
O'Reilly's Decision and Its DRM Implication - SeanBoocock
https://scottmeyers.blogspot.com/2017/06/oreillys-decision-and-its-drm.html
======
clumsysmurf
Tim O'Reilly once said "Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and
creative artists than piracy". I discovered and purchased almost every
Rosenfeld Media book from OReilly.

After O'Reilly moved to DRM-free books, their 2009 sales went up by 104%
[http://toc.oreilly.com/2010/01/2009-oreilly-ebook-revenue-
up...](http://toc.oreilly.com/2010/01/2009-oreilly-ebook-revenue-
up-104-percent.html)

In other interviews, he seemed confident that DRM wasn't worth it
[https://www.forbes.com/forbes/2011/0411/focus-tim-oreilly-
me...](https://www.forbes.com/forbes/2011/0411/focus-tim-oreilly-media-e-book-
antipiracy-steal-this.html)

Perhaps some part of the equation has changed since then. I'm looking forward
a deeper analysis of the business reasons for this.

I'm also interested to hear what more authors think - I wonder how many agree
with Martin Kleppmann (Designing Data Intensive Applications)
[https://twitter.com/martinkl/status/880336943980085248](https://twitter.com/martinkl/status/880336943980085248)

This independence day weekend there were a lot of sales, so I purchased:

* "Programming Clojure, Third Edition" from pragprog (30% off sale)

* The entire collection of "Enthusiast's Guide to ..." from rockynook (each for $10)

* "The Quick Python Book 3e", "Serverless Architectures on AWS", "Event Streams in Action", "Get Programming with Haskell" from Manning (50% off)

These sales are the only way I can afford the volume I read. Some of that
money would have gone to OReilly authors, but they deleted my _full cart_ with
$100 worth of stuff before I could purchase!

EDIT: OReilly catalog seemed large & redundant with publishers (packt)
offering the same materials on their sites. Some like Wiley / MKP only offered
very few items from their catalogs. Others like Rosenfeld / rockynook / no
starch now provide DRM free options directly from their sites. I'm hoping at
least OReilly reconsiders selling their Animal books again.

~~~
j_s
Here is a quote of the Tweet for the lazy:

Martin Kleppmann‏ @martinkl

 _I am not happy about this. I believe readers should be able to get DRM-free
eBook files to download to their own devices._

1:07 AM - 29 Jun 2017

~~~
adfm
Referenced below and applicable here, O'Reilly state they continue to support
DRM-free formats (available from outlets that support them, like Google Play)
and acknowledge the PDF issue in this post by Laura Baldwin.

[https://www.oreilly.com/ideas/the-mission-of-spreading-
the-k...](https://www.oreilly.com/ideas/the-mission-of-spreading-the-
knowledge-of-innovators-continues)

------
rst
Perhaps best read after the blog post from current O'Reilly media president
Laura Baldwin, which makes two important points:

1) Book sales have been consistently declining overall, in all media. It's not
clear that DRM has much to do with this.

2) They'll still be selling DRM-free through at least one merchant, Google
Play. (It's not clear whether this policy extends to Amazon as well, but they
wouldn't be the first publisher selling DRM-free there; Tor's science fiction
novels have been DRM-free through all merchants for a few years now.)

Source: [https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/oreilly-mission-spreading-
kno...](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/oreilly-mission-spreading-knowledge-
innovators-laura-baldwin)

~~~
clumsysmurf
But there are no DRM free high quality PDFs ... if you download a PDF from
Play Books its a conversion.

~~~
Buttons840
Can you given some more details? A screen shot demonstrating the low quality
would be nice. Not that I don't what your saying.

