O'Reilly books launched on Inkling (iPad, iPhone & Web)
inkling.com
inkling.com
I see that Campbell's Biology is still outrageously expensive as well. Can I even resell my Inkling books? If the answer is "no" then students should just buy the used dead-tree version of texts on amazon and resell them. Especially Campbell.
Also, I want to middle-click the tiles to open the book in a new page. Shame on you Inkling for breaking that.
I wouldn't read into the O'Reilly prices too much. They must balance a lot of pre-existing agreements with other distribution channels, and as you probably know, Amazon often sells print titles at a loss.
Campbell is a similar situation, but it's available by the chapter for $4, and that's how most students are buying it -- getting just the pieces their profs assign.
As to the middle-click / option-click problem, we're aware, and we consider it a bug. We'll fix it. We are ashamed!
In the case of Campbell the a la carte Inkling prices are such that a student can get 60% of the book at the point they reach the full price of the book. I know at many universities Campbell is the primary text used for first year biology students so going through 60-80% is not unheard of. At that consumption rate I would be better off buying the book used from Amazon, using it, and then reselling it at a loss of $20-$30. If a student doesn't want to deal with reselling his or her book they can even rent Campbell for ~$70. As it's a, first year, general biology book keeping it for reference doesn't make a huge amount of sense for non-pre-med biology students.
I really don't blame Inkling for this, I just think that Campbell would be a reasonable text at a quarter to half the current price (with individual chapters similarly reduced) which would compete nicely and directly with the rental text market.
All that said, per-chapter certainly benefits students who tend to not buy the texts, but would like access to particular chapters.
Additionally, buying an Inkling text with half a dozen other students and sharing becomes an enticing proposition (that probably terrifies publishers and probably violates the EULA and TOS).
Anyway, I'm excited about Inkling, and hope that authors and publishers fully embrace it and similar platforms. I'm not excited about future students still being gouged for a medium that is dirt cheap to reproduce.
O'Reilly seems pretty open to delivering their books in a number of ways at a number of price points. For example, several of the books on that page can be had as ePub based Android apps for $4.99 each [1]. Also, they're all almost certainly available via Safari subscription.
Is there a list of books which feature the coding widget? I imagine this only applies to the interpreted languages like Python and Ruby?
I have bought a book or two, and noticed that the site remembers both my CC details (this is alright) and also my 3 digit CVV. Isn't there a law against storing both for the purpose of future purchases?
I'd feel a little more comfortable if I was asked to enter the CVV every time. This is not inconvenient for the user as far as I can see.
I don't use my CC that much online, but I can't remember the last time (if ever) that I wasn't asked for a CVV on a future purchase after saving my details. Amazon still requires it for transactions even though my details are saved.
It makes me a bit more uncomfortable, because it removes that extra security layer between someone breaking into my account, and someone buying something. In another situation they would have to have my account details and my CVV (which may in fact, not be that hard to obtain, but it's a little more peace of mind).
Just some food for thought. I do like your site!
Typically sites that save the CC do not save the CVV, but they only require it on the first purchase.
I'm a fan of Inkling, disappointed at its absence from Android and hopeful for the day that textbooks - printed, interactive or otherwise don't cost $160+.
I can't say for sure how the new programming books are created in their entirety, but I think it's safe to assume a similar process is used.
Source: I was an intern at Inkling about a year ago.
Humans did not manually reformat these titles. The source was EPUB, and there was some clever automation to start. The semantic structure, internal content links, remarks and glossary entries were done essentially algorithmically. Enhancements and the ability to see code in the book were done systematically, and sometimes manually.
All of this was done using Inkling Habitat, our (as-yet unreleased) integrated content development environment. It makes this stuff much more scalable, and as we continue to roll out cool brands like O'Reilly, you'll see increasing amounts of media and interactivity where stuff like that makes sense.
Sometimes editioning and other considerations prevent us from doing a certain title immediately, but we do plan to bring the whole O'Reilly library to the platform over the next few months, including Ruby and Rails content.
(In the meantime, maybe you can learn a real language? Tee hee. Kidding. omg.)
(p.s., we're hiring. Just not Ruby engineers.) http://www.inkling.com/careers