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Ask HN: Did you stop buying O'Reilly books after they ended their online shop?

8 points by bioinformatics ↗ HN
Now that's everything is on Safari, and there's not even book releases on O'Reilly's site, did you guys stopped buying/accessing/learning from their books?

I am usually more connected to Manning and PragPub ATM.

9 comments

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ocdtrekkie
Well, technically yes, but technically no. I definitely didn't subscribe to Safari, but I still pick up a significant volume of O'Reilly books via Humble Bundle. (This bundle is still going for the next five days: https://www.humblebundle.com/books/web-design-development-bo...)

I will only buy ebooks if they are either totally DRM-free or "watermarked". I have no desire for subscription access, login-required ebook schemes, etc. I had previously very much classified O'Reilly as one of the "good ones" for offering their books DRM-free, and mostly had to remove it as my go-to place to find books I need. Currently I lean towards Informit/Pearson if I need to buy a specific subject book on the spot.

Sevii
I buy paper copies on amazon.
Someone1234
I liked Safari, but I stopped buying computing books in general. The information contained within is often outdated almost immediately, misses a lot of nuance found in discussion (e.g. Stackoverflow), and is often harder to search than other digital resources.

There's a couple of books that I still buy, but the concepts contained within are evergreen (e.g. people management, project scheduling, Windows Internals, etc). Web development just moves too fast, even if you're stuck supporting IE11.

akulbe
This is WHY I primarily look for pre-release stuff on Safari. I consider it one of the best investments a tech person can make in their own continuing education, because by the time something gets to print, it's often obsolete already.
jackgolding
Yep I went on and had a look the other day because I used to buy a book from them every 2 months but I haven't looked at their books for 2 years their website made this nearly impossible.
thijsvandien
I used to buy over a dozen ebooks every year, but closing their store meant they lost me as a customer completely.
tedmiston
I've had a Safari Books subscription since before they closed the shop. Unlimited access to so many books is just invaluable. Also being able to access books before they are officially released.

I still occasionally buy a random tech book but just a couple per year vs viewing dozens to hundreds per year on Safari.

I'm a big fan of Pragmatic as well. A lot (all?) of their stuff is on Safari [1].

[1]: https://www.safaribooksonline.com/library/publisher/pragmati...

andyhnj
I used to buy both print and ebook format books from O'Reilly from time to time. I now have a Safari subscription (via my ACM membership), so I've stopped buying computer books almost entirely. Safari isn't perfect, but it's got a lot of books, covering most of the computing-related subjects that I'm interested in. I'd rather have DRM-free PDFs, but Safari is good enough for now.
Endy
I never started buying. My local public libraries got enough copies that I could read them when they came out in dead-tree.