O'Reilly News & Commentary

E-Readers Up Close: Using the Sony PRS-700

By William Stanek
November 18, 2009

William Stanek here, continuing with the in-depth look at e-readers and e-books. The recap: In my earlier blog entries, I've explored the ins and outs of e-ink, electronic paper displays (EPDs) and e-readers. Now, I'm examining individual readers as a case study in how e-readers work. As I stated in previous posts, my hope is that if you are better informed, you can decide whether e-readers are right for you. So here's another installment in the Sony Reader discussion, focusing on the features of the Sony PRS-700.

E-Readers Up Close: Getting to know the Sony Readers, Part 2

By William Stanek
November 10, 2009

William Stanek here, continuing with the in-depth look at e-readers and e-books. In my earlier blog entries, I introduced EPDs, discussed how the technology works, and delved briefly into ways they're being used. Now, I'm examining the Sony Reader as a case study in how e-readers work. My hope is that if you are better informed, you can decide whether an e-reader is right for you. And who knows, an e-reader may just replace your MP3 player as your favorite device. And now, back to the Sony Reader discussion of the PRS 505 and the PRS-700.

E-Readers Up Close: Getting to know the Sony Readers, Part 1

By William Stanek
November 9, 2009

William Stanek here, taking an up close look at e-readers. First up, the Sony e-readers. Sony unveiled its first reader device in January 2006 and the device became available in early 2007. The Sony Reader, like all currently available e-readers, has a black-and-white active matrix EPD display. As with other devices and E Ink itself, the Sony Reader has evolved through several generations of products.

Safari Books Online 6.0: A Cloud Library as an alternate model for ebooks

By Tim O'Reilly
October 28, 2009

Most people thinking about ebooks are focused on creating an electronic recreation of print books. At O'Reilly, we've tried to focus not on the form of the book but on the job that it does for our customers. It teaches, it informs, it entertains. How might electronic publishing help us to advance those aims? Safari Books Online, our subscription based online library, was our answer. And it just got better. Safari Books Online 6.0, released yesterday, brings a new level of ease of use. Safari adopted a "cloud library" model rather than downloadable ebooks as its fundamental design metaphor. I thought it might be worthwhile to understand how we arrived at that decision, as well as some of the other lessons we’ve learned over what is now 22 years of ebook publishing experience.

Windows 7 Ebook Giveaway Has Ended. - We've drawn the winners of the Ebook giveaway contest.

By Laurel Ackerman
October 26, 2009

Thanks so much to those who took the time to leave a comment to our Windows 7 is Here post. We have our lucky winners, listed at the bottom of this post.

Windows 7 is Here! - Win free Ebooks.

By Laurel Ackerman
October 21, 2009

Windows 7 becomes widely available today, and O'Reilly has 2 new books to help you make the most of it.

"He not busy being born is busy dying"

By Tim O'Reilly
October 14, 2009

I found myself quoting that great Bob Dylan line the other day on a mailing list for those dealing with the changes sweeping through the publishing industry. Michael Coffey from Publisher's Weekly wrote an eloquent and moving lament that expresses the fear of many that the book might be losing its pre-eminent position in the cultural canon.

Behind the Scenes at O'Reilly Media's Digital Books - Interview with O'Reilly's Andrew Savikas

By O'Reilly Media
October 7, 2009

MyMac Magazine's John Nemerovski interviewed O'Reilly's VP of digital initiatives Andrew Savikas about ebook publishing. "The market for individual downloadable ebooks has only recently matured," explained Savikas. "But with the adoption of EPUB as a standard, and the emergence of Kindle and especially iPhone for mobile reading, we've seen a huge uptick in interest and sales of ebooks." Explore the state of the art of electronic publishing from the comfort of your desk. Register today for O'Reilly's Tools of Change for Publishing Online Conference, 8 October.

Four short links: 5 October 2009 - Bozo Cloud Talk, Annotation Fail(ish), Python MySQL Slash, and Infinite Books

By Nat Torkington
October 5, 2009

Brown Cloud Marketing -- An advertorial "interviewing" the general manager of a company offering "DNS in the cloud". This might be a worthwhile service, but the way he markets it (by saying open source is "freeware" and the market leader is "legacy") reveals a rich vein of bozo. This and more in today's Four Short Links.

