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No more O'Reilly subscriptions for me

173 points by speckx

by cauliflower99

6 subcomments

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.

by vittore

3 subcomments

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.

by DannyPage

1 subcomments

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.

by gruntledfangler

2 subcomments

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.

by tombert

7 subcomments

I get the O’Reilly subscription through the ACM. It’s an extra $75 a year after a regular ACM membership. A lot less than $500/year.

by AlexB138

2 subcomments

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.

by zargon

1 subcomments

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.

by giantrobot

2 subcomments

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.

by tracker1

0 subcomment

When I was consuming close to a book a month, I thought it was pretty well worth it.. it's hard to justify otherwise. Before Amazon got big, I would browser B&N/Borders etc. for technical books and it was nice... even after Amazon, I remember driving across town for a book that I kind of needed before the weekend for a project.
Amazon then became my main go-to... then more blog articles and technical posts became prevalent... StackOverflow grew to similar dominance. Now, I buy a handful of books for my Kindle a couple times a year and may or may not get through them. I'm more inclined to just read online docs, search or even look at AI results than read through books. I miss dead tree books, but the space and moving them kinda sucks. Not to mention, that even with glasses the text is a bit hard for me now.
I'm still an avid tech reader, just more blogs and less books... I used to tear through 500-800 pages on a typical weekend. After 3 decades in this career, I'm a bit more inclined to veg out in front of the TV.

by roadside_picnic

1 subcomments

> 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.

by AlexeyBrin

0 subcomment

I get it through my public library.

by xbar

1 subcomments

The app is unusable. I have a subscription available to me. I try to use it from time to time. The app is unusable.

by graypegg

1 subcomments

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.

by jayfx

1 subcomments

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

by 1313ed01

0 subcomment

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.

by begueradj

1 subcomments

> Unfortunately, I cannot read technical books fast and definitely not fast enough to make the subscription be worth $500 per year.
Reading is never about being fast at doing it.
If you don't want to read a book, read it fast.

by flexagoon

0 subcomment

I'm genuinely baffled by the amount of people here who actually use those proprietary DRM book apps. I understand paying for the subscription to support the authors/publisher, but surely you can just pay for a subscription and then still download the books as DRM-free pdfs/epubs? Is there a single reason to use those publisher apps?

by YellowZeeZee

0 subcomment

I had the option to get a membership that I could expense through my work, but decided against it after the trial period ended.
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.

by jldugger

0 subcomment

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.

by markus_zhang

0 subcomment

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.

by schainks

0 subcomment

O'Reilly's mobile app is always a moment of zen: You open it to read a book to enhance your professional skills, but alas, the app is obviously poorly written despite being created by people in your profession (who seem to have not read the books?)
Anyway, the web experience has been pretty good for a while, so I use that now.

by charliesbot

0 subcomment

Yeah, I agree about the O'Reilly app. It's pretty bad, so I'm actually thinking about just getting the book instead of using their app.

by JackAcid

0 subcomment

$500/year?? Wow, I get it free as a military veteran. I still use it via browser at work quite often.

by thih9

0 subcomment

> 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.

by sunng

0 subcomment

I just terminated my 8-years O'Reilly subscription this year. I was at $400/year and realized I cannot make full use of it recently.
But I just joined Manning subscription this winter to see if it helps.

by hnt2025

0 subcomment

(From my experience) O'reilly is very responsive and open to direct feedback less to rants on the net, I think you should use their contact channels and send feedback :-)

by nullbyte808

0 subcomment

https://annas-archive.org

by richard_todd

1 subcomments

Lately I just ask an LLM to teach me things interactively. It will be interesting to see if that stops working so well, when authors stop writing books for LLMs to absorb. Maybe as long as there is some kind of canonical reference, the LLM can bridge the gap to decent educational material. If so, that's kind of sad, but also kind of awesome at the same time. It's definitely an interesting time to be alive. I wish I was just a little closer to retirement, though...

by kunley

1 subcomments

Disrupt the subscriptions hoax.
Buy the books! Even better: physical, paper books. They are a pleasure to read

by asdefghyk

0 subcomment

I got offered a initial O'Reilly subscription of $200 / year - just last week ....

by mindcrash

5 subcomments

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:
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...

by stonecharioteer

0 subcomment

Manning wins points for giving me DRM free books and for their website. It's really nice and I like reading the books on it. So much so that I wish I could sync pdfs to the Web progress.
Good job Manning!
I hate the UX of O'reilly. Great books, but horrible HX. That company seems to have people who do not dogfood.

by riffic

0 subcomment

there is an O'Reilly plan for public libraries which is dope and accessible to those less privileged to afford premium access.

by alebaffa

0 subcomment

I agree O'Reilly is way too expensive.

by poorblish

0 subcomment

I work for a publishing company that sells elearning access to the proprietary “framework”. Anyways our company is now going full bore on AI related content. Everyone is just milling about having meetings about our AI product line but the company is sinking.
We don’t focus any effort on our core services and product, just chase the next fad.
If other publishing companies are anything like the one I work for then they’re clawing at the wall looking for the next big thing. Since AI is a big question mark, they are publishing absolute drivel.

by apwheele

0 subcomment

Do folks have opinions on the quality of the recent books? Last one I picked up was not good (good chance it is partially AI slop).
Read online (and not in the app), but the copy-editing did not do it any favors, and then how code snippets were formed broke the simple copy/paste (used icons for line breaks that could have been avoidable).

by nottorp

0 subcomment

> where I can get O’Reilly books without DRM and keep them beyond any subscription limit
... and this way they'll own the books ...

by lucaspottersky

0 subcomment

their UX is terrible. any decent PDF reader beats it. no more for me as well.

by 123sereusername

0 subcomment

[dead]

by user3939382

0 subcomment

The big name companies in tech are mostly extractive nightmares including FAANG. Orielly is the least of our problems.