's the reason for the change.

And with Safari, O'Reilly is uniquely positioned to give our customers the
choice and convenience they expect. When we launched Safari back in 2001, we
knew we were investing in the future of publishing, and today, that future is
here. Since 2014, when O'Reilly became sole owner of Safari, we have refocused
our business around its potential as a membership platform. It's working—just
this week, Outsell Insights published a report on Safari that gave us a
"Strongly Positive" rating and noted that, "Safari shows that continuous
reinvention through the addition of new tools onto a solid content base
provides an extremely strong foundation on which to build a business. As an
example, it also shows the kind of timescales necessary to build a strong
reputation for quality content, one on which a more tools-focused solution is
possible."

That's where "new opportunities for you" come in. We've developed successful
new products like Live Online Training and video Learning Paths, available
exclusively on Safari, and we have more in the works. We'll be in touch soon
with more information about these new ways we can work together on Safari. And
of course, we will continue to publish books and videos that are available
both as stand-alone products and on Safari.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
Netflix and Spotify operate completely different business models, and their
customer base has completely different needs and requirements.

They're also much cheaper.

Safari has always been an also-ran side platform. The "growth of subscribers"
on Safari may exceed direct sales, but what's driving that growth? Is it
really because Safari is Just That Awesome? Does the management team have any
idea?

This is a classic example of a business with a reputation for treating its
customers with respect deciding to trash that reputation by treating its
customers and content developers as livestock that can be farmed and sweated.

~~~
tallanvor
I mean, "much cheaper" doesn't mean much. I pay $199/year for Safari. It's
more expensive than Netflix or Spotify, sure, but still only $17/month.

And regarding Safari being an "also-ran side platform", I'm wondering if maybe
you were thinking of the old SafariBooksOnline platform. They switched to
Safari a couple of years ago which is definitely more modern and cheaper,
although it does do away with the tokens you would get every month to download
whole books or chapters.

For me, this doesn't trash their reputation or otherwise make me think less of
them. They've obviously decided that direct fulfillment was too much of a
hassle and that other retailers could do a more efficient job. I guess I might
feel different if I bought a lot of books from them, but having used their
subscription service for around 8 years now, I just don't need to buy tech
books anymore.

~~~
syshum
The current price is $400 per year not $199, if you get a discount or have a
grandfathered rate that should not be used as a talking point to defend their
pricing as a person signing up today will not get that rate. So you have to
base the argument on today's prices...

~~~
jonlucc
You'd think they'd use this opportunity to run a sale for Safari to ease the
transition for people who aren't yet on the platform. Maybe they didn't expect
this to cause any problems?

------
delhanty
Giving the authors zero prior notice - that's rude!

As a long-term buyer of lots of O'Reilly ebooks - it's disappointing, but it's
their prerogative if they want to exit the market. It's not like we entered
into some lifetime contract where they agreed to sell me ebooks forever.

From O'Reilly 's point of view, this looks rational though.

Joel Spolsky [1] and Jeff Attwood [2] called it in 2008:

>What is stackoverflow.com?

>Nothing, yet.

>But here’s the concept:

>Programmers seem to have stopped reading books. The market for books on
programming topics is miniscule compared to the number of working programmers.

Then they made doubly sure by making SO a huge success!

In music publishing, most of the money in the mainstream has moved from music
sales to live performances, with streaming subscriptions bring up the rear.

Isn't the same thing likely happening here with O'Reilly's conference business
probably dwarfing everything else?

[1]
[https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2008/04/16/stackoverflowcom/](https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2008/04/16/stackoverflowcom/)

[2] [https://blog.codinghorror.com/programmers-dont-read-books-
bu...](https://blog.codinghorror.com/programmers-dont-read-books-but-you-
should/)

~~~
bryanrasmussen
frankly I've found the utility of my oreilly membership has definitely
increased over the last few years as the utility of Stackoverflow and Google
searching on an issue has declined. However it's true that I don't buy
physical books very much anymore, and definitely not physical technical books.

------
torstenvl
Deeply disappointing. O'Reilly had some really good things going for it, and
it just decided to flush it down the drain.

