I don’t think you get the same level of access though? I tried an O’Reilly subscription directly then went the ACM route and remember being disappointed that it was a more limited subscription.
I just checked, and I've had an O'Reilly account since March of 2014 without major interruption, back when it was called Safari. It is by far the best source for high quality tech content out there. There is so much filler content in tech blogs, that I'm happy to pay to get access to high quality.
I must be on some grandfathered plan though, as I'm not paying near $500/year. That is a very steep price.
At one time I worked at a research institute. It had a huge library that was only partially filled. One of the directors wanted to buy every developer their own Safari subscription. The cost was quoted at around $4K/mo IIRC.
I pointed out that it would be far more cost–effective to simple let us request hard copies of whatever books we wanted, and then they would just stay in the library. No one worked remotely at the time.
We ended up getting Safari subscriptions for everyone.
I've worked in similar scenarios and advocated for the Safari subscription. The most obvious problem with the physical book solution is that not everyone can read the same book at the same time. In my experience it's very common that, because some topic is particularly relevant for the team, many people will want to read the same book. At the same time, you do not want 30 copies of a book that was read by everyone 3 years ago sitting on the shelf.
And, as far as expenses go for a research institute, $4k/mo is very inexpensive.
You can quite often get a $300 yearly sub to O'Reilly, they run a discount ~4 times a year.
That said, like a lot of other content subscriptions, it can be quite anxiety inducing to make it seem like you're getting your money's worth. I've gotten the sub via my work, and I think the labs and videos are quite good, plus the occasional opportunities to do live-chats with the authors. But you have to sift through a lot of content and dedicate a lot of hours to use them. For most folks, I think buying a few technical books a year as needed would be a much better use of time and money.
Anytime I'm asked for feedback via the O'Reilly website (I manage the business account for my company), the first thing I always say is that the app is unusable. I've tried it on my Amazon Fire Tablet, Ipad, different phones - it doesn't work.
The user metrics in O'reilly (and probably most learning apps) has floored in the last 12 months. I see they've launched a new AI platform now. They're definitely going in a direction - time will tell if it's the right one.
Personally, I'd love a website that can provide all the ebooks oreilly provides. But it needs to work on a tablet.
> Personally, I'd love a website that can provide all the ebooks oreilly provides. But it needs to work on a tablet.
Can't you just download pirated copies as a pdf or epub and read them on any device? It feels much more convenient than using a shitty DRM app, and if you have ethical concerns nothing's stopping you from still paying for a subscription while doing that.
If you are in Bay area, San Francisco Public Library (sfpl.org) gives you access to O'Reilly for free, if you have library card, while it does not improve on usability issues, at 0 cost it is phenomenal resource.
> will most likely not make me renew my subscription for the new year. Given the price, it will be probably
Will the author find the time and energy to actually cancel the subscription? The fact that he wrote the blog post and still haven’t cancelled makes me wonder.
For me one of the best ways until now to get good quality IT books is (believe it or not): Humble Bundle (https://www.humblebundle.com/)
The past year they featured bundles from (quickly out of my head): O'Reilly, MIT Press, Manning, Pearson, Pragmatic Programmers and No Starch Press.
Oh, and Packt. But I left that one out because the quality of most Packt books is total shit (IMO).
It's the next best thing besides going on the seven seas if you want to reliably read IT related books on a ereader without spending a ton of money. (book bundles go for about $20 to $30 each, with most if of not all of them totaling up to $1000 or sometimes even more in value).
If you're fast there's still time to get these right now:
I have O'Reilly subs available both from my employer and my local library. Doesn't fix the UI issues but does at least shift the ROI calculus.
There are some applications that try to export O'Reilly books into Kindle formats, but every time I've tried they've mangled a few tables, formulas or sidebars, etc. I should probably sell or hand down my kindle and find something more suitable to O'Reilly.
I have figured that I’m going to get exactly one CS hobby that is not work, and 0 CS hobby if I can find a job that fits the hobby.
Then I figured there are less than ten books that I need to read, and probably less if I can get such a job because it is always a lot better to learn on the job.
So I agree with the author that such subscription is not very useful, and a paper book + a paper notepad are way better than reading books on a tablet.
I signed up many years ago when they had 50% off and then was allowed to renew at the same price. Made it very difficult to cancel, knowing that I will have to pay full price if I ever want it back, but one year I looked at how much I had paid in total for reading those books and decided to cancel anyway.
Great site though. I never used the app, but mobile browser support was not bad.
Paid for it to read computer books, and did a lot of that, but also discovered much else. They also had (have?) courses and paid video presentation. I noticed one series of videos I watched there would have cost more to watch legally than I paid for an entire year of O'Reilly.
Every library I've had a library card for (Toronto Public Library 7ish years ago, and BANQ Montréal) have had O'reilly subscriptions for free! A few other people have mentioned it in this thread with specific cities, but check your local one! It seems really common.
I'm grandfathered in at $200/year from the Safari days. The main advantage of the subscription to me is being able to evaluate several books on a topic to pick the one that is the best fit for what I need.
If I knew which books were best in category, it would be cheaper for me to just buy those specific books (or video courses, for things like Blender).
But if I had to pay the current $500 price, I wouldn't be a subscriber.
The moment O'Reilly went subscription-only they lost me as a customer. I have a huge library of O'Reilly books I've purchased as PDFs. Shit I've got a huge library of print O'Reilly books despite years of slimming down.
It really sucked because I've been learning from O'Reilly books for thirty years. But I've become fundamentally opposed to DRM on media and subscription-only access is the ultimate DRM. I don't have any desire to be locked into their app to access stuff I paid for and be at the whims of their poor UI decisions.
