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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 -

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.

pirocks 9y ago
Random question: What did you switch to when you dropped JetBrains, and did you notice a productivity drop?
- reitanqild 9y ago
  Former user of Eclipse an IntelliJ, now Netbeans: For some people (like me) Netbeans is awesome. I love the fact that it can use pom as its own project model and IMO it aligns better with OS keyboard shortcuts (Win and Linux at least) than VS, eclipse and IntelliJ). Be prepared for weird reactions though: it seems everyone "knows" it is awful.
clumsysmurf 9y ago
As a Lightroom user myself, I'm a bit worried about that. Since the subscription model began, Lightroom seems to have languished a bit - and its been years since a standalone release. Lets hope Affinity can put out a competitive DAM tool.
- ghaff 9y ago
  In all fairness, for me at least, Lightroom seems to have gotten to a place where it does what it needs to do with acceptable performance. It doesn't seem to have a lot of obvious functionality holes.Of course, it also doesn't have a lot of competition which may partially explain the pace of change too. If I had to guess, I suspect Lightroom will end up as only a subscription offering at some point. It's hard to see why it would remain an outlier. I'm sure there would be great hue and cry but I actually use it enough that I wouldn't be all that bothered.
ehnto 9y ago
It is worth noting JetBrains still offer buy it once and own it licenses, and even their subscription grants you an eternal license to the particular version you were on when you stopped subscribing.
- detaro 9y ago
  > then re-joined them when they went to "Subscription + keep your start of subscription version forever".
  - ehnto 9y ago
    Oh, yeah I missed that. Cheers!
- nightski 9y ago
  I'm pretty sure it's to the version that is 12 months behind when you stopped subscribing. You have to subscribe for an entire year to own the version when you started. So if you subscribe for 12 months, and then cancel, you actually have to revert back to a version 1 year old. It's pretty messed up. Plus the updates have REALLY been lacking. They have missed the quarterly releases regularly and it just feels like very little has actually been added.
  - codewithcheese 9y ago
    Your essentially paying for the product at the time of your payment and a 12 month subscription to updates. From that point of view it makes some sense that once your subscription is finished you revert back to the original product you bought you when subscribed. It does seem unnecessarily punitive though.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - 0xTJ 9y ago
      I prefer the model with Matlab, where you pay once, get a year of updates, and keep the last version.
ChickeNES 9y ago
I won't buy another Pragmatic Press book after buying the Practical Vim second edition Kindle book only to find that the cursor positions are missing throughout the entire book. I posted on their forums about it only to be told that they had submitted the update and it was out of their hands. It's now been a year and a half and the update still hasn't appeared, and as I waited for the non-existent update to appear, I couldn't get a refund.
- lando2319 9y ago
  that is unacceptable, there is an entire chapter on cursor positioning, must be pretty boring without the cursor.
- AndyHunt 9y ago
  I'm very sorry to hear that. But unfortunately, support was correct. We can't control when -- or IF -- Amazon ever ships an update that we provide. If you buy from us directly, we ship out updates to books regularly. In this case, if you email me directly, I'll email you the latest version of that book by hand. Also, for anyone who wants to own individual ebooks, please help yourself to this coupon: iLoveEbooks, good for 30% off at pragprog.com. Thanks, /\ndy
  - MonkeyIsNull 9y ago
    Yeah, this is why I always buy direct from you guys. You do a bang up job of rolling out updates.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - chris_wot 9y ago
    This is why I also love Pragmatic Press and have also purchased from you in the past. Thank you for being awesome!
- nobleach 9y ago
  Oh that's terrible! I bought the 1st edition in print, and I can't imagine who ridiculous it would be without the cursor.
chasing 9y ago
> 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?
- mark_l_watson 9y ago
  I agree with you. I have a Safari subscription and I have mostly stopped buying computer science text books (I buy only 7 or 8 a year now). Now instead of looking on stack overflow or doing a web search, I login to Safari, find a recent book, and read the parts that are useful/interesting.
  - gglitch 9y ago
    Same. When I got an email yesterday saying that my ACM membership now gives me complete access to the entire Safari platform and all its content, it was like the last several Christmases all wrapped up in one. Just extraordinary how much useful content just became available to me, and all searchable too. Amazing.
- lucaspm98 9y ago
  It's honestly just a personal preference which model you prefer more. I can respect a business choosing either model, but ideally having both options is the best.
- tomku 9y ago
  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.