Rebooting the Book (One Apple iPad Tablet at a Time)

By Mark Sigal
September 23, 2009

The book business is under assault. Book sales have been stagnating for some time, Amazon is the industry's boogeyman, and more terrifying, book publishers have no idea how to market books in a world (largely) devoid of bookstores. Moreover, in the age of the always on, it's fair to ask, do people even still read anymore? Just as it re-envisioned the Media Player, the Mobile Phone and Mobile Computing, Apple is well positioned to reboot the Book with its forthcoming iPad Tablet.

Talk Like a Pirate and Think Like a Pirate Contest Has Ended - We have our winners

By Laurel Ackerman
September 22, 2009

Thanks so much to those who took the time to leave a comment to our Talk Like a Pirate and Think Like a Pirate post. We have our winners.

Talk Like a Pirate and Think Like a Pirate - Chance to win Ebooks

By Laurel Ackerman
September 19, 2009

Online security is critical for any website or application. To outsmart your enemies you have to think like them. O'Reilly has a number of books that tell you what to be on the lookout for and how to protect your online property from attack, as well as learn about vulnerabilities you may not be aware of. Share your best security advice and tips for a chance to win an ebook!

Labor Day Weekend Question Contest Has Ended - We have our winners

By Laurel Ackerman
September 9, 2009

Thanks so much to those who took the time to leave a comment to our Labor Day Weekend Question post. We have our winners.

Four short links: 8 September 2009 - Mobile jQuery, API to Google Book Search, Open Learning, Popularity Algorithms

By Nat Torkington
September 8, 2009

jQTouch -- Want some help developing your mobile app for the iPhone, Android, PalmPre or other device? Check out jQTouch, a plugin for mobile web development that offers a library of pre-built functions. Visit the jQTouch site to get the plugin and explore a demo. This and more in today's Four Short Links.

Labor Day Weekend Question: How Does O'Reilly Help You Work Better? - Chance to Win Free O'Reilly Ebooks

By Laurel Ackerman
September 3, 2009

We get tons of great feedback on oreilly.com; most of it positive, all of it appreciated. We hear how much people like the content, the format, the authors, and the forums. One additional thing that we're especially interested in, though, is hearing about how O'Reilly has helped you. Has a book helped you build a great project? Has attending a conference given you an edge at work? Has a training course helped you to advance your career or start a new one? Please tell us! We're going to leave this post open for comments through Tuesday 9/8; after that we'll randomly choose 5 commenters to each win a free O'Reilly Ebook of their choice. We're really looking to hearing from you!

Four short links: 14 August 2009 - EPub FTW, SQL Horror, Computer Vision Explained, and A Massive Dump of Twitter Stats

By Nat Torkington
August 14, 2009

Page2Pub -- A group at the Rochester Institute of Technology's Open Publishing Lab has produced Page2Pub, a "pair of applications that collects content from the web and reformats it for publication across other a wide range of media." The beta version allows users to gather wiki and other web content to produce a version in EPUB, then render a print-ready PDF book. See also Sony dropping its proprietary format and moving to EPub. This and more in today's Four Short Links.

The App Store and the Long Tail Part 2: The Real "DRM" At Stake

By Andrew Savikas
August 11, 2009

A few weeks ago I wrote about how the small number of sales from many different countries were adding up to more than the large number of sales from the US in the App Store for our books. Our success got me wondering why there's not stronger interest from other publishers, especially trade publishers, in iPhone apps (besides concerns about pricing and the approval process). Then as I was looking at rankings for some of the top paid book apps, I spotted a possible answer.

Would an Apple Tablet be an Ereader? Yes and No.

By Andrew Savikas
July 28, 2009

Last Friday the latest round of rumors of an Apple Tablet swelled considerably after a piece from Apple Insider asserted the device is now on the 2010 product roadmap. The news sparked considerable interest among publishers, who apparently see this development as a "Kindle killer" that will upset Amazon's apparent dominance of the ebook ecosystem. It's understandable from the perspective of a publisher, but if this device actually exists, it's doubtful anyone at Apple sees it as an "ereader" any more than it sees the iPhone as "a GPS device."

