You can get $5 O'Reilly EPUBs from the App Store everyday.
Extracting an epub from an iPhone app is easy. First you unzip the .ipa file. Then you cd to Payload/*/book. Finally, you zip up the files to an .epub file: zip -X ~/book.epub mimetype && zip -r9DX ~/book.epub META-INF OEBPS.
mimetype must be first in the archive for validity, which you can test with EpubCheck.
This is definitely a hacky way to go. I just tried it with Matz’s Ruby book. Reading it with Stanza on OSX is just about the ugliest digital reading experience outside of scanned text.
If I had an iPad I might consider it to see if I can read on that, but I've found that I only ever read books when printed on the pulped, mangled, processed bodies of brutally murdered trees.
From what I've seen, O'Reilly material works well on iPad. I have a subscription to Safari Library, and have tried using it three ways on my iPad.
1. For those books that support the HTML view, I've read them in the browser from the Safari Library web site. These have been excellent, including diagrams and code snippets. One or two books have had slight formatting problems (a line of example code not wrapping).
2. For books that don't support the HTML view, or books that I've downloaded as PDFs (part of the my subscription is a certain number of "download tokens" that can be redeemed to download chapters or whole books), I've read then in GoodReader. This has worked out fine.
3. Finally, they offer some books for download in EPub format. I've tried those in iBooks, and they've been good. I've also used the free program Calibre to convert some of the PDFs I downloaded to EPub and they have worked fine.
I am quite pleased with the combination of O'Reilly Safari Library and my iPad.
Oh, they've also announced that this summer there will be a Safari Library iPad application. That should be interesting.
Why would an iPad help? It still has the eyeball-melting backlight, and it has a glossy screen, so you have to read through a reflection.
There's a reason why people like e-ink-based ebook readers so much. They may not have games, but they are really good for reading ebooks. (Though I admit that the normal Kindle is not so great for books that have diagrams.)
Especially for technical books where I end up flipping around pages back and forth something that the computer probably will never be able to model intuitively.
Though I must say I like my kindle enough that it is readable for normal books.
FYI: Looks like ordering multiple books created issues getting delivery of yesterday's purchases. I also lost the discount after checkout. Today's order pricing isn't what was reflected at checkout.
Today the two titles I bought in two orders are listed as "registered" under the registered books area.
Order status on both orders reflects "BOOKED", but shipped is 0, download link is not active, and the books are not listed in the downloads section.
One purchase shows the discount, the other reflects full price without discount.
An email to O'Reilly auto-responded with this:
> Thank you for contacting O'Reilly Media Customer Service. We are experiencing a very heavy volume of orders due to our recent promotion. This is affecting the delivery and access of your electronic media. Please be patient and keep checking your account.
TL;DR: Buyers should double-check orders to see what was actually charged.
I think there are some valuable lessons to be learned by this sale for O'Reilly, tech publishers and authors.
* 9.99 standard pricing will result in incredibly high sales volumes (the servers would not nearly have been overloaded if everyone wasn't clamoring to get their purchases in before the deadline)
* Publishers and authors need to decide whether they want larger margins w/low volumes - I am of the understanding that selling 5k copies is considered a best seller in the tech market - instead of lower margins with higher volumes. I'm hoping that the results of yesterday's sale might make them consider the first point above.
It would be interesting to see if O'Reilly released some statistics on book sales in the wake of yesterday's server bloodbath.
Myself, I bought a pile of books that I otherwise would not have bought. I have an O'Reilly Safari subscription that is already saving me tons of money, and the low price just pushed me over the edge to buy some local copies of books that I might have otherwise just had in my bookshelf for a month.
- Javascript: The Good Parts (http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596517748/)
- High Performance Javascript (http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596802806/)
It's always a good time to buy a few classics:
- Information Architecture for the WWW (http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596527341/)
- Javascript: The definitive guide (http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596101992/)
- Beautiful Code (http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596510046/)
My book 'Programming Windows Azure' just came out today. :) I feel bad about plugging it here but hey, I put heart & soul into it for the last one year so I feel justified :).