Hopefully OReilly wanted only to cut costs, and is still willing to make high
quality preorders and DRM free media available through some other source.

~~~
nindalf
Here's a guy who shared a side-by-side comparison of Google and O' Reilly's
editions of Designing Data Intensive Applications -
[https://mobile.twitter.com/kondrej/status/880540236303880193](https://mobile.twitter.com/kondrej/status/880540236303880193)

~~~
tren
We still sell all O'Reilly books DRM free in both PDF and ePUB. i.e.
[http://www.ebooks.com/95729334/designing-data-intensive-
appl...](http://www.ebooks.com/95729334/designing-data-intensive-
applications/kleppmann-martin/). If you click on preview (on a desktop), the
preview is composed of images rendered from the PDF.

~~~
SSLy
>DRM-free

>supported on "e-readers with Adobe Digital Editions installed"

Someone is incorrect here.

~~~
Crontab
The second statement is probably boilerplate but is concerning.

~~~
tren
Yes, you're right, it's boilerplate and needs to be updated to reflect that
O'Reilly books are DRM-free and can be read on any device, I'll get it updated
tomorrow.

------
elcapitan
> They can also reach buyers who want to see the full product before making a
> purchasing decision or who wouldn't become aware of your book through
> conventional marketing efforts.

This is definitely true for me, and one of the reasons why Oreilly is one of
the defining "colors" on my bookshelf. In particular with technical literature
I really need to get a good look into the book before I make a commitment and
a decision to buy. I just don't want to spend money first and then stick to
something that turns out to be rather disappointing.

So my usual way of buying books is to download various publications on a topic
via Bittorrent and then buying the best one once I know what I want. This is
similar to going to a public library, getting a few books, and buying the most
convincing one for long-term use. If there was a micropayment way of paying
for the short-term evaluation, I would be more than happy to pay for that (as
I implicitly pay via library contributions, which go to the publishers to some
part).

Having said that, Oreilly traditionally had a market of being the "printed out
manual of open source software", which I'm pretty sure is dead by now, and I
wonder if they can reposition completely. One thing I noticed is that they now
often sell books that have titles that sound very general "Data Science for
blabla" but turn out to be really just tutorials/manuals for some particular
framework. That's the kind of book I would want to avoid. Nothing against good
examples, but I don't need printed out tutorials.

~~~
nhangen
What makes you think that this is OK?

~~~
chii
> What makes you think that this is OK?

what makes you think this _shouldn't_ be OK?

~~~
maccard
Because it's (most likely, depending on where OP lives) illegal. Distributing
and copying other people's IP is illegal and unethical, rven if you have noble
intentions after the fact.

(To be clear, i don't agree with the DRM implementation, I don't agree with
O'Reillys recent change and I don't agree with an always online subscription
service that is out of the price range of most people).

~~~
CuriousSkeptic
Illegal yes. Unethical? Very much still debated. It's really a fascinating
debate once you go looking for quality arguments.

Lawrence Lessig (creator of Creative Commons) has a couple of great keynotes,
and books, setting the tone for the battle ground.

Benklers Wealth of Networks is another great resource covering similar topics.

Then you have the clear opposition variants such as Stallmans arguments. The
book Against Monopoly is also a good read on this angle (this one is more
about patents than copyright though)

I don't recall the source right now, but there is also this fascinating
history of copyright in Europe and the statue of Anne which, ostensibly, was
mostly about censorship and not at all about authors rights or ability make a
living.

First step is to recognize that IP is a propaganda term, designed to confuse
issues and appeal to an entirely different set of laws and moral frameworks.
So if you use this term, know that you've been successfully manipulated by the
other side of the debate.

~~~
Ace17
> First step is to recognize that IP is a propaganda term, designed to confuse
> issues and appeal to an entirely different set of laws and moral frameworks.

Exactly. BTW, equating non-profit copyright infringement with attacking ships
also might be some kind of propaganda.

------
epaulson
DRM-free epubs are at least supposed to be available from Google Books (though
Kleppmann says when he tried with his book it wasn't DRM-free) - the ebook.com
folks say that they have DRM-free epub and PDFs, but I don't know if the PDFs
are the high-quality print editions that ORA used to sell or the crappy epub-
PDF conversion that Google books sells, and what exactly ebooks.com means by
'DRM-free' \- they make reference to having to use a specific Adobe software
package to read them, but that you have the right to print and copy-and-paste.
Until I see it opened in some libre-PDF reader I don't know that I trust it.