This is on par with Apple moving to butterfly switch keyboards across its
entire laptop line, or Netscape deciding to ditch its browser and rewrite it
from scratch. Tragic, user-hostile blunders. And it wouldn't completely
surprise me if this marked the beginning of the end for O'Reilly.

~~~
avuton
You remember a different Netscape than I do. Netscape was the kind of browser
you hated to recommend to a loved one. The experience was truly subpar. When
Firebird was announced, the user experience improved significantly over what
Netscape could have ever hoped to attain, though it still took some time
before recommending it to a loved one would turn out not to be a mistake.

~~~
torstenvl
You're talking about the change from Netscape Communicator 6+ to Firebird and
eventually Firefox in ~2003. That was a positive change.

I'm talking about the the change from Navigator 4.x to the MAS-based buggy
crashy slow XUL monstrosity in 1998-2000. That was a terrible change, it
killed Netscape as a company, almost gave Microsoft complete control over the
future of the Web, and ended up necessitating Firebird/Firefox.

------
ekidd
I've bought well over a hundred O'Reilly books over the years, and after 2002
or so, I bought almost all of them as DRM-free PDFs. But in recent years, I've
only averaged an O'Reilly book or two per year, because they've been slow to
publish books on new technologies I cared about.

I find that, with few exceptions, Kindle programming ebooks are annoying and
unpleasant. Some of the "textbook"-mode ones (where you can highlight diagrams
and not just text) are tolerable on a Chromebook in tablet mode, but just
barely.

And there's no way I'm going to pay $399/year for Safari, not when I'm
currently spending $0-50/year, and certainly not for the privilege of using
what people tell me is a mediocre mobile app. So going forward, this means
that I'll buy maybe one O'Reilly book every other year through Amazon.

Does this also mean that O'Reilly is no longer going to be offering "early
release" books for people who don't buy Safari? I think that something like
90% of my technical book purchases in the last 10 years were early release.

------
kin
The $399/yr doesn't make sense for a lot of people. It definitely is too high
a price point for me as I only read 1 or 2 O'Reilly books a year at most. It's
nice to have a copy lying around for reference years later.

On the flip side, I totally understand them going DRM-only for digital
publishers. O'Reilly PDFs are way too easy to find for free with minimal
Google-fu.

~~~
kronos29296
Only thing that will change with DRM is less Google-fu and more Pirate-fu
which people with good google-fu also have in abundance.

~~~
swiley
Yeah there's absolutely no way I would ever pay for something with DRM.

This will end up going the way the textbooks went.

------
dcw303
I just posted this on another thread:

I just got this via email and I'm very disappointed too. DRM issues aside,
Kindle is still terrible for tech books. Code samples, data tables, etc. They
all look crummy. The pdf ebooks from the Oreilly store had far superior
formatting.

~~~
kin
Google Play store offers O'Reilly books DRM free in both PDF and ePub format.

~~~
michaelmrose
Its amazing that a company whose main product is search has such a worthless
search for their store. Its absolutely worthless unless you already know
exactly what you want.

You have to use their general search product to find enough info to bring up
the exact title you want to buy.

For example you can't on the play store find all the oreilly books that aren't
drm encumbered or find all the books on a certain topic in a certain range of
years directly via its interface.

~~~
padthai
Not only the store, Youtube and Scholar do not provide a good search
experience either.

I wonder why.

In fact I remember that when Youtube got adquired by Google search got worse.

------
justanton
I am a Safari subscriber, however I use it only for quick reference or for
watching videos.

I've never read a whole book on Safari only for one reason: the HTML
formatting in the browser (as well as in the Queue app) is terrible. It still
amazes me, how a publisher such as O'Reilly, who by definition should be aware
of importance of such things as typography, almost entirely neglected this in
Safari. Books in Safari are just stream of text, without a proper layout. I
truly wonder, if Safari employees have read a whole book on their platform
themselves.

If I needed to read a whole book — I would still buy the paper version
directly from the publisher or Amazon.

The news, that O'Reilly is gradually switching towards a subscription-only
model in the future, are very disturbing for me.