> Unfortunately, I cannot read technical books fast and definitely not fast enough to make the subscription be worth $500 per year.
For me I find the $500 to be a pretty clear win as far as value goes. My shelves are already overflowing with, while not "timeless", much slower aging technical books. But quite often, throughout a year, I'll want a deeper dive into a current topic than I can get from online resources + Claude. Quite often that dive involves wanting to look through multiple books (even if only using a few chapters).
I know I'm a dying breed, but, while I love AI for interactive exploration and learning, I find books more valuable in the era of endless YouTube tutorials and AI slop blog posts. Technical topics benefit from "big picture" thinking that basically doesn't exist in modern short-form web content.
I've concluded exactly the same!
It's far more cost effective to buy individual books than paying for the subscription.
Hard copies can also be sold if I decide not to keep them, which offsets costs even more
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[ 4.1 ms ] story [ 89.0 ms ] threadI must be on some grandfathered plan though, as I'm not paying near $500/year. That is a very steep price.
I pointed out that it would be far more cost–effective to simple let us request hard copies of whatever books we wanted, and then they would just stay in the library. No one worked remotely at the time.
We ended up getting Safari subscriptions for everyone.
And, as far as expenses go for a research institute, $4k/mo is very inexpensive.
That said, like a lot of other content subscriptions, it can be quite anxiety inducing to make it seem like you're getting your money's worth. I've gotten the sub via my work, and I think the labs and videos are quite good, plus the occasional opportunities to do live-chats with the authors. But you have to sift through a lot of content and dedicate a lot of hours to use them. For most folks, I think buying a few technical books a year as needed would be a much better use of time and money.
The user metrics in O'reilly (and probably most learning apps) has floored in the last 12 months. I see they've launched a new AI platform now. They're definitely going in a direction - time will tell if it's the right one.
Personally, I'd love a website that can provide all the ebooks oreilly provides. But it needs to work on a tablet.
Can't you just download pirated copies as a pdf or epub and read them on any device? It feels much more convenient than using a shitty DRM app, and if you have ethical concerns nothing's stopping you from still paying for a subscription while doing that.
Will the author find the time and energy to actually cancel the subscription? The fact that he wrote the blog post and still haven’t cancelled makes me wonder.
The past year they featured bundles from (quickly out of my head): O'Reilly, MIT Press, Manning, Pearson, Pragmatic Programmers and No Starch Press.
Oh, and Packt. But I left that one out because the quality of most Packt books is total shit (IMO).
It's the next best thing besides going on the seven seas if you want to reliably read IT related books on a ereader without spending a ton of money. (book bundles go for about $20 to $30 each, with most if of not all of them totaling up to $1000 or sometimes even more in value).
If you're fast there's still time to get these right now:
15 Linux/DevOps related books from O'Reilly: https://www.humblebundle.com/books/linux-from-beginner-to-pr...
20 Data Science/Data Engineering related books from O'Reilly: https://www.humblebundle.com/books/data-engineering-science-...
18 Hacking/Cybersec related books from No Starch: https://www.humblebundle.com/books/hacking-no-starch-books
19 Software Architecture related books from Pearson: https://www.humblebundle.com/books/software-architecture-pea...
29 AI related books from Manning: https://www.humblebundle.com/books/ultimate-ai-algorithms-an...
21 Microsoft Certification prep books from Pearson: https://www.humblebundle.com/books/microsoft-certification-p...
19 books on Software Strategy and Risk Management from Pragmatic Programmers: https://www.humblebundle.com/books/software-strategy-and-ris...
There are some applications that try to export O'Reilly books into Kindle formats, but every time I've tried they've mangled a few tables, formulas or sidebars, etc. I should probably sell or hand down my kindle and find something more suitable to O'Reilly.
Then I figured there are less than ten books that I need to read, and probably less if I can get such a job because it is always a lot better to learn on the job.
So I agree with the author that such subscription is not very useful, and a paper book + a paper notepad are way better than reading books on a tablet.
Great site though. I never used the app, but mobile browser support was not bad.
Paid for it to read computer books, and did a lot of that, but also discovered much else. They also had (have?) courses and paid video presentation. I noticed one series of videos I watched there would have cost more to watch legally than I paid for an entire year of O'Reilly.
If I knew which books were best in category, it would be cheaper for me to just buy those specific books (or video courses, for things like Blender).
But if I had to pay the current $500 price, I wouldn't be a subscriber.
Reading is never about being fast at doing it.
If you don't want to read a book, read it fast.
It really sucked because I've been learning from O'Reilly books for thirty years. But I've become fundamentally opposed to DRM on media and subscription-only access is the ultimate DRM. I don't have any desire to be locked into their app to access stuff I paid for and be at the whims of their poor UI decisions.
The reason was entirely the terrible state of their app.
- Random crashes, or times when it would not start up at all.
- Text to speech is unusable because it cannot start reading at a specific point. Only at the beginning.
- Cannot download epub to use with a different (better) epub reader.
So even though it would not cost me anything, I realized I would never use it due to the issues with their app.
For me I find the $500 to be a pretty clear win as far as value goes. My shelves are already overflowing with, while not "timeless", much slower aging technical books. But quite often, throughout a year, I'll want a deeper dive into a current topic than I can get from online resources + Claude. Quite often that dive involves wanting to look through multiple books (even if only using a few chapters).
I know I'm a dying breed, but, while I love AI for interactive exploration and learning, I find books more valuable in the era of endless YouTube tutorials and AI slop blog posts. Technical topics benefit from "big picture" thinking that basically doesn't exist in modern short-form web content.