One bummer: Nearly everything I bought from O'Reilly were 'Early Release'
books - The Kleppmann 'Data Intensive Apps' book took like two years for him
to finish (not complaining, books aren't easy and this book was exceptionally
well-researched), but it was nice to have the first half of the book available
early on. Sadly, the Early Release program seems to be only available through
Safari now. There were like five books I had planned to buy over the holiday
weekend that now I guess I'll have to wait a year or so before being able to
buy.

I also don't get the folks saying "Just buy $DIFFERENT_PUBLISHER books
instead" \- books aren't interchangeable, people buy specific titles, not
whatever the publisher's version of that topic might be.

~~~
clumsysmurf
If I read these pages (1,2) from ebooks.com correctly, you need to read their
PDFs in Adobe Digital Editions:

"As our books have Adobe DRM applied to them your device must state that it is
compatible with Adobe DRM or Adobe Digital Editions"

Some time ago, there was a big fiasco with Adobe (3,4) "On 6 October 2014,
Nate Hoffelder reported in The Digital Reader that Adobe Digital Editions
version 4 ("ADE4") was sending extensive information about eBooks back to
Adobe, including ebooks read by a user as well as eBooks stored on the same
machine but not opened in ADE4."

I tried Adobe Digital Editions (ADE) a while back and considered it very poor
experience. Originally it was based on Adobe Flex, and the font rendering was
grey scale anti-aliased and looked terrible. I won't try it again to find out
if they improved it.

There was another fiasco, but Adobe backed down (5). A contact from Datalogics
confirmed that Adobe was going to force everyone (publishers, users) to
upgrade to the new version of DRM (ADEPT) and that your old titles would be
unusable if not!

I avoid ADE like the plague.

(1) [https://support.ebooks.com/hc/en-
gb/articles/213875366-Guide...](https://support.ebooks.com/hc/en-
gb/articles/213875366-Guide-to-ebook-formats)

(2) [https://support.ebooks.com/hc/en-
gb/articles/206061173-Readi...](https://support.ebooks.com/hc/en-
gb/articles/206061173-Reading-your-ebook)

(3) [https://the-digital-reader.com/2014/10/06/adobe-spying-
users...](https://the-digital-reader.com/2014/10/06/adobe-spying-users-
collecting-data-ebook-libraries)

(4)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Digital_Editions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Digital_Editions)

(5) [https://the-digital-reader.com/2014/02/03/adobe-require-
new-...](https://the-digital-reader.com/2014/02/03/adobe-require-new-epub-drm-
july-expects-abandon-existing-users/)

------
agibsonccc
Disclaimer: I have commercial interest with oreilly. I speak at a ton of their
conferences and lean on them partially for marketing and lead gen.

Oreilly author here. FWIW a ton of us were caught off guard by this as well.
At the same time, I can't say I'm surprised.

My commercial incentives for working with oreilly wasn't about the book per
se. I found a ton of value in working with them for their peripheral
activities including safari, their strata , and AI conferences. I think other
folks who write for oreilly tend to do these same things.

Pointing out where oreilly is making money: It tends to be large companies
paying for access to safari now.

They will be putting other content in there now.

Print is a dying media. That being said: A ton of people prefer print still.

I don't think any end user or author of their's is "happy" about this per se.
1 benefit I liked of the online store was the ability to point people at that
for pre releases and updates. You can't really do that with amazon.

I may be naively hopeful in saying this, but..

That being said: this should allow them to invest in other distribution
channels now as well.

Oreilly showed they know how to run a distribution channel and may use that
expertise in other areas.

As someone closer to this than a lot of people, I'm happy to answer general
questions about the process, other ways this could affect us etc, if that
helps.