~~~
gglitch
I'm puzzled by this. I'm reading /Introducing Elixir, 2nd Edition/ online
right now in Firefox on a Mac, and it looks fantastic. Beautifully formatted.

~~~
justanton
I've just checked this book on Safari — it seems it indeed doesn't have the
issues I've experienced while reading on Safari, like spacing between the
letters in a word, tons of whitespace in weird places and poor image quality.

That means that overall quality of books ranges on the platform.

May I ask you, would you still prefer a Safari version of this book over, say,
a PDF?

~~~
gglitch
Tough call. I'm not at all unsympathetic to the variety of very good reasons
why someone would prefer a pile of DRM-free files they own and can do with
what they please. In this case, for me, it doesn't matter much; I have a
Kindle on which I'd never try to read a technical book, so whether I read a
pdf in Preview or a website in Firefox I'm kind of indifferent to. All else
being equal, it seems to me that the web offers much more flexibility in
design than a pdf, which must, at the end of the day, have standardized
"pages," that don't necessarily correspond well semantically to the content.

------
Oletros
So, no more DRM free ebooks, no more multiple format ebooks and Safari
subscription cannot be used offline and cannot be used out of their apps.

349 euro is a very steep price

Difficult to buy more O'Reilly books

From the blog post:

> That’s clear even among the largest, most stable corporations: a few years
> ago, a study predicted that 40% of today’s Fortune 500 companies won’t exist
> in a decade.

Perhaps this move is the first step to be one of the 50% disappearing

------
troydj
One of the things I'll miss is the "upgrade a registered O'Reilly print book
to an ebook for $4.99" option. Always nice to have both the print and
[affordable] ebook versions. Bummer.

~~~
myth_drannon
Manning gives that you for free

~~~
douche
That and their daily half-off sales have resulted in me spending far too much
money on their books... At least they generally have good editing and a pretty
high quality bar, better than I've seen with Packt or Apress.

~~~
gregjwild
Glad to hear you've enjoyed our stuff. We really do try to do a good job with
it! :)

------
bearsnowstorm
I'm sure I'm not their biggest customer, but I have bought in the hundreds of
dollars worth of books each year from O'Reilly for the last few, consumed as
DRM free PDFs. Definitely going to re-evaluate that. When I want to buy a book
on a topic I used to Google "O'Reilly <insert topic here>" as my first port of
call. That just ended. I'll look to other publishers first instead, and cease
recommending O'Reilly.

~~~
dcminter
Why would their Safari service not be suitable for you if you prefer to
consume their content as PDFs anyway?

~~~
dcminter
Oh, looking at their site, I now see that it's a substantially different cost
and set of constraints than those that applied when I allowed my subscription
to lapse. Disregard.

------
sjcole
Folks, www.eBooks.com is still selling O'Reilly titles without DRM. Prices
might be less competitive than Amazon, but we're not Amazon.
[http://www.ebooks.com/subjects/computers/](http://www.ebooks.com/subjects/computers/)

~~~
martinkl
I just looked up my own O'Reilly book on ebooks.com.
[http://www.ebooks.com/95729334/designing-data-intensive-
appl...](http://www.ebooks.com/95729334/designing-data-intensive-
applications/kleppmann-martin/) I can't see anything about DRM on the page,
but under "supported devices" it says "e-readers with Adobe Digital Editions
installed". Isn't that DRM enforcement software? Could you clarify please?

Edit: this page explicitly says that readers need to be compatible with Adobe
DRM [https://support.ebooks.com/hc/en-
gb/articles/214119286-Guide...](https://support.ebooks.com/hc/en-
gb/articles/214119286-Guide-to-ebook-reader-devices)

~~~
andre_m
I am not sure if your book is DRM protected – if you browse the books at
ebooks.com, you will see that ebooks.com is selling books in "EPUB/PDF format"
and „secure EPUB/secure PDF format“. Furthermore please take a look at
[https://support.ebooks.com/hc/en-
gb/articles/205639205-Insta...](https://support.ebooks.com/hc/en-
gb/articles/205639205-Installing-Adobe-Digital-Editions-ADE-on-your-computer):
Most of the ebooks available to download from eBooks.com (but not all) are
protected by Adobe DRM…

------
rahimnathwani
This sucks. I've been a subscriber to Safari Books Online for a couple of
years. Whilst I like being able to reflow text, and in general the reading
experience is good, some books just looked screwed up when reading them in the
Queue app or the Safari web site.

For example, some of the equations in 'Hands-on Machine Learning with
Tensorflow' aren't rendered to images properly. They probably look fine in the
print and PDF versions of the book, but I don't get those as a Safari
subscriber. I get an HTML version with equations rendered to images, without
anyone checking the quality.

Amazon does sell 'print replica' editions of some books, which are as good as
PDFs if you are OK reading within the Kindle app, but IIRC that's not the case
for O'Reilly books, which are only available as HTML-ish versions.

------
hdra
That sucks. Especially when "Amazon or your favorite retailer" is not even
available where you live.

How many technical book does one read in a year anyway? The $399/year
subscription model doesn't make sense unless your employer is paying for it.

