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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 writin

by throwaway2016a 9y ago

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.

wavefunction 9y ago
"including new opportunities for you" I'll be the judge of that
- throwaway2016a 9y ago
  Obviously in context it means O'Reilly authors but... I might consider contributing some course material. Based on the comments here, though, perhaps not. It's not much of an opportunity if it doesn't benefit the other party enough for them to pay.
SomeHacker44 9y ago
Subscription services like Netflix are cheap. Vastly cheaper than Safari. Furthermore, Netflix allows two viewing streams simultaneously, 24 hours a day, and all five members of my household have their own profiles. We almost certainly spend more hours as a family on Netflix than we do reading O'Reilly books (especially since it's mostly just me who does that, and sometimes my son when we're doing programming together). I'm not spending $399/year. Maybe if it were $8/month like I spend on Netflix and Crunchyroll or Amazon Prime (paid annually), sure. (Granted, this household uses Prime for delivery and ignore their streaming stuff mostly.) Goodbye O'Reilly. Not only will I not buy Safari, I will not buy any O'Reilly product ever again.
- tonyedgecombe 9y ago
  The economics are different, Safari is a niche product and will always be more expensive than something aimed at the general consumer.
  - chris_wot 9y ago
    Well, yes. And thus why this will fail. I want to read O'Reilly books as PDFs. Properly typeset PDFs. And I don't want to buy from anyone other than O'Reilly. And I tried Safari, but it's not the same as reading their books as PDFs.
    - gregjwild 9y ago
      Here at Manning we plan to keep selling beautifully typeset .PDFs & other formats for many years to come :)
      - MonkeyIsNull 9y ago
        Thanks - it's the only format that I can read code in. I will be throwing more moola your way because of this.
      - chris_wot 9y ago
        I LOVE Manning! You are amazing and I will keep spending my hard earned money on your books. I bought your Spring books, and a few others. Next time I want to buy a book, I'll go straight to Manning and not O'Reilly.
youngtaff 9y ago
O'Reilly is becoming a less and less interesting company to work with but it's not surprising After-all this is the company that's built a multi-million dollar conferencing business that doesn't pay speakers, and often doesn't meet their travel and hotel costs
- jazzyk 9y ago
  Not defending O'R, but what conferences pay speakers' fees and reimburse their costs these days?
  - youngtaff 9y ago
    Some pay speakers but plenty of conferences cover travel and expenses (not enough though) Oredev in Malmo are a O'Reilly sized conference that not only pays travel etc. but also book it all for you It's not just large swanky conferences, believe community events like CSS / JS conf cover costs as it helps get diverse speakers (and ultimately it shows you respect the speaker) Let face it O'Reilly are profiting off their speakers hard work and without speakers there is no conference
TheOtherHobbes 9y ago
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 9y ago
  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 9y ago
    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 9y ago
      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?
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
Buttons840 9y ago
Hello OReilly author. May I ask: did you consider DRM issues when choosing to publish with OReilly and would you choose to publish with them again after this change?
- throwaway2016a 9y ago
  I'm a relatively old author (my only book with them was published almost 10 years ago) but they did contact me a few years later and asked me if I would allow them to "experiment" with selling a DRM free version of my book. I gladly said "yes" Even then, all books were on bittorrent within weeks regardless of if you have DRM or not. As a victim (so to speak) of piracy I'd rather provide more convenience to the customer over ineffectively making life harder for the pirates.

wavefunction 9y ago

"including new opportunities for you" I'll be the judge of that

throwaway2016a 9y ago
Obviously in context it means O'Reilly authors but... I might consider contributing some course material. Based on the comments here, though, perhaps not. It's not much of an opportunity if it doesn't benefit the other party enough for them to pay.

SomeHacker44 9y ago

Subscription services like Netflix are cheap. Vastly cheaper than Safari. Furthermore, Netflix allows two viewing streams simultaneously, 24 hours a day, and all five members of my household have their own profiles. We almost certainly spend more hours as a family on Netflix than we do reading O'Reilly books (especially since it's mostly just me who does that, and sometimes my son when we're doing programming together). I'm not spending $399/year. Maybe if it were $8/month like I spend on Netflix and Crunchyroll or Amazon Prime (paid annually), sure. (Granted, this household uses Prime for delivery and ignore their streaming stuff mostly.) Goodbye O'Reilly. Not only will I not buy Safari, I will not buy any O'Reilly product ever again.

tonyedgecombe 9y ago
The economics are different, Safari is a niche product and will always be more expensive than something aimed at the general consumer.
- chris_wot 9y ago
  Well, yes. And thus why this will fail. I want to read O'Reilly books as PDFs. Properly typeset PDFs. And I don't want to buy from anyone other than O'Reilly. And I tried Safari, but it's not the same as reading their books as PDFs.
  - gregjwild 9y ago
    Here at Manning we plan to keep selling beautifully typeset .PDFs & other formats for many years to come :)
    - MonkeyIsNull 9y ago
      Thanks - it's the only format that I can read code in. I will be throwing more moola your way because of this.
    - chris_wot 9y ago
      I LOVE Manning! You are amazing and I will keep spending my hard earned money on your books. I bought your Spring books, and a few others. Next time I want to buy a book, I'll go straight to Manning and not O'Reilly.

youngtaff 9y ago

O'Reilly is becoming a less and less interesting company to work with but it's not surprising After-all this is the company that's built a multi-million dollar conferencing business that doesn't pay speakers, and often doesn't meet their travel and hotel costs

jazzyk 9y ago
Not defending O'R, but what conferences pay speakers' fees and reimburse their costs these days?
- youngtaff 9y ago
  Some pay speakers but plenty of conferences cover travel and expenses (not enough though) Oredev in Malmo are a O'Reilly sized conference that not only pays travel etc. but also book it all for you It's not just large swanky conferences, believe community events like CSS / JS conf cover costs as it helps get diverse speakers (and ultimately it shows you respect the speaker) Let face it O'Reilly are profiting off their speakers hard work and without speakers there is no conference

TheOtherHobbes 9y ago

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 9y ago
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 9y ago
  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 9y ago
    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?

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

Buttons840 9y ago

Hello OReilly author. May I ask: did you consider DRM issues when choosing to publish with OReilly and would you choose to publish with them again after this change?

throwaway2016a 9y ago
I'm a relatively old author (my only book with them was published almost 10 years ago) but they did contact me a few years later and asked me if I would allow them to "experiment" with selling a DRM free version of my book. I gladly said "yes" Even then, all books were on bittorrent within weeks regardless of if you have DRM or not. As a victim (so to speak) of piracy I'd rather provide more convenience to the customer over ineffectively making life harder for the pirates.