~~~
dorfsmay
As someone who regularly bought eBooks from them, and kept their epub versions
on my laptop, their new self as "ebook rental" does not interest me.

What if I'm out of work and cannot afford the rental (Safari) fee?

What about account problems? Because of technical reasons or political (say
revenge because of public criticisms), there's a risk to lose access to the
material. This happened to somebody with their Amazon account and their
ereader.

Sad day.

~~~
agibsonccc
Yeah..there's always that risk with a "life time download". That includes if
the company goes bust as well.

I would just consider having your own drm free backup. I understand what you
mean though :(.

~~~
e12e
What's the current state of the DMCA in the US? Is it now legal to circumvent
DRM in order to backup titles you own? (Not that circumventing DRM will always
be feasible for the casual user - see last generation of Amazon DRM for
example).

If circumventing DMCA is still illegal in and off itself, I'd be careful by
advising people to break the law, without making it clear that they risk some
serious penalties in many jurisdictions.

What's the current status of inheriting DRMed works? I know that I'll be able
to read the books and comics I inherit - but I'm not so sure about the kindle
eBooks - without gaining access to the account of the deceased - assuming it
remains active for long enough to do so?

~~~
agibsonccc
I think you're extrapolating a lot from my post :D. Yes there are laws
associated with it.

You bought the book, you own the pdf. I'm not advocating or implying people
giving them away.

I'm not sure if you read above but I'm actually an author. Authors don't
really make much money when working with publishers..but it doesn't mean I
don't want something for my work.

I'm also not going to hand out legal advice as I'm not qualified to comment on
or do so.

~~~
e12e
I'm not trying to put words in your mouth about _sharing_ copies (hence
inherit, not borrow or get a copy of) - my main point was that while:

>> I would just consider having your own drm free backup.

> You bought the book, you own the pdf.

seems perfectly reasonable on the face of it - it implies removing the drm -
which I think is still unclear if it is legal or not (per the dmca)?

I believe there was some case around backing up dvds (a notoriously fragile
medium) - as well as circumventing drm in order to view legal copies (eg: play
dvds on Linux/in vlc) - but I'm not certain if that was tested in supreme
court or not - and if it would apply to ebooks.

I do know that with the initial draft of the dmca, circumventing drm was in
and of itself illegal.

~~~
agibsonccc
Oreilly lets you download drm free copies though? You're not "removing"
anything if it doesn't exist in the first place. That's the source of my
confusion here.

I won't comment on DMCA regulations.

~~~
e12e
Ok, might be confused by the context. I would think you only need "drm free
backups" if what you get originally is "drm-ed files". If there's no drm,
there's no drm. I thought the change was that O'reilly was moving towards drm
only?

------
sqldba
They are my main source for PDF DRM free books (I don't care about stamping my
name as long as it can be read anywhere).

If they stop selling then they lose 100% of my business which is about $100 a
year.

I don't use other formats. They screw technical books too badly. Some other
publishers like Apress and MS Press do okay too but if O'Reilly pulls out then
it's quite a blow.

------
orbitingpluto
I was at a garage sale and I was perusing a bunch of Wrox books. The seller
offered me a ridiculous price and then I noticed he was on the cover of one of
them.

I asked him about it and I think he'd rather have the latter benefits than the
minuscule compensation:

"Piracy is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it means you receive no
compensation for the benefit readers get from the work you put in. On the
other hand, pirated books act as implicit marketing, expanding awareness of
you and your book(s)."

So I bought the books, but asked if he had another copy of his own book. He
said that he did not, because that he guesses he should keep a copy as, after
all, he was the author. That's a lot of trauma for him to say something like
that.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
That could be because in a typical deal the author gets an advance up front
and the royalties are so meagre that that's all the money the author ever
gets.

In fact any initial advance is often calculated on this basis. A book has to
sell exceptionally and unexpectedly well to start paying extra royalties.