~~~
alexott
Even with subscription, you can't read these books on Kindle if you want. I
bought a lot of books from them, that I often load to old kindle to read
during vacation, without having access to internet, or other distractions

------
manicdee
"Seeing as 40% of our customers buy pink things, we are reducing costs by
selling only pink things."

The whole point if going to O'Reilly was DRM free books that I can use on my
various devices (iPad, Sony Reader).

Guess it's off to Apress in the future. Can't load Kindle or Kobo books into
the Sony.

~~~
stephanakib
FWIW informit.com has the same model. We have regular holiday sales, update
our eBooks, and offer the different DRM-Free formats including PDFs.

Informit.com is a Pearson owned site and sells the following tech imprints:
Addison-Wesley, Prentice Hall, Sams, Microsoft Press, Cisco Press, Pearston IT
Certification, Big Nerd Ranch, Peachpit, Adobe Press, and New Riders.

------
ernsheong
O'Reilly, your SafariBooksOnline pricing for folks outside the US is insane.
Great content, but the pricing is too much for someone who isn't earning US
dollars. Well, I guess it's just a matter of time someone came up with
something more democratized, and cheaper.

------
a3n
I watched premier computer bookshops die -- SoftPro's disappearance in the
south Denver area was so sad for me. This was a somewhat long process; there
was a period where we were wringing our hands about the physical computer book
stores disappearing.

But there was O'Reilly, other smaller but equally good online vendors, and
also rans.

I think now we're seeing the start of the same decline and disappearance of
online outlets.

That smile on Amazon boxes is starting to look like a smirk.

------
chippy
It's clear O'Reilly is struggling. I personally know some authors, and they
have made some great books, but I've not bought much from them for around 10
years. They seem to have dropped from my radar. I no longer hear from my
friends that they are publishing their books with O'Reilly.

Also, O'Reilly produced and ran a number of excellent quality conferences
(ETech anyone?) These disappeared a long time ago. I also remember them
sponsoring a whole range of meetups and smaller conferences with books given
out for free being quite common. O'Reilly has changed, and they need to change
too.

Perhaps the internet and search engines have overtaken technical books in
general? Perhaps in seeing their market share decrease over the years they
need to make drastic changes to adapt?

------
tebruno99
I've cancelled my Safari subscription and moving everything over to Apress.
This is definitely a very sad day. I own every O'Reilly book ever published
DRM Free and still had Safari, but never again.

Apress, Informit, and Packtpub you are now #1, BE #1, stay customer first.

------
tomku
I used to buy a lot of O'Reilly ebooks, always DRM-free directly from them. I
thought they had a great business model and they published quite a few
excellent books. They've slowly lost me as a customer over the past few years
as those two characteristics have disappeared. Other publishers have more
consistent quality, better coverage of new tech and better pricing. This just
adds "access to DRM-free downloadable files" to the list of things that other
publishers do better.

It'll be interesting to see how having all of their digital content locked
behind Safari will affect their ability to attract authors. Maybe it'll work
out well for them overall, who knows.

------
ffernand
Tim O'Reilly mentioned on twitter that he's not opposed to selling PDF's via a
third party bookstore.

[https://twitter.com/timoreilly/status/880472045137670144](https://twitter.com/timoreilly/status/880472045137670144)

I can only hope that a statement like this isn't used to pacify the masses
until this issue is relegated to obscurity. In the mean time, I'm looking at
other publishers (thank GOD that many of them I heaven't heard of are
discussed here) for content and refuse to pay for a $400/yr safari
subscription while NEVER REALLY OWNING ANYTHING.

------
michaelmrose
In case it might help anyone many libraries pay for a subscription to safari
books. For example the Seattle library system provides free access to safari
books to all card holders.

Seattle library cards are available not only to anyone in who works, lives or
owns property in seattle/king county but also those who have a card in one of
several surrounding county library systems. Further non-resident cards may be
had for $85 a year.

Unlike having a personal account you cannot download items for offline
viewing, can't access video training, and can't access books in progress.

Still this provides access to the bulk of the material you may want to read.

