O'Reilly Publishing is closing its online store

[joblack]

Things are changing at the O'Reilly online shop—as of today, we are no longer selling individual books and videos via shop.oreilly.com. Of course, we'll continue to publish books and videos on the topics you need to know, like data science, product management, and leadership—and you'll still be able to buy them at Amazon and other retailers.

http://shop.oreilly.com/

What's going on? I will stop using O'Reilly's affiliate stores for new books and e-books and boycott them.

If somebody want to tell O'Reilly what to think of this decision they can let them know at support@oreilly.com

[Cinisajoy]

I am confused. If they are going to stop selling books, you can't buy from them anyway. So how is your boycott going to work?

When I first saw your post, I thought of O'Reilly auto parts.

[joblack]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

So how is your boycott going to work?

They sell books and e-books through other retailers (e.g. Amazon). The problem is that at least the e-book format is not multi format and often includes DRM (e.g. Amazon Kindle format).

One attractive treat from shop.oreilly.com was that you could buy the e-book, get all three formats (epub, mobi and pdf) and had no DRM.

Now they are forcing you to use a subscription model like Safari where you have to be online or force you to use DRM enabled e-book stores like Amazon.

So if the customers just stop buying O'Reilly books/e-books altogether I would define that as a 'boycotting'.

[jhowell]

I misread the thread title as "closing up shop", meaning going out of business entirely. I'm glad that they will still be around even if they will no longer be selling directly.

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by joblack

They sell books and e-books through other retailers (e.g. Amazon). The problem is that at least the e-book format is not multi format and often includes DRM (e.g. Amazon Kindle format).

One attractive treat from shop.oreilly.com was that you could buy the e-book, get all three formats (epub, mobi and pdf) and had no DRM.

Now they are forcing you to use a subscription model like Safari where you have to be online or force you to use DRM enabled e-book stores like Amazon.

So if the customers just stop buying O'Reilly books/e-books altogether I would define that as a 'boycotting'.

I see you edited your first post to make the boycott clear. Thank you. Now it makes sense.

[AnemicOak]

So I wonder if this is a case of them running their own shop hasn't been cost effective, as has proven to be the case for some other publishers, or if it's more of a case of them wanting to push more people towards Safari. Or maybe there's some other reason.


Looks like Amazon (where AFAIK their titles are DRM-free, or were anyway), iBooks and Google Play, but not Kobo, are the choices for buying now.

[tastyeng]

Originally Posted by AnemicOak

Looks like Amazon (where AFAIK their titles are DRM-free, or were anyway)

I don't know about currently, but in the past I've occasionally come across DRMed O'Reilly titles on Amazon, and on reporting them to O'Reilly they had the status fixed within a couple of days. Packt was similarly helpful when I reached out to them regarding the same issue with a few of their titles. Kindle format wouldn't be my first choice for those kinds of books, but I'm glad to see those who want it able to buy DRM-free on Amazon.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by joblack

Now they are forcing you to use a subscription model like Safari where you have to be online or force you to use DRM enabled e-book stores like Amazon.

I fail to see any practical difference between buying a book DRM-free from Amazon and DRM-free direct from O'Reilly.

Would you like me to fix the error in the thread title, BTW?

[rkomar]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I fail to see any practical difference between buying a book DRM-free from Amazon and DRM-free direct from O'Reilly.

Would you like me to fix the error in the thread title, BTW?

The O'Reilly shop let you download multiple formats of the same book (PDF, EPUB,...), multiple times (including new copies with corrections). I don't know if Amazon allows the same, but my experience buying novels from Google Play is that they aren't as generous.

At least O'Reilly is still allowing access to those ebooks bought previously from them.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by rkomar

The O'Reilly shop let you download multiple formats of the same book (PDF, EPUB,...), multiple times (including new copies with corrections). I don't know if Amazon allows the same, but my experience buying novels from Google Play is that they aren't as generous.

At least O'Reilly is still allowing access to those ebooks bought previously from them.

Well, Amazon obviously only sell their format, but format-shifting of DRM-free books is trivial, and if the book is revised, Amazon will give you the corrected version. I just don't see this is a big deal - O'Reilly have obviously decided that the volume of sale direct from them doesn't justify the expense of running their own bookstore, and if the revenue doesn't meet the costs, that's a sensible commercial decision.

[joblack]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I fail to see any practical difference between buying a book DRM-free from Amazon and DRM-free direct from O'Reilly.

Would you like me to fix the error in the thread title, BTW?

Amazon will only give you a mobi format. O'Reilly had all three formats. If you convert the mobi format you still not get a well adjusted epub or pdf format.

I wouldn't have a problem with that if there would be another online shop which would support DRM free multiformat O'Reilly e-books but we will see what will happen.

Sure, please modify the thread title.

[shalym]

Originally Posted by joblack

Amazon will only give you a mobi format. O'Reilly had all three formats. If you convert the mobi format you still not get a well adjusted epub or pdf format.

I wouldn't have a problem with that if there would be another online shop which would support DRM free multiformat O'Reilly e-books but we will see what will happen.

Sure, please modify the thread title.

So buy it from Google, then? I understand that you are upset that you can't get the book in all formats anymore, but it sounds like you don't want .mobi format anyway, and from what I can see, google offers downloads in both epub and pdf for most books.

If O'Reilly found that they were losing money by hosting the store, are you really going to *boycott* them because of it? Or do you think that they are closing the store just because they're tired of it, and want to annoy people like you who don't like Amazon? (You do realize that they've always sold on Amazon, right?)

Shari

[HarryT]

An advantage of Amazon over Google books may perhaps be the issue of updates, if these are, as suggested, books that get updated. Amazon make it easy to get updated versions of purchased books. I don't know how good Google Books are in that regard?

[jselby]

The biggest disappointment for me is the loss of the member discounts. They had several standard discounts for those with an oreilly.com account (buy 1 get 1, discount for upgrading to the next edition of books you own, discounts if you buy both the print and ebook). I bought a lot of ebooks direct from them because of those discounts. Having access to multiple formats was nice as well, but as was mentioned already, conversion to other formats is easy.

[joblack]

Originally Posted by shalym

So buy it from Google, then? I understand that you are upset that you can't get the book in all formats anymore, but it sounds like you don't want .mobi format anyway, and from what I can see, google offers downloads in both epub and pdf for most books.
Shari

If you look at the PDF format of an O'Reilly book you could almost feel the dedication which went in the PDF e-book format. I wouldn't be surprised if the PDF e-book was the master for the paperback book.

Is the Google Play version also in three formats and without DRM?

Originally Posted by shalym

If O'Reilly found that they were losing money by hosting the store, are you really going to *boycott* them because of it? Or do you think that they are closing the store just because they're tired of it, and want to annoy people like you who don't like Amazon? (You do realize that they've always sold on Amazon, right?)

Do you know for sure that this is the reason they closed the store? I suspect the reason is to push people to the subscription model. There is more profit in it. I have seen it before (e.g. Adobe Photoshop Cloud) but you are right we have not enough information to know the truth.

I have primarily bought e-books especially at oreilly.com because they had the DRM free multi format.

If you just want paperback books and/or DRM-invested e-books other stores will be fine for you.