So... authors can make a little extra money by selling their five or ten free
copies direct to the public. Even at a knock-down price, it's still money they
wouldn't get otherwise.

The piracy argument is nonsense. Most technology book authors either have a
brand/platform because they're already notable, or they remain unknown,
because it's almost impossible to build a brand solely by writing specialist
technology books. (This wasn't always true, but it's become more and more true
over time.)

Piracy for "exposure" changes nothing. Given the royalty issue, it doesn't
even affect most authors' earnings - although of course it does affect
publisher income.

------
vbezhenar
DRM-less PDF encourage me to buy books that I'm not going to read anytime
soon, and I bought few books I didn't read yet and may be I won't read at all.
But the point is, my PDF is always with me in my backups and no matter what
happens with DRM software, platforms or publisher, I can always read them.
That's important for me, I truly own this copy, not some stupid renting thing.

------
joshmarinacci
I sincerely doubt the change had anything to do with DRM. Book sales have been
declining for years. Developers just don't use books as their primary source
of learning anymore. I believe OReilly is going to double down on their
subscription service, Safari.

------
guelo
O'Reilly used to produce the definitive bibles that you were required to own
to work on different technologies, but I feel like the quality has gone down
over the last 10 years or so. I don't know if that is a byproduct of
developers relying on books less, or technology moving faster, or poor
publishing decisions. But it has probably contributed more than DRM, one way
or the other, to their decline.

~~~
blantonl
Exactly. Take for example the Sendmail book. Probably one of the most
important (and feared) sysadmin books of our time. If you had a well worn dog
eared copy on your desk, you commanded respect.

~~~
tjl
The Essential System Administration book was a regular reference for me.
Thankfully, I was not the sendmail guy.

------
daeken
The conclusion here (to paraphrase: "no DRM isn't a big enough draw") doesn't
seem to be at all supported. It may be that they want to focus on publishing;
it may be that they simply had to charge too much; it may be that it wasn't
bringing in enough sales to make it worthwhile, compared to other retail
channels.