~~~
ianai
Can you essentially only read the books from the library website?

~~~
michaelmrose
Years ago I wrote up a quick script using imacros and calibre to create epubs
based on the documents available from safari.

I would consider this fair use format shifting. Legal opinions probably vary
but this was essentially indistinguishable from just reading the book so long
as the script didn't grab a page per second and pretty easy to do.

------
dyukqu
Music and film (a.k.a. Spotify & Netflix) are entertainment means. Books are
not - especially the technical ones. You can buy a Netflix and Spotify
subscription and stream them 24/7 without the need for paying attention. How
could they expect people to buy a subscription for $399 and be happy/ok/cool
about it? You cannot "stream" books. I'd feel I have done a dead investment. I
doubt it will be a successful strategy even for half of the current
subscription cost.

------
chx
I contacted customer support and they had this to say:

> We currently have the Kindle versions of our title available on Amazon.com
> and the ePub version at Google Play or IBooks for your mobile devices. We do
> not currently have the DRM free PDF versions available from any online re-
> sellers.

------
teilo
Horrible news. In my experience tech books tend to be horribly formatted in
ePUB and MOBI format. They don't have to be, but they usually are.

When I have bought from O'Reilly in the past, I have always defaulted to PDF.

Now, not only does that option go away, everything will be DRM going forward.

------
flor1s
I don't know how the math works, but ACM members currently get free access to
Safari. You can sign up for ACM for $99 a year.

~~~
guu
Isn't this a subset of the full safari library?

~~~
flor1s
It used to be, but currently it seems to be the complete catalog.

------
kqr2
I can understand their decision to stop selling print books, however, since
they are still selling safari, why not continue to sell individual ebooks? Is
the infrastructure and maintenance that much different?

~~~
EwanToo
This is surely the unspoken element of O'Reilly's change here, piracy of
technical PDFs is rampant.

~~~
subpixel
The thing is, by making pdfs harder to get through legit channels they are
going to increase traffic through illegitimate channels. It's not about how
many files are available, it's about how many people are looking for them.

~~~
jamespo
Not if they stop making PDFs full stop

~~~
kronos29296
Yeah stop book photocopying by not publishing books is the best way to do it.
Then they are no longer book publishers just another website with a premium
subscription.

~~~
chris_wot
People like me will just publish directly to gitbook

------
fsloth
Does anyone know why they're killing PDF? Seems insanity to me, it's the only
digital format I find suitable for consuming technical books.

------
walterbell
Are O'Reilly PDFs available through retailers? Through Safari?

~~~
pan69
I can't tell for sure but it seems to be on the bandwagon of; pay for what you
don't use and what you pay for you don't actually own.

------
Finnucane
A few weeks ago O'Reilly sold its interest in the Pubfactory platform and the
developers who work on it to Sheridan, a printing services company (presumably
Sheridan wants to beef up its own digital portfolio). Whether this is cause or
effect here, I couldn't say, but it would seem to be related.

One makes a guess that as digital delivery becomes a bigger part of the pie
for them, the cost of managing physical inventory becomes more burdensome to
them. So they said, screw it, we'll join the Borg and be assimilated.

(Personally, I get access to the Safari online service through the library at
work, so I don't have to worry about it too much).