What Ebook Resellers Should Learn from Scribd

By Andrew Savikas
July 7, 2009

Scribd made a splash when they opened up a "Scribd Store" for selling view and download access to documents. Their terms (80% to the document publisher) are quite generous, though one reason publishers keep so much is that most of the merchandising (including pricing) is self service -- Scribd could learn a lot from other media retailers if they're interested in really promoting document sales.

Why $9.99 Won't Always Be an eBook Pricing Ceiling

By Joe Wikert
May 19, 2009

Have you stumbled across any of those Kindle owners who get angry anytime they see an ebook price over $9.99? How about publishers who insist on maintaining their print list price for the e-version? Btw, for the record, at O'Reilly we typically fall somewhere in between; our "digital list price" is generally less than the print list price and, of course, Amazon is free to discount to an even lower price. As a consumer, when I see a Kindle price over $9.99 I'm highly likely to skip it.

Amazon's Physical vs. Digital Dissonance

By Andrew Savikas
May 19, 2009

In March of 2008, I wrote about the frustrating experience of trying to get this blog added to Kindle. Fourteen months later, apparently that "rather large ingestion queue" is still full, because the blog never showed up, and I never heard another peep about it. (There is now a self-publishing feature for blogs, but as with their self-publishing book feature (known as DTP), the standard terms of service you must accept to participate aren't something many commercial publishers will be willing or eager to swallow.)

Scribd Store a Welcome Addition to Ebook Market (and 650 O'Reilly Titles Included)

By Andrew Savikas
May 18, 2009

The document-sharing site Scribd has launched a new "Scribd Store" selling view and download access to documents and books. As part of the launch, there are now more than 650 O'Reilly ebooks now available for preview and sale in the Scribd store, and all include DRM-free PDF downloads with purchase. (Scribd will soon be adding EPUB as a format, and we'll make that available as soon as possible.)

Reinventing the Book in the Age of the Web

By Tim O'Reilly
April 29, 2009

There's a lot of excitement about ebooks these days, and rightly so. While Amazon doesn't release sales figures for the Kindle, there's no question that it represents a turning point in the public perception of ebook devices. And of course, there's Stanza, an open ebook platform for the iPhone, which has been downloaded more than a million times (and now has been bought by Amazon.) But simply putting books onto electronic devices is only the beginning.

Over 160 O'Reilly Books Now in Kindle Store (without DRM), More on the Way

By Andrew Savikas
April 17, 2009

I'm happy to announce that more than 160 O'Reilly books are now available on Kindle, and are being sold without any DRM (Digital Rights Management). Though we do offer more than 400 ebooks direct from our website, the number for sale on Kindle will be limited until Amazon updates Kindle 1 to support table rendering ("maybe this summer" is the most specific they would get). We expect to add another 100 or so titles in the coming weeks; those have needed a more detailed analysis of the table content to identify good candidates. There were two main reasons we held our books back from sale on Kindle: poor rendering of complex content and compulsory DRM.

Open Publishing Distribution System -- an Open-Standards Catalog Format

By Andrew Savikas
April 8, 2009

It's no secret we're big fans of the iPhone/iPod reading app Stanza. While the Kindle App has overtaken Stanza for the top-spot among free book apps in iTunes, Stanza offers a much better reading experience than the Kindle App (for example, by supporting standard formatting like tables and whitespace-preservation). But more than the quality of the software, the major reason I'm so bullish on Stanza is their willingness to experiment.

O'Reilly Ebooks Now In Stanza Online Catalog

By Andrew Savikas
March 9, 2009

Just in time for Read an Ebook Week O'Reilly's 400+ ebooks are now available for direct purchase and download on your iPhone or iPod Touch from within Stanza's Online Catalog. Buying ebooks this way gives you the same flexible, DRM-free ebook bundles as buying through oreilly.com (because you are buying from oreilly.com via Stanza). That means 3 ebook formats and free lifetime updates (and did we mention no DRM?). To celebrate the Stanza news (and Read an Ebook Week) you'll automatically get 40% off any ebooks purchased on Stanza through March 15.

No Need for Weed. Or, Misadventures in Google Book Search

By Allen Noren
March 3, 2009

We all know that Google is known for their ground breaking software, their keen ability to mine the collective intelligence of users and deep data sets to deliver just the right bit of information one needs at a point in...