Without more data (or really... any), this conclusion is pure speculation.

~~~
ahkurtz
Yeah, I completely agree, but the OP is speculation too, because it's from
Scott Myers's reading of a blog post. If you go read his linked blog post
(from Laura Baldwin, President of O'Reilly media) you can see they explain
many different aspects of their decision. Not once do they mention DRM in a
negative way (only apologizing for no longer offering it in multiple formats
via their store). In fact, they mention explicitly that Google will still
publish their content DRM free.

The reasons they give for discontinuing their e-commerce efforts are that book
sales have been dwindling since 2000, and that they simply make too much money
on new interactive media and don't want to pay for their own e-commerce
infrastructure and staff anymore. I would imagine the publishers they are now
relying on can also help them market their titles (which I suggest
speculatively would help significantly).

The article I want to link from Laura Baldwin is unfortunately only directly
linkable via social media, but for now it's the only article at this link:
[https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/oreilly-mission-spreading-
kno...](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/oreilly-mission-spreading-knowledge-
innovators-laura-baldwin)

Anectdotally, I bought a lot of DRM free books from O'Reilly directly. While I
did share them due to convenience (coworker doesn't understand SSL! No
problem), I also shared them with friends who couldn't afford them. I think
this was actually good for O'Reilly, and that Tim was right and still is on
this score.

I say this because I personally spent many thousands of dollars through their
web store. My friends without cash who went on to become computer
professionals started paying for the new books they wanted as well. The vast
majority of people I shared books with who could afford them would go out and
buy several more after seeing the quality and value of particular titles.

It's obviously a culture and economic mechanism that subsidizes certain kinds
of customers and use, but I believe it subsidized the "right things". Because
much of the content builds value in real marketable skills, free-riders can
eventually become wealthy enough that the price to convenience ratio tips
correctly and they become paying customers. It helps that they now have very
strong brand loyalty. This is how I became an O'Reilly customer in the first
place, so many year ago.

O'Reilly direct e-book sales was a positive example of business that creates
huge uncaptured value for the domain (technical knowledge), but by virtue of
that generates more customers. This is the kind of business we actually need.
In some ways I think it was their own success that killed their book business,
because ultimately digital books were replaced by more compelling media
formats, and those exist largely due to advances in design and technology, and
their books are raw fuel for those advances.

I say this many words only because I loved them so much, and am sad to see
them go. I have to sadly admit it's been probably two years since I either
read or bought a lot of titles from them. I haven't been reading or buying
technical books at all. I don't know if this says something about my current
level of specialization, perhaps my current level of laziness, my subconscious
desire for new media formats, the quality of the titles they've been
publishing, their business model, or perhaps the nature of the industry they
serve.

I'd personally like to hear more from O'Reilly about this eventually. I know
they need to spin everything to look good, but I am incredibly curious if
their non-book media is actually increasingly popular as they suggest. Do
people just not want technical books anymore? Do people want them but
increasingly pirate them and never pay? Are people willing to pay for
technical knowledge in different media? Did their business model cost them
their business, or is this the result of unavoidable change in the market for
technical knowledge?

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
Technology titles live on the usual bell curve. The less sophisticated and
expert the audience, the bigger the potential sales. As you go up in expertise
titles become increasingly niche - and harder to write well - but potential
sales become more limited.

The biggest sellers were always mass-market guides to Windows, OS X, Word,
iOS, and such.

The next tier down were introductory guides to core topics - HTML/CSS, js,
Java, Flash, VisualBasic, and on on.

The tier down from that was much more specific - e.g. sound on iOS - but only
of interest to a relatively small audience.

Eventually publishers hit a point where they can't find good expert authors
because the money for writing a book is so poor compared to a typical
developer salary, and the amount of work so high, that no one wants to do it.
And even if they do they probably need a lot of help with editing and
formatting.

StackOverflow and other online sources have more or less wiped out the lower
levels. Changes in the industry have wiped out the upper levels - hardly
anyone needs an introduction to Windows now, and even an intro to HTML/CSS is
much harder to sell than it used to be.

That leaves the niche-y, limited, specialised levels - which aren't big enough
on their own to support the old publishing model, except as a cottage
industry.

Aside from author advances, _the production costs of a book don 't depend on
the technical level of the content._

So this is why the industry is struggling. Meanwhile lynda.com, Udemy, and
other courseware are cleaning up in the same space.

So of course O'Reilly, Wiley, and the rest are going to try to make a play for
that space. And IMO they will fail, because the costs of producing courseware
are much higher than the costs of producing a book, the courseware business
requires an even more specialised skill set, the market isn't huge anyway -
and more than anything, they're late to the party.

~~~
billpollock
Some of this is true, but it's still possible to be a successful technical
book publisher.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
Indeed.

But it's rather harder to be a successful technical book author.

------
newscracker
> Piracy is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it means you receive no
> compensation for the benefit readers get from the work you put in. On the
> other hand, pirated books act as implicit marketing, expanding awareness of
> you and your book(s). _They can also reach buyers who want to see the full
> product before making a purchasing decision_ or who wouldn't become aware of
> your book through conventional marketing efforts.

The point I've emphasized above really matters a lot for people who do read
many books. Despite select chapter previews that some publishers provide,
there are people who really want to do their own evaluation of something
before committing to buying it.

> _My feeling is that most people who choose pirated books are unlikely to pay
> for them, even if that 's the only way to get them._ As such, I'm inclined
> to think the marketing effect of illegal copies exceeds the lost revenue. I
> have no data to back me up. Maybe it's just a rationalization to help me
> live with the knowledge that no matter what you do, there's no way you can
> prevent bootleg copies of your books from showing up on the Net.