~~~
Oletros
> One makes a guess that as digital delivery becomes a bigger part of the pie
> for them, the cost of managing physical inventory becomes more burdensome to
> them

But they also are ditching selling ebooks

------
leopld
Completely threw me off when I got the email. Safari Books Online is really
expensive, and I dislike seeing private entrepreneurs reinventing public
libraries (and even selling it as an innovative concept).

------
TY
Very disappointed by this decision. I have been a customer of OReilly for
about 20 years, buying ebooks since 2009. I really liked DRM free nature of
their ebooks, so that I could read them on all of my devices.

Maybe decision makes sense from economic perspective. But they really have to
consider who their audience is. These are the people who still complain that
Google Reader was killed and loss of good will and PR consequences of this
decision will come to haunt them for years, regardless of the current
financial reality.

------
kqr2
Does anyone know how this will affect previous ebooks purchased via O'Reilly?

Will you still be able to login and access the digital books or do you need to
download all of them before a certain date?

~~~
runevault
They say you will still be able to access stuff you already bought for life.
You certainly already can access them as I logged into my account to check.

------
micheljansen
Sad news. O'Reilly were one of the few publishers that used my preferred
model: buy the paper book and add the eBook version for $10 extra or so. Best
of both worlds.

------
AndyHunt
Well, O'Reilly seems to be focusing on the large, corporate market, with a
broad array of topics, so from that perspective this move makes perfect sense
as a small, simple optimization on their part.

At Pragmatic Bookshelf, however, we focus on the individual, highly skilled
developer looking to improve their skills and those of their teams. We don't
offer a broad array of tech topics, just the ones _we_ feel are important.

We focus on readers who like to collect and own their books, DRM free in epub,
mobi, and PDF formats (you get all three for one price, and can re-download
forever, or as long as we're in business ;)

It's a different market, and a different approach.

So don't go hating on O'Reilly for this move—if it doesn't suit you, you're
not their market. And that's okay. It's a big world.

/\ndy Publisher, Pragmatic Bookshelf

~~~
starsinspace
Question: do you consider giving up on the soft-DRM (watermarking of PDFs)
too?

Lack of DRM (both soft and hard) was for me the biggest feature when buying
from O'Reilly. It's what made it quite unique and why I bought most of my
tech-related eBooks there. I had a somewhat unpleasant surprise when I bought
books directly from your website and found them to be watermarked. Didn't see
that written anywhere on the site before I purchased...

~~~
rollover
The watermarking is the sole reason I don't buy ebooks from PragProg.

------
jefe_
Have had Safari Books Online for about a year now, got it 50% off last August,
love it. There have been several books I started reading in SBO and then
ordered physical copies on Amazon. Never even occurred to me to order the
books from Safari directly. The books I order are about broad topics and
themes (Designing Data-Intensive Applications, Enterprise IoT, etc.). Rarely
would I order a book about a specific Language or Framework, they have a
limited shelf-life, but I'll absolutely reference the online versions to grab
the info I need (more valuable format, can have open on monitor, search,
etc.). Their process for alerting authors of this change may not have been
great, but it seems like a smart business decision (assuming my use case if
fairly typical).

------
trustfundbaby
This is disappointing. Amazon doesn't let you buy pdfs, which I prefer over
epubs.

------
timwaagh
well i mostly bought their titles from bookstores in deadtree format so it
does not really affect me. as long as they continue to publish good stuff and
the bookstores have their books (which has become more of a problem lately) i
will probably buy a few once in a while. still this is a most unwelcome
deterioration. it just puts them in the category of companies that like to
squeeze every dollar out of their users, which is not good because they used
to enjoy a very good reputation which justified their high pricetag.

------
dawnerd
Lots of outrage but the important thing here is they'll still be available
from other retailers. They're not forcing you to buy a subscription to get the
books.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
The problem is other retailers don't offer the DRM-free ebooks that O'Reilly
was. Amazon, Google, Microsoft, etc. all DRM them to heck.

Going forward, the only time I'm gonna be buying O'Reilly ebooks is when
they're on Humble Bundle.

------
JBNixx
This is disappointing, but I guess it the way most companies are going.

Subscriptions are fine, but they quickly add up. I'm in the process of cutting
out stuff I don't use. As it's quick to forget you have been paying for
service "X" and haven't actually been using it to get your moneys worth.
Safari would quickly fall into that category for me.

However there are plenty of online stores which sell DRM free books, so no big
deal really.

------
vk3000
For those of us deeply disappointed at O'reilly discontinuation of PDF ebooks,
I've started an "idea" on O'reilly's support website to bring them back:

[http://support.oreilly.com/oreilly/topics/bring-back-pdf-
ebo...](http://support.oreilly.com/oreilly/topics/bring-back-pdf-ebooks)

Hopefully, if it gets enough upvotes, they'll consider it.

------
stephanakib
I am writing from Pearson and have seen a lot of queries about where can folks
find DRM-Free PDFs of technical books now. I want to share that informit.com,
a Pearson eCommerce site, sells DRM-Free PDFs from our imprints Addison-
Wesley, Prentice Hall, Sams, Cisco Press, Microsoft Press, New Riders, Que,
and Peachpit.

informit.com/store/eBooks