If it helps, I need to point out that my book is chock-full of Star Trek, BSG and Monty Python references and the surprising backstory of how Windows Azure's orginal code name came to be. :)
I grabbed Hadoop: The Definitive Guide
Tomcat: The definitive Guide 2nd ed (this one I have access to via ACM membership but those rotate out potentially so eh)
Head first Statistics (my math skills are beyond rusty, and the head first books tend to be good.
However either due to overload or something, while I was able to place my order, the books are not showing up in my available list yet. Figure I'll give them until tomorrow then throw an email at them asking what's wrong.
97 Things Every Programmer Should Know (ed. Kevlin Henney) is sort of nice reading. All pretty smart ideas so far, imho. Though I haven't finished reading it.
This caught my eye...
And then I remembered that my safaribooksonline subscription lets me read all the o'reilly books I want, and thousands of other tech books, for $20.00 a month.
For anyone who wants to use this coupon, I'm not sure why you wouldn't just get yourself a month on safari... or a free trial for that matter....
Any ideas?
Strangely this promotion led me to pick up the "MEAP" edition of Clojure in Action from Manning Publications. I already had The Joy of Clojure and I wanted to see the other side.
I can't think of anything O'Reilly offers that I want to read right now aside from maybe Agile Web Development with Rails.
Seems like this is a popular promotion, based on their website performance. I wonder if it will make anyone reconsider the recent controversy over Amazon's pricing for Kindle editions. Seems like lots of people are willing to buy e-books for $9.99.
Yeah at $9.99 it's worth picking up things for a look. At $30-$40 you want to be sure you'll have the time to read it and it's something useful/ interesting.
These are technical books that retail for $30-$60; so $9 is a great price.
Amazon is charging $12-$13 for some novels that sell in hardback for $15, and $6.99 for some novels that are $7.99 in paperback. That's not such a great deal.
Out of curiosity anyone able to download their books yet? The loading data screen no longer hangs for 20+ seconds, but it still doesn't find the books.
[+] [-] just_the_tip|16 years ago|reply
Extracting an epub from an iPhone app is easy. First you unzip the .ipa file. Then you cd to Payload/*/book. Finally, you zip up the files to an .epub file: zip -X ~/book.epub mimetype && zip -r9DX ~/book.epub META-INF OEBPS.
mimetype must be first in the archive for validity, which you can test with EpubCheck.
[+] [-] ydant|16 years ago|reply
They are in multi-file HTML format inside the APK, so this is even cheaper and given I wanted them on the Android phone/tablet anyway, easier.
Even better the eBook app O'Reilly delivers has an "Export to ePub" button that will send it to an ePub on your sdcard.
[+] [-] anotherperson|16 years ago|reply
Oh well, it only set me back 5 bucks.
[+] [-] dtf|16 years ago|reply
We're sorry, an error has occurred in our application.
So now I've finally given up after the tenth attempt. I guess O'Reilly won't be selling me that copy of Building Scalable Websites after all.
[+] [-] DannoHung|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|16 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] swombat|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tzs|16 years ago|reply
1. For those books that support the HTML view, I've read them in the browser from the Safari Library web site. These have been excellent, including diagrams and code snippets. One or two books have had slight formatting problems (a line of example code not wrapping).
2. For books that don't support the HTML view, or books that I've downloaded as PDFs (part of the my subscription is a certain number of "download tokens" that can be redeemed to download chapters or whole books), I've read then in GoodReader. This has worked out fine.
3. Finally, they offer some books for download in EPub format. I've tried those in iBooks, and they've been good. I've also used the free program Calibre to convert some of the PDFs I downloaded to EPub and they have worked fine.
I am quite pleased with the combination of O'Reilly Safari Library and my iPad.
Oh, they've also announced that this summer there will be a Safari Library iPad application. That should be interesting.
[+] [-] jrockway|16 years ago|reply
There's a reason why people like e-ink-based ebook readers so much. They may not have games, but they are really good for reading ebooks. (Though I admit that the normal Kindle is not so great for books that have diagrams.)
[+] [-] wwortiz|16 years ago|reply
Though I must say I like my kindle enough that it is readable for normal books.
But there is just something about paper :)
[+] [-] kmfrk|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ydant|16 years ago|reply
Use coupon code FAVFA - prices won't be discounted until check-out.
It works for multiple books, although the headline looks like it's for a single book.