Again, the emphasized sentence above has been known for a very long time in
the areas of music, movies, TV shows, books - any content, actually. In my
observation, people who pirate books also tend get into a habit of hoarding
rather than reading (low disk/storage and bandwidth costs). Leaving aside the
people who are in countries with poorer currencies and cannot really imagine
buying a lot of the English language technical content produced, I doubt if
the real loss in revenue is even substantial.

Books also, depending on the subject, require investments of time, attention,
memory and repeated reference, unlike movies, TV shows and music that most of
the time require a "one time investment". So I would not consider books to be
in the same category as others when it comes to piracy.

I'm not at all happy with O'Reilly's decision, and did write to support at
oreilly saying that this makes it difficult (finding DRM free content on
amazon or elsewhere in multiple formats) and that I wouldn't be buying
O'Reilly products again. I received a standard reply thanking me for the
feedback and pointing me to the blog post. My guess is that the direct
customer relationship and brand recognition through its website is going to be
lost along with this decision.

I don't know if O'Reilly will change the decision, but people who do value the
freedom of DRM free content in different formats _must voice their opinions_
by writing to O'Reilly support.

~~~
braziliandev
> I doubt if the real loss in revenue is even substantial.

I am not a fan of DRM. Less because of its restrictions, but more because of
its low level of user experience (merely consequence of its restrictions,
sure, but still), with publishers not making content available for this or
that device, and with lack of smart features like
lending/borrowing/transferring material.

That said, and being from Latin America myself (Brazil), as well with
connections in Asia (friends), I've heard many stories already that give an
idea of thousands of developers that are consuming "paid" content downloaded
through torrents/forums/dropboxes/etc, and never made the "honorable" payment.

I am afraid you are underestimating the amount of developers in developing
countries that consume books from O'Reilly and other publishers and are not
paying at all for that, ultimately damaging investments on new material, both
by publishers and authors. It is hardly the case of not being able to afford,
but simply a cultural thing.

For any author that thinks their content should be DRM-free and available to
anyone, I don't understand why they don't publish on GitHub, and drop a link
to their PayPal account for contributions. If they did, my bet would be on
repositories with huge traffic (easy to monitor), but low pay-rate.

~~~
voltagex_
This is basically the same problem as monetising an open source project on
GitHub. I don't know what O'Reilly's take of a 5-20USD eBook was, but I bet
you the authors get more than your average Patreon.

Even if you do convince someone to pay (did I read that 1% was a good
conversion rate?), how difficult is it to get their money? How many are you
going to lose to the PayPal login process? How much money is your payment
processor going to take?

While I've got you here (although this looks like a throwaway account), how
easy is it for you to make a credit card payment to a US merchant from Brazil?
Can you use Patreon? PayPal? Flattr?

Also, Bitcoin is _not_ the solution here.

------
a3n
I have given a few O'Reilly DRM-free books to colleagues. Younger colleagues,
who usually have never heard of an "animal book." I always point out where it
came from, and suggest that if they like it, they either buy it, or buy
something else from O'Reilly.

Maybe some did, I don't know. I suspect that the ones that didn't, probably
wouldn't buy a similar book from anyone, not because of piracy, but because
they just aren't into that particular kind of product. So no (real) harm, no
foul.

------
acomjean
I bought probably about 20 books on O'Reilly website. Mainly because they are
typically of good quality but also because they're drm free.

I always appreciated that they were available in any format (pdf/ebook etc)
and thus easier to search. You can even sync them to your dropbox
automatically after purchase. A download them.

We had a book service at a former company and it was terrible, one page at a
time with a clunky web interface. Being able to download and scan them was
much appreciated.

