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Andrew Savikas replied on October 08, 2009 12:51 to the question "Format shifting..." in O'Reilly Media:

Hi ajehals,

As you probably already know, we sell our ebooks in multiple formats without any DRM encryption. We want you to have the flexibility to read the content in the format and using the device that you prefer. While we of course expect our readers to respect copyright law, extracting the HTML from one of our ebooks for personal use on your various devices is absolutely acceptable. The EPUB version of our ebooks is actually XHTML and CSS under the hood. You can get at it by changing the file extension from ".epub" to ".zip" and unzipping it. See our EPUB resources page for more details on the EPUB format.

We don't currently offer a plain text version, though if I wanted to get from HTML to plain text, I'd use the <tt>dump</tt> option from the lynx browser.

Andrew Savikas replied on October 02, 2009 22:48 to the idea "Make an ebook reader please!!" in O'Reilly Media:

Although Amazon did acquire Lexcycle, so far Stanza (and all of the O'Reilly iPhone Apps built using their technology) are based on the open EPUB standard. You can even extract the EPUB from one of our apps (perhaps to add to your Bookworm library). And speaking of Bookworm, it works great on any mobile device with a Web browser (including the Kindle) and will save your place across devices.

Buying the (DRM-free) ebooks directly from us is a great way to "future-proof" your library of O'Reilly books, and have the option to read them on whichever device you prefer.

A comment on the problem "iTunes App titles" in O'Reilly Media:

If you compress the contents of the folder named "book" (not the folder itself) and change the extension of the resulting zip file to "epub" it'll work. – Andrew Savikas, on August 05, 2009 04:18

Andrew Savikas replied on August 01, 2009 18:01 to the problem "iTunes App titles" in O'Reilly Media:

Hi Francis -- there's no additional charge to access the EPUB. It's just a part of the App. (Though we do also sell the EPUB files as part of our "ebook bundles" from oreilly.com.)

Stanza is an EPUB reading system, and our Apps use the Stanza framework packaged with an individual EPUB ebook; we've chosen not to encrypt that EPUB content, so customers in your situation can get at the content (and for example back it up or move it to a different device).

Andrew Savikas replied on August 01, 2009 16:19 to the problem "iTunes App titles" in O'Reilly Media:

Hi Francis,

Thanks for the detailed description of the problem you're having, that's very helpful for us and for Lexcycle/Stanza to try and improve the rendering. There are two other options for better display of the code: first is to reduce the font size (available in the App settings or by pinching). Second, the EPUB content is actually accessible from your computer (there's instructions in this blog post). That way you can have a version you can read using Bookworm, Adobe Digital Editions, or another EPUB reading system. I know that's not ideal, and I do appreciate your feedback and patience while we work to improve the display on our iPhone apps.

Andrew Savikas replied on August 01, 2009 14:41 to the problem "iTunes App titles" in O'Reilly Media:

Hi Francis,

We're working with Lexcycle to fix this issue (it's unfortunately a common problem among ebook reading systems, including the Sony Reader). In the meantime, a simple workaround is to tilt the phone to trigger landscape mode -- that should fit the code onto the screen.

Andrew Savikas replied on July 27, 2009 00:46 to the problem "Access denied when clicking on iPhone book." in O'Reilly Media:

Hi Jim,

We were doing some maintenance on our website today and some of the book pages were temporarily unavailable. Sorry for the inconvenience, the page you were looking for should now be available.

Andrew Savikas replied on July 22, 2009 20:02 to the question "I purchased iPhone: The Missing Manual and want to register it. It is a Kindle Book from Amazon.com. Since there is no ISBN how can I register it to get updates?" in O'Reilly Media:

Hi Carol,

You can register it using the ISBN from the print book, which is 9780596521677 for the 2nd edition. Amazon doesn't offer a way for us to update content on Kindle, but you're definitely welcome to register your book and we'll send you info on updates.

Andrew Savikas replied on June 30, 2009 20:58 to the question "3.0 iPhone Missing Manual iPhone app free upgrade?" in O'Reilly Media:

Hi Robert,

Unfortunately, no. We partnered with a company called Lexcycle (makers of the Stanza reader) to build and sell the Missing Manual App, and Lexcycle was recently acquired by Amazon. I can't really get into details unfortunately, but the upshot here is that we'll be releasing a new Missing Manual App covering the 3G S iPhone as soon as we can, and it will carry a reduced introductory price.

We tried our best to avoid this situation, but part of the problem is that Apple does not allow the transfer of ownership of an existing iPhone App (we asked!).

Regards,
Andrew Savikas

Andrew Savikas replied on May 08, 2009 13:56 to the problem "Sony Reader Problems." in O'Reilly Media:

Hi Rodrigo,

That issue with lines of code is a bug in Adobe Digital Edtions, which is the software used on the Sony Reader to read EPUB files. We have reported the bug to Adobe, but they have not said when there will be a fix.

Images are a challenge with a reflowable format like EPUB. We do review our ebooks on a Sony Reader, Kindle 1 and Kindle 2, the iPhone, and on Bookworm. Unfortunately optimizing each book for all possible devices is quite difficult. That's why our Ebook bundles include the PDF version as well, so that if there are issues with a particular book or device, the PDF is available in a format that matches the print layout.

We will review the books you mentioned to see if anything can be done to improve the image issue. As I said before, the code lines is a bug in Digital Editions that we don't have any control over, unfortunately.

I'm sorry to hear you were disappointed in your ebook experience with O'Reilly. If you feel you didn't get what you paid for, we do offer a 100% satisfaction guarantee, so we'd be happy to refund your purchase.

Andrew Savikas replied on April 17, 2009 13:15 to the idea "Please make your titles available through Kindle!" in O'Reilly Media:

We've now begun selling O'Reilly ebooks (DRM-free) in the Kindle store.

Andrew Savikas replied on April 17, 2009 13:14 to the question "Kindle support?" in O'Reilly Media:

We've now begun selling O'Reilly ebooks (without DRM) in the Kindle store.

A comment on the question "ebook formatting problems" in O'Reilly Media:

Hi Fred,

I should clarify that most of our ebooks do have indexes (that include followable hyperlinks). We're not quite yet at 100% (particularly for titles that don't go through our standard full-XML workflow), but we are striving to include working indexes in as many ebooks as we can. – Andrew Savikas, on April 13, 2009 13:39

Andrew Savikas replied on April 09, 2009 17:38 to the question "ebook formatting problems" in O'Reilly Media:

Most of our ebooks don't have indexes, since they're typically read on a device with full-text search. All internal links (for example, cross references to other chapters) are functioning hyperlinks that will take you to the correct location (since "page" isn't really the right term when you can resize the text).

Andrew Savikas replied on April 09, 2009 15:30 to the question "ebook formatting problems" in O'Reilly Media:

PDF is intended to faithfully represent a printed