~~~
starsinspace
Are the PDF eBooks watermarked?

~~~
stephanakib
Yes they are watermarked for security

~~~
rollover
A digital watermark is automatically inserted customer information into a
purchased product to restrict it's usage only to the buyer of that product. To
me that's exactly like Digital Rights (Restrictions) Management. Calling
something that contains digital watermarks DRM-free is deceptive to the
customer. But long story short, if it contains watermarks I don't buy it.

~~~
stephanakib
The watermarks are discreet w/ no other information than your name. The PDFs
require no passwords and can be loaded on up to 6 different devices. We have
tried to come up with a solution that provides for the customer, but protects
our authors' content as well. But certainly I can understand your point of
view.

~~~
rollover
They don't protect anything. Probably 90% of your catalog is out there on the
net and findable with a bit of googling. In the end it's just a bad business
decision. You scare away potential customers and your stuff gets pirated
anyway. You're degrading your own product and artificially creating a
situation where the pirated product is actually a better one (one without a
watermark) than the one you are legally selling. You've got to realize how
insane that is.

------
clavalle
I would love a subscription service -- if they offered a books-only option
with PDFs at a reasonable price.

I don't need tutorial videos or any of that other crud, I need books.

If I could get all the high quality programming books I want for $15 I
wouldn't think twice.

------
gamesbrainiac
This does not come as a surprise. Packt now has Mapt, and subscription based
services such as Pluralsight are showing far healthier profit margins than
O'Reilly.

This is just their attempt to get in line with what other publishers are
offering.

------
ddrum001
Having purchased many books thru O'Reilly, and now using Safari Online - I'm a
huge fan of this move. Feels to me like going from iTunes to Spotify, or
Netflix DVDs to Streaming.

~~~
hdra
I'm not. I purchased many books from O'Reilly as well, but the number is more
like 4-5 books a year. Even with just 4-5 books a year I still usually end up
with a book left unread or unfinished every time.

Spotify/Netflix makes perfect sense for a subscription model because of the
way we consume musics/videos. The same can't be said for technical books. Not
for $399 a year anyway. With that price point, seems like they are hoping to
get employers to pay for it.

~~~
ddrum001
I guess I'm an anomaly in that I read far more books than watching movies, but
I agree that most consumers will want a variety of music and shows, unlike
books. However, isn't the price point ($35/month), which is 4x more than
Spotify, roughly in line with the price for a single book, which is roughly 4x
an album.

I guess the main difference is not that the price ratio between subscription
and individual items is off, but rather that most consumers don't want 1 book
a month. It's a bummer that they don't give people an option, but I'm still a
fan of Safari...and I hope this move will mean they drastically improve the
Safari app, much like Netflix has doubled down on Streaming now that they
don't do DVDs.

~~~
hdra
I read books far more than I do watching movies or tv shows as well, but I
don't include technical books in my count. I read general books for
entertainment, and maybe learn one or two mundane things that I don't know
before. I read maybe 2-3, sometimes 4 books a month for entertainment.

When I read technical books, its going to be because there is a specific thing
that I want to learn, and when I'm done with the books, I expect to have a new
skill under my belt that I can start polishing. I certainly don't do this at a
rate of 1 book a month.

Yeah, the fact the pricing is offered at rate that is way more than most
people's (including mine) purchasing habit is a bummer, but the inclusion of
DRM meaning that you lose access to your "purchase" once your subscription
ends is the deal breaker for me.

The fact there is a lot more content in the Safari offering may look like a
good value in the marketing copy, but that just means more noise to filter
through for me. I only have limited amount of time to spend on consuming
content after all.

------
foobardeveloper
Is there any alternative to Safari Books Online which has both beginner and
advanced content, video and books ? (If yes, I want to move away from Safari
on grounds of principle)