But as internet search gets better, you find quick solutions on stack
overflow. It must be hard selling books.

~~~
tjl
I love the Dropbox sync, although I found it hit or miss. Some books it
wouldn't work. But, I've bought at least 50 books from their site.

I tried Safari when I was still in university, but found it terrible (but that
was a few years back). I won't pay $400/year for a service like it. I could
see maybe half that being reasonable. But, there are so many subscription
services now.

------
reidacdc
The death of the DRM-free model was a big concern to me, but a recent
supplementary blog post from Laura Baldwin, linked-to in the article but not
called out, seems to claim that O'Reilly books will still be available DRM-
free from Google Books. It's not clear to me if this means the Google Play
e-book store, or something else.

Blog post here: [https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/oreilly-mission-spreading-
kno...](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/oreilly-mission-spreading-knowledge-
innovators-laura-baldwin)

~~~
llasram
I'm just a consumer, but Google Play Books are in fact available for DRM-free
download when so-requested by the publisher. Or least that's the reason Google
gives when directly providing the book as a DRM-free download.

~~~
runevault
Check other comments, they aren't the quality PDFs previously available from
the O'Reilly site, but crappy conversions from epub.

~~~
sqldba
Yeah. Also I'd rather not give Google my money. If something goes wrong I
don't like my chances of getting it back. At least with O'Reilly you could
talk to a human.

------
hackerpolicy
No more $5 dollar books by registering as a 'print-book owner'?

~~~
sitkack
Gone.

------
starsinspace
So does anyone know of another online bookstore that is completely DRM-free? I
mean both hard DRM (encryption) and soft DRM (watermarking, be it visible or
invisible). That O'Reilly was completely DRM-free (AFAICT) made me spend quite
an amount of money on their eBooks over the years... I wonder who wants to
serve that market in the future? It seems that all the other options at least
do watermarking, which makes it uninteresting to me.

Guess I'll have to buy everything as print books again...

~~~
billpollock
All of our ebooks have always been DRM-free. That's true for some other
publishers, too.

~~~
starsinspace
That's great! I had bought several of your books from O'Reilly -- I will head
to your store directly then in the future.

------
djhworld
I like reading PDFs of books on my phone, especially on my commute. It works
surprisingly well, better than I thought it would.

My work bought a copy of Designing Data Intensive Applications for the team,
I've started reading it but lugging around 1kg of book every day gets old
really quick, I wish they would have offered a PDF download coupon or
something inside.

------
djhworld
I wonder why they still offer the Google Play versions as being "DRM free"

Is it just Google has more weight they can throw around and O'Reilly didn't
want to 'rock the boat', or was it a technical problem?

Apparently the Google Play versions of O'Reilly books are formatted strangely
and aren't a direct PDF of the physical books.

------
banku_brougham
When I discovered books at OReilly I thought I had stumbled into heaven. I
bought a couple hundred books over several years. I thought they "get it." No
longer.

Companies are starting to get serious about product and service lock-in, for
me and many others the paradigm is repellent.

------
shmerl
I didn't quite get that. Will their books still be available DRM-free or not?
If not, that's a major setback.

~~~
tjl
Technically, they're saying Google will offer them DRM-free, but they're ePub
and the PDFs are conversions from ePub. It looks like ebooks.com will offer
ePub and PDF that are DRM-free too.

~~~
shmerl
Is it just cost reduction for them? Why can't they continue selling them from
their site?

------
ninjakeyboard
I published a book and have to admit that I have given it away to everyone who
has any inkling of interest.

~~~
voltagex_
What's the book?

------
Animats
That sounds more like O'Reilly gave up on fulfillment and went with Amazon,
like everybody else.

~~~
burntrelish1273
Monoculture monopoly leads to tyranny and gouging.

------
davidf18
I liked using the O'Reilly early release program available from the site (as
well as Manning's MEAP program). Is there any replacement for that now?

I also prefer the PDF versions which I can print out a chapter when I need to
read hard-copy Instead of carrying with me an entire book (live/work in
Manhattan, we don't use cars much and value light-weight equipment).

~~~
tjl
I prefer PDF versions because they're formatted nicely. I find that ePub and
Mobi versions of technical books almost uniformly terrible.

~~~
billpollock
Completely agree.