[+] [-] Terretta|16 years ago|reply
FYI: Looks like ordering multiple books created issues getting delivery of yesterday's purchases. I also lost the discount after checkout. Today's order pricing isn't what was reflected at checkout.
Today the two titles I bought in two orders are listed as "registered" under the registered books area.
Order status on both orders reflects "BOOKED", but shipped is 0, download link is not active, and the books are not listed in the downloads section.
One purchase shows the discount, the other reflects full price without discount.
An email to O'Reilly auto-responded with this:
> Thank you for contacting O'Reilly Media Customer Service. We are experiencing a very heavy volume of orders due to our recent promotion. This is affecting the delivery and access of your electronic media. Please be patient and keep checking your account.
TL;DR: Buyers should double-check orders to see what was actually charged.
[+] [-] slantyyz|16 years ago|reply
* 9.99 standard pricing will result in incredibly high sales volumes (the servers would not nearly have been overloaded if everyone wasn't clamoring to get their purchases in before the deadline)
* Publishers and authors need to decide whether they want larger margins w/low volumes - I am of the understanding that selling 5k copies is considered a best seller in the tech market - instead of lower margins with higher volumes. I'm hoping that the results of yesterday's sale might make them consider the first point above.
It would be interesting to see if O'Reilly released some statistics on book sales in the wake of yesterday's server bloodbath.
Myself, I bought a pile of books that I otherwise would not have bought. I have an O'Reilly Safari subscription that is already saving me tons of money, and the low price just pushed me over the edge to buy some local copies of books that I might have otherwise just had in my bookshelf for a month.
[+] [-] cschep|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fredoliveira|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sriramk|16 years ago|reply
Obligatory O'Reilly and Amazon links
http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596801984 http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0596801971
If it helps, I need to point out that my book is chock-full of Star Trek, BSG and Monty Python references and the surprising backstory of how Windows Azure's orginal code name came to be. :)
[+] [-] Jun8|16 years ago|reply
I was trying to buy:
* Making Things Talk (great into to networking with low-level HW)
* The Best of Instructables (excellent selection of mostly simple projects, includes IKEA hacking)
[+] [-] mechanician|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mattyb|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] runevault|16 years ago|reply
However either due to overload or something, while I was able to place my order, the books are not showing up in my available list yet. Figure I'll give them until tomorrow then throw an email at them asking what's wrong.
[+] [-] tmsh|16 years ago|reply
(Like a lot of O'Reilly books these days, it's available in a free (legal) form on the internet too http://programmer.97things.oreilly.com/wiki/index.php/Contri... )
[+] [-] johkra|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kingtoe|16 years ago|reply
For anyone who wants to use this coupon, I'm not sure why you wouldn't just get yourself a month on safari... or a free trial for that matter.... Any ideas?
[+] [-] kanwisher|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] psyklic|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dpritchett|16 years ago|reply
I can't think of anything O'Reilly offers that I want to read right now aside from maybe Agile Web Development with Rails.
[+] [-] CWuestefeld|16 years ago|reply
Oddly, "Free to Choose" (https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Free_to_Choos... ) is not one of the books that you can buy.
[+] [-] Alex63|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] robryan|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xsmasher|16 years ago|reply
Amazon is charging $12-$13 for some novels that sell in hardback for $15, and $6.99 for some novels that are $7.99 in paperback. That's not such a great deal.
[+] [-] anirudh|16 years ago|reply
We expect to have the issue resolved soon. Please continue to check back or contact our Customer Service: [email protected]
[+] [-] runevault|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dreyfiz|16 years ago|reply
R in a Nutshell, 1Ed
Real World Haskell, 1Ed
iPhone Game Development, 1Ed
Cocoa and Objective-C: Up and Running, 1Ed
JavaScript: The Good Parts, 1Ed
Programming Collective Intelligence, 1Ed
Head First Statistics, 1Ed
Head First Data Analysis, 1Ed
Confessions of a Public Speaker, 1Ed
iPhone 3D Programming, 1Ed
[+] [-] rbanffy|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bitboxer|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] slantyyz|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DannoHung|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nkassis|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] waterlesscloud|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] metamemetics|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AndrewO|16 years ago|reply