~~~
stephanakib
Informit.com is a Pearson owned site and we sell the following tech imprints
for all levels: Addison-Wesley, Prentice Hall, Sams, Microsoft Press, Cisco
Press, Pearston IT Certification, Que, Big Nerd Ranch, Peachpit, Adobe Press,
and New Riders.

We have regular holiday sales (including a 4th of July sale starting
tomorrow), update our eBooks, and offer the different DRM-Free formats
including PDF, MOBI and EPUB.

~~~
sjcole
The same is true of eBooks.com.

------
troydj
Maybe if we all start sending tweets to @timoreilly he will reconsider this
very unfortunate decision...

~~~
rexreed
From what I understand he hasn't been making day-to-day decisions for O'reilly
for at least 10 years. He's just the owner and figurehead.

------
vixen99
This is dreadful and such a disappointment from a company I'd praised to
others for their service.

------
tonystubblebine
I'm reading some comments here that are disappointed, but I'm impressed.

O'Reilly navigated itself through two major contractions in tech book
publishing. Practically every other company would have packed it in or found
some really horrendous way to screw customers.

The first contraction was the dot.com crash. During the boom, O'Reilly was so
flush with cash that they did things like put Larry Wall (creator of Perl) on
payroll, just because. And right before the crash they built two new office
buildings and a warehouse. So they were screwed when business went away and
somehow they wiggled their way out of that.

I joined the company right after the crash and stayed for 2.5 years. Every
employee meeting included an update on our negotiations with the banks--
literally the CFO was begging banks to be able to stay in business. She's now
CEO of the company.

I get a constant reminder of how lean things were then when I check my 401k
account from that time. There was one all hands meeting where O'Reilly
announced they were going to match contributions. The execs were so happy--I
think they thought it was a signal that the tide had turned after waves of
layoffs. (Even though I'm pretty sure the money came from a one-time windfall
from being investors in Blogger)

The thing though about that matching contribution is that it wasn't much. It
definitely wasn't one to one. I can't remember the exact rules for how much
they were going to match. But my current 401k statement breaks out my
contributions vs. O'Reilly's. After twelve years of compounding interest, that
employer contribution is now worth $128.24. (In other words, things were so
bad that they were celebrating contributing about $40 to my retirement).

And then, there was the second contraction. Up until about 2005, every single
programmer had a library of O'Reilly books on their desk. That time is gone. I
haven't seen a programmer who worked that way at any company recently (I'm
sure there are some).

Most companies would have just packed it in. Tim O'Reilly had a good run and
cares about other things, like politics. Dale Dougherty could do anything and
has by starting Make Magazine and Makerfaire.

But there are hundreds of people at O'Reilly and they kept plugging away and
finding ways to be relevant. Those ways just aren't books anymore--at least
not like they used to be.

The company found other ways than books to make a difference. The O'Reilly
conferences are cutting edge because O'Reilly still picks cutting edge people
as conference chairs. And OATV, in venture capital, is another great example,
which continues to experiment with things like Indie.vc.

So, to take it full circle. I'm impressed that O'Reilly is still in business
at all, and more so that they are relevant at all. And when I look at their
print business, I think, well, they're doing the best they can with a format
that has declining importance.

I think about the context above when I hear about things like removing some
book features or letting print quality slip. Those seem like reasonable
adjustments that are much better than the alternatives which I think were
probably go out of business or sell to Pearson.

------
bricss
Good luck O'Reilly!

------
sarawinge
Here's more about why O'Reilly stopped selling books on the site:
[http://oreil.ly/2t9RnXP](http://oreil.ly/2t9RnXP) (disclaimer: I work there!)