pirocks 9y ago

Random question: What did you switch to when you dropped JetBrains, and did you notice a productivity drop?

reitanqild 9y ago
Former user of Eclipse an IntelliJ, now Netbeans: For some people (like me) Netbeans is awesome. I love the fact that it can use pom as its own project model and IMO it aligns better with OS keyboard shortcuts (Win and Linux at least) than VS, eclipse and IntelliJ). Be prepared for weird reactions though: it seems everyone "knows" it is awful.

clumsysmurf 9y ago

As a Lightroom user myself, I'm a bit worried about that. Since the subscription model began, Lightroom seems to have languished a bit - and its been years since a standalone release. Lets hope Affinity can put out a competitive DAM tool.

ghaff 9y ago
In all fairness, for me at least, Lightroom seems to have gotten to a place where it does what it needs to do with acceptable performance. It doesn't seem to have a lot of obvious functionality holes.Of course, it also doesn't have a lot of competition which may partially explain the pace of change too. If I had to guess, I suspect Lightroom will end up as only a subscription offering at some point. It's hard to see why it would remain an outlier. I'm sure there would be great hue and cry but I actually use it enough that I wouldn't be all that bothered.

ehnto 9y ago

It is worth noting JetBrains still offer buy it once and own it licenses, and even their subscription grants you an eternal license to the particular version you were on when you stopped subscribing.

detaro 9y ago
> then re-joined them when they went to "Subscription + keep your start of subscription version forever".
- ehnto 9y ago
  Oh, yeah I missed that. Cheers!
nightski 9y ago
I'm pretty sure it's to the version that is 12 months behind when you stopped subscribing. You have to subscribe for an entire year to own the version when you started. So if you subscribe for 12 months, and then cancel, you actually have to revert back to a version 1 year old. It's pretty messed up. Plus the updates have REALLY been lacking. They have missed the quarterly releases regularly and it just feels like very little has actually been added.
- codewithcheese 9y ago
  Your essentially paying for the product at the time of your payment and a 12 month subscription to updates. From that point of view it makes some sense that once your subscription is finished you revert back to the original product you bought you when subscribed. It does seem unnecessarily punitive though.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - 0xTJ 9y ago
    I prefer the model with Matlab, where you pay once, get a year of updates, and keep the last version.

ChickeNES 9y ago

I won't buy another Pragmatic Press book after buying the Practical Vim second edition Kindle book only to find that the cursor positions are missing throughout the entire book. I posted on their forums about it only to be told that they had submitted the update and it was out of their hands. It's now been a year and a half and the update still hasn't appeared, and as I waited for the non-existent update to appear, I couldn't get a refund.

lando2319 9y ago
that is unacceptable, there is an entire chapter on cursor positioning, must be pretty boring without the cursor.
AndyHunt 9y ago
I'm very sorry to hear that. But unfortunately, support was correct. We can't control when -- or IF -- Amazon ever ships an update that we provide. If you buy from us directly, we ship out updates to books regularly. In this case, if you email me directly, I'll email you the latest version of that book by hand. Also, for anyone who wants to own individual ebooks, please help yourself to this coupon: iLoveEbooks, good for 30% off at pragprog.com. Thanks, /\ndy
- MonkeyIsNull 9y ago
  Yeah, this is why I always buy direct from you guys. You do a bang up job of rolling out updates.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- chris_wot 9y ago
  This is why I also love Pragmatic Press and have also purchased from you in the past. Thank you for being awesome!
nobleach 9y ago
Oh that's terrible! I bought the 1st edition in print, and I can't imagine who ridiculous it would be without the cursor.

chasing 9y ago

> 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?

mark_l_watson 9y ago
I agree with you. I have a Safari subscription and I have mostly stopped buying computer science text books (I buy only 7 or 8 a year now). Now instead of looking on stack overflow or doing a web search, I login to Safari, find a recent book, and read the parts that are useful/interesting.
- gglitch 9y ago
  Same. When I got an email yesterday saying that my ACM membership now gives me complete access to the entire Safari platform and all its content, it was like the last several Christmases all wrapped up in one. Just extraordinary how much useful content just became available to me, and all searchable too. Amazing.
lucaspm98 9y ago
It's honestly just a personal preference which model you prefer more. I can respect a business choosing either model, but ideally having both options is the best.
tomku 9y ago
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.