State of the Computer Book Market 2008, part 5 -- eBooks and Summary

By Mike Hendrickson
February 27, 2009

In this final post, 1, 2, 3, and 4 were posted earlier, we will provide a summary of the first four posts and include some data on electronic books and how the digital world is catching up the the print world.

Indigo's Shortcovers Launched Today: A Good Start, But Room for Reader Improvement

By Andrew Savikas
February 26, 2009

The Shortcovers website and companion iPhone and Blackberry apps launched today. Put simply, it's a website for buying ebooks. But there's a few interesting twists that (for now) set it apart. Though most of the current content is books, the primary unit of the service is the "shortcover" -- things like an article, a blog post, and a book chapter. That means publishers have the option of making individual chapters available for sale (or as free samples). But perhaps the more interesting consequence of that is something they're calling "mixes," where readers can combine multiple shortcovers into a single "mix" (think iTunes playlist), and share that with other readers.

Unboxing the Kindle 2

By Kevin Hemenway
February 26, 2009

This is the first of a number of entries planned regarding Amazon's new Kindle 2 and, as such, will serve both as an introduction to the series and as the requisite dump of unboxing and first-use photos. The Kindle 2...

Kindle 2.0: Publishing's Killer? Publishing's Savior?

By Kurt Cagle
February 17, 2009

The new Kindle 2.0 is a cool enough-looking gadget - its hyper-svelt profile (just over a third of an inch) is thinner than most of the books it holds, at ten ounces it's also lighter, and the silvery/white casing (among others) manages to take scuffs and dirt better than its predecessor. The e-ink paper, sporting sixteen shades of gray, is also a compelling testament to what looks like the next major display technology - e-ink retains its state after it's configured, which means that you only have to refresh the page when you move beyond the buffered page content ... which in turn means that you can run the Kindle for days without recharging.

The "O'Reilly Bump" and Bookworm

By Andrew Savikas
February 13, 2009

During his TOC Keynote, Tim O'Reilly talked about how the status he confers through "retweets" on Twitter are really just another form of publishing, not much different from the status...

At TOC: Bookworm Online EPUB Reader Now Part of O'Reilly Labs

By Andrew Savikas
February 10, 2009

We liked Bookworm so much that we invited principal developer Liza Daly to bring it into O'Reilly Labs, the R&D space that we've re-launched at this year's TOC Conference.

Safari Books Online Goes Mobile

By Allen Noren
February 9, 2009

Like much of the publishing world, I'm eager to hear about Amazon's latest version of the Kindle. But that's not the only news today. I'm sitting here at TOC and talking to John Chodacki from Safari Books Online and, with a smile on his face, he's showing me beta version of m.safaribooksonline.com. The smile is well deserved. It looks great, it's fast, and I love the stripped-down navigation and lack of clutter.

First Frontlist O'Reilly Ebook Bundle (Including EPUB) Now Available

By Andrew Savikas
October 10, 2008

With today's release of iPod: The Missing Manual, Seventh Edition, by J.D. Biersdorfer and David Pogue, we're beginning the release of nearly all new (frontlist) titles as ebook bundles. SharePoint for Project Management, by Dux Raymond Sy, will be available tomorrow, and Web Security Testing Cookbook, by Paco Hope and Ben Walther, will be available next Tuesday (Oct. 14)

How To Read O'Reilly EPUB eBooks on your iPhone with Stanza

By Andrew Savikas
August 29, 2008

Since we released 30 of our books as ebook bundles (including EPUB, PDF, and Kindle-compatible Mobipocket format) as a pilot program, a steady stream of customers has been asking how...

Safari Books Online

By O'Reilly Media
August 14, 2008

Save Money • Save Paper • Save TimeWith Safari, you'll get: • Immediate online access to thousands of the best technical books. • Over 700 hours of video training content. • Chapter downloads. • Copy and paste code. • Save 35% on O'Reilly print books. • All for just $42.99 a month, the cost of one book. Try Safari Now!

30 O'Reilly Titles Now Available as Ebook Bundles; Many In Kindle Store Later Today

By Andrew Savikas
August 13, 2008

O'Reilly has released 30 titles as DRM-free downloadable ebook bundles. The bundles include three ebook formats (EPUB, PDF, and Kindle-compatible Mobipocket) for a single price -- at or below the book's cover price.

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