7 ms·
OReilly offers 50% discount on ebooks in celebration of 'Day Against DRM'
- knodi 14y agoMost of the books are cheaper on Amazon even after the 50% discount...
- hackerboos 14y agoYou only get mobi on Amazon.
- dpcx 14y agoFor some people, that's enough. Not everyone needs 15 copies of the same book.
- dlisboa 14y agoNot everyone has a Kindle. Giving more choices should be the default. Amazon doesn't do it because they want you to buy their hardware. Until there's a standard every e-book reader abides to publishers should try to provide for everyone.
- wwweston 14y agoI'm not sure Amazon cares about selling hardware -- they have reading apps for Android, iOS, OS X, and the web, probably Windows too. I think it's more a desire to lock you in to their platform and maybe to make buying as low friction as possible.
- ipedrazas 14y agoYou tell me when in a few years you use a different ebook reader...
- mattl 14y agoIf they're DRM-free mobi, which I think ORA books are, then Calibre can easily convert them to ePub, etc.
- Ma8ee 14y agoMobi and the Kindle sucks for technical literature. Tables and program listings are often messed up and unreadable and it is too slow and awkward to jump between different sections. I love my Kindle for more linearly organized texts though, such as fiction or essays.
- marsee 14y agoAnd it has DRM on it.
- Thrymr 14y agoBut the point here is a "day against DRM". O'Reilly has really nice DRM-free editions, in multiple formats: PDF, ePub, Mobi, etc.
- Zigurd 14y agoProgramming Android http://www.amazon.com/dp/1449316646/ http://www.amazon.com/dp/1449316646/ and http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920023005.do http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920023005.do is about $1.80 less expensive at shop.oreilly.com after the discount Plus, you get a choice of formats. Amazon sells only Kindle format e-books.
- mrkmcknz 14y agowith OReilly can't you just enter the ISBN and get the book for $4.99? edit: This is through registering your(already purchased) print books and then purchasing the corresponding e-book.
- eterpstra 14y agoYeah, you can get ebooks for $5 if you 'own' a hard copy. And you prove that you own the hard copy by typing in the ISBN. Also, they spam out 50% off coupons for ebooks every week.
- hackerboos 14y agoBut ISBNs are available on Amazon.
- scarmig 14y agoI think the idea is that "well, if someone's gonna be a dick and get our books against our expressed will, they'll probably just download them off the internet."
- AjithAntony 14y agoI actually have a Safari books online membership, and it gives me "tokens" to download books. The ironic thing is that the safari downloaded books are of poorer quality and in fewer formats than the Oreilly.com books. Sometimes I cheat and pay $5 for the pristine and versatile oreilly book. My rationalization is that I'm entitled to the highest quality reading experience because I'm paying them $50/mo for the subscription.
- smartial_arts 14y agoThanks heaps for this awesome hint! Just registered my copy of "definitive guide" to get an ebook much cheaper!
- floor 14y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5649758 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5649758
- DanielStraight 14y agoAny recommendations of must-have O'Reilly books? 5000+ items is a heck of a lot to look through in one day.
- jiggy2011 14y agoNarrow it down to topics you actually want to learn?
- DanielStraight 14y agoI was imagining building a list of books which are included which are generally recommended as must-reads, so people could fill out their libraries of known top books.
- thejosh 14y agoDon't feel you need to rush out and bulk purchase books. O'Reilly often offer large discounts like this one.
- incision 14y ago"Collective Intelligence" is a recent favorite and I notice that a bunch stuff from No Starch Press (The TCP/IP Guide / Think Like a Programmer), which I've become a fan of recently, is on sale.
- toby 14y agoThanks! That's my book, appreciate you mentioning it.
- self 14y agoIf it helps, I bought Conrad Barski's Land of Lisp and Steven Levy's Hackers (25th anniversary edition).
- danso 14y agoFYI, ebooks are always 50% off at O'Reilly...at least for the past few years that I've been buying from them.
- Spoom 14y agoYep, for the last few months I've been able to find a working 50% off coupon code for all eBooks. http://www.retailmenot.com/view/oreilly.com http://www.retailmenot.com/view/oreilly.com
- marsee 14y agoThat's the discount for user group members offered through O'Reilly's user group program.
- atc 14y agoI've bought a book just to say "O'Reilly, this is what I want ebooks to be!".
- rurounijones 14y agoAny recommendations for ruby related o'reilly books that may be hidden gems? (Not aimed at beginners) Also any recommended books related to web-development / scaling / new languages like go in general which a dev may not buy as a matter of course would be nice also. I get most of my stuff from pragprog but am open to other options.
- jamesbritt 14y agoAny recommendations for ruby related o'reilly books that may be hidden gems? (Not aimed at beginners) Greg Brown's Ruby Best Practices. http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596523015.do http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596523015.do
- nnnnni 14y agoPun intended?
