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Is there any cheaper way to access O'Reilly Learning Platform?
Maybe just ditch O’Reilly learning altogether? The publisher stopped selling ebooks online several years ago and left people with the only option of subscribing to the online service (it does participate in the discounted Humble Bundle sales once in a while). Now these subscription prices are way higher than before. Maybe this is working out quite well for O’Reilly or maybe O’Reilly is grasping at straws (to make more money), but if an individual balks at the prices, isn’t every access a vote for the pricing and the platform, and an indirect encouragement to do away with partnerships that don’t pay “full price”?
What I’d be interested to know is what alternatives exist, even if they aren’t as broad as this one.
I still think their books are among the best edited and informative on the market but their business practices are getting less and less appetizing.
Some people assume it's just books, but they have live content, video courses, etc too.
It's the best purchase I make for my professional life every year. If they ever offered a lifetime tier, I'd likely buy it.
In the past few years, I've browsed thousands of technical books on the site; but when it comes to paper technical books in the same time period, I've probably bought maybe just ~25. Access is king.
They (O’Reilly) have all this excellent book content but they don’t use it to help me understand which books I should read — what if they could pull out code samples or pull quotes, or help me read books like Manning’s, which can add audible narration to their books? What if there were more links to GitHub, or a categorization system that could group books by API version and recency/relevancy?
What if O’Reilly could meta-search and actually return ACM papers and other relevant websites alongside the relevant books and conference talks they already have? What if they indexed good content sources such as YouTube recordings, or partnered with associations for content, such as USENIX or ATD instead of just including ATD books mixed in with all the others?
Is a boring list of books really the best presentation? And why mix in book chapters so often, it’s annoying to go from a book chapter to the full book on mobile, you basically have to do another search for the book title directly.
Are there alternatives, or ways for me to access this through the library? For me, yes. But at this point in my career I find more value in materials not in O’Reilly learning’s books - I’ll learn more from a self-published title, sooner, for example.
Once upon a time, it felt like the bookstore had all the books on every topic… these days, open publishing is everywhere and the bookstore’s selection often feels limited to popular titles. Are there exceptions? Absolutely. But I’m tempted to buy those when I see them, now, if I have no other way of accessing them (e.g. Skillsoft).
I think there is a lot of content there, but I'm also finding it hard to stomach their pricing. $100/year was a no brainer (or whatever the membership fee for ACM was). I would probably do $200 or maybe even $300/ year.
But $500!! Maybe I'll try talking my employer into paying for it.
They used to run specials for "half off" (when they were charging $400), and I felt like I was getting value for my money then. But yeah, any more than that, it's just not worth it, unfortunately.
I think the only cheaper alternative is during Black Friday period where they give a 100 usd discount.
Note: There is a significant typo in the article below, in that the renewal price in subsequent years does stay at the discounted rate. I've been subscribing since it was called Safari Books and still on the discounted rate.
[1]: https://slickdeals.net/f/13605994-year-of-o-reilly-online-le...
If they don’t, your manager could probably get it approved with little effort.
Geez, I mean the typical O'Reilly publication is quite expensive as it is, and I'm finding self-published books are typically more useful anyway. I wonder how much of the cost actually goes to the content creator, and how much to the publisher for the honor of having O'Reilly stamped on the front cover...
I also remember that I was not able to retain the access to the Live training recordings I had from the ACM membership when I bought a paid O'Reilly membership. Only after writing to the customer service they agreed to link a "reasonable amount" (maybe 15 sessions as far as I remember) of live training recordings to my new account. Felt like a scam.
Normally I would treat buying nonfiction as something worthwhile. But buying a book related to software is often a great way to purchase something irrelevant six months later. O'Reilly enables me to check out new stuff, form opinions about the keepers, and read about the latest stuff that I know will be replaced very soon but is in hot demand right now.
Everyday we stray further from the light of the gods.
