6 ms·

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 consistent

by rst 9y ago

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-knowledge-innovators-laura-baldwin https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/oreilly-mission-spreading-kno...

clumsysmurf 9y ago
But there are no DRM free high quality PDFs ... if you download a PDF from Play Books its a conversion.
- Buttons840 9y ago
  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 9y ago
    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
    - jacobolus 9y ago
      That seems to be two different screenshots of different parts of the Google version. The typesetting is pretty bad.
    - tren 9y ago
      We still sell all O'Reilly books DRM free in both PDF and ePUB. i.e. http://www.ebooks.com/95729334/designing-data-intensive-applications/kleppmann-martin/ http://www.ebooks.com/95729334/designing-data-intensive-appl.... If you click on preview (on a desktop), the preview is composed of images rendered from the PDF.
      - Buttons840 9y ago
        Why does that page you linked have a list of supported devices? It looks to me like ebooks.com does use DRM.
        tren 9y ago
        You're correct, it should have different info for DRM free books under the supported devices section. We do use DRM at ebooks.com, but only for the publishers that enforce us to use it (99% of publishers).
      - SSLy 9y ago
        >DRM-free >supported on "e-readers with Adobe Digital Editions installed" Someone is incorrect here.
        Crontab 9y ago
        The second statement is probably boilerplate but is concerning.
        tren 9y ago
        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.
        tjl 9y ago
        Looking at the info about the formats for that book it seems that the ePub and PDF are unrestricted.
    - drej 9y ago
      Actually, that's just two screenshots from the same Google Play version. A side-by-side with O'Reilly's PDF is striking https://twitter.com/kondrej/status/881120506161876992 https://twitter.com/kondrej/status/881120506161876992
clumsysmurf 9y ago
"Running oreilly.com as a distribution platform was effective, but also costly. It required a dedicated investment in e-commerce software, staff, marketing, and so on." Perhaps it was expensive because it was a platform for other publishers (and print) as well, but I doubt this would be true if they focused on their own selection of eBooks.

by rst 9y ago

clumsysmurf 9y ago

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

Buttons840 9y ago
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 9y ago
  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
  - jacobolus 9y ago
    That seems to be two different screenshots of different parts of the Google version. The typesetting is pretty bad.
  - tren 9y ago
    We still sell all O'Reilly books DRM free in both PDF and ePUB. i.e. http://www.ebooks.com/95729334/designing-data-intensive-applications/kleppmann-martin/ http://www.ebooks.com/95729334/designing-data-intensive-appl.... If you click on preview (on a desktop), the preview is composed of images rendered from the PDF.
    - Buttons840 9y ago
      Why does that page you linked have a list of supported devices? It looks to me like ebooks.com does use DRM.
      - tren 9y ago
        You're correct, it should have different info for DRM free books under the supported devices section. We do use DRM at ebooks.com, but only for the publishers that enforce us to use it (99% of publishers).
    - SSLy 9y ago
      >DRM-free >supported on "e-readers with Adobe Digital Editions installed" Someone is incorrect here.
      - Crontab 9y ago
        The second statement is probably boilerplate but is concerning.
        tren 9y ago
        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.
      - tjl 9y ago
        Looking at the info about the formats for that book it seems that the ePub and PDF are unrestricted.
  - drej 9y ago
    Actually, that's just two screenshots from the same Google Play version. A side-by-side with O'Reilly's PDF is striking https://twitter.com/kondrej/status/881120506161876992 https://twitter.com/kondrej/status/881120506161876992

clumsysmurf 9y ago

"Running oreilly.com as a distribution platform was effective, but also costly. It required a dedicated investment in e-commerce software, staff, marketing, and so on." Perhaps it was expensive because it was a platform for other publishers (and print) as well, but I doubt this would be true if they focused on their own selection of eBooks.