- route3 14y agoSlightly off-topic observation: 2 results for: django > Books 46 results for: rails > Books Can anyone speak to the demand, or lack thereof, for Django books and educational material? Do large(r) technical publishers not see a viable market for Django books? I read Two Scoops Of Django (on vacation, no less) and would love to see more books on Django best practices.
- raverbashing 14y agoYes, this is interesting. When I learned Django, the existing books were, how can I put it, awful. Really Sorry, but the ones that were "recommended" to me had no sense of a learning curve whatsoever. I was left frustrated by them, thinking I would never learn this. And beyond the Django tutorial on the site, you're left all by yourself. 2SoD is good, but it's a book for advanced users. It is really a sad situation.
- stmchn 14y agoTo be fair, Django has excellent documentation and a great online community of bloggers and people to poke with questions. I've rarely come to a situation where I was truly off on my own. Although, yeah, I would love to see more Django books out there.
- raverbashing 14y agoYes, the documentation is very good, what confuses people is what to look up (if you don't know where to look) or in what order to learn things.
- absconditus 14y agoPerform a job search for the same two topics.
- mynegation 14y agoI wonder if this has to deal with some external factors, like availability of a good free book (often times from the makers), or volatility of APIs. Having said that, for a long time I have been evaluating popularity, risk of adoption, and job market impact of technologies using the number of O'Reilly books and videos published on the subject as a crude measure.
- imdhmd 14y agoDuplicate of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5649458 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5649458 Does this happen often here? Sorry in advance for digressing, but had to ask.
- denzil_correa 14y agoOh well it does, it has happened to me a lot as well. That said, I think the duplicate is due to the difference in URLs of our submission links. Of course, timing on HN matters a lot as well.
- dougk7 14y agoAny recommendations for great books on DevOps or iOS Programming?
- sinak 14y agoOffering books without DRM is awesome, but as consumers should also have the right to remove DRM to use works in non-copyright infringing ways. For example, commentary, academic use, parody, criticism, and making backup copies. At the moment, circumventing DRM for non-infringing reasons is illegal. Which is why Section 1201 of the DMCA needs to be fixed. Join the movement: http://fixthedmca.org http://fixthedmca.org
- rdhyee 14y agoI signed the petition and told my friends about it. Fixing the DMCA is key.
- mtgx 14y agoRelevant post from a few days ago from Tor Books on DRM: http://www.tor.com/blogs/2013/04/tor-books-uk-drm-free-one-year-later http://www.tor.com/blogs/2013/04/tor-books-uk-drm-free-one-y...
- WestCoastJustin 14y agoNot sure how widely this is know but you can use Safari Books Online [1] for a monthly fee (about the price of a typical book) and just read them on-line. I generally read the book and use them as referenced in real life and this translates perfectly to an on-line media. Also, there is no waiting for the books to show up!! p.s. my office also has a corporate account with books24x7 [2], but thier on-line format is not as good as Safari's. [1] http://www.safaribooksonline.com/ http://www.safaribooksonline.com/ [2] http://books24x7.com/ http://books24x7.com/
- pm90 14y ago+1 If you're a student, its likely that your University library has purchased this on your behalf. Mine has, and I get all oreilly books online, free :)
- 147 14y agoThanks, I had no idea I had access to these books until now.
- lesterbuck 14y agoAnd public libraries. For example, if you live in the Houston area, the Harris County Public Library has several licenses to Safari. (hcpl.net) I sure wish O'Reilly had an affiliate program. I would collect the name of every public library system that offered Safari, SEO the name of O'Reilly books, and direct people to their local library's license of Safari with a helpful affiliate ad to buy their own copy. Note: the public library version of Safari is not quite the same as a personal (or corporate?) license, but it is very similar.
- evolve2k 14y agoJavaScript - The Good Parts $12 http://shop.oreilly.com/product/mobile/9780596517748.do http://shop.oreilly.com/product/mobile/9780596517748.do
- darasen 14y agoIf I wanted to learn a new topic, such as Python, in general what series are considered better? ie Head First, Missing Manual, Novice to Ninja... Any opinions ?
- brent_noorda 14y agoAm I the only one bothered by the fact the software is free, but the e-books are not? They're both merely an arrangement of bits in files, duplicated at a near-zero cost. But one of these (the free one) has usually gone through many man-years of development while the other (the one that costs money) is the result of a few man-weeks or months of effort. Oh, wait, I just learned that the the non-free quickie version of bits is now available at 50% off. Never mind.
- L0j1k 14y agoThe title of this should read: "OReilly offers 50% discount on ebooks in celebration of 'Hoping To Sell More eBooks'".
- paul_f 14y agoIs it just me or are OReilly books only valuable in print form? I keep them open on my desk and can easily flip around and find what I need. Can't do the same with an eBook. An OReilly eBook is not terribly useful IMO and not even worth half the print edition.
- nightski 14y agoGet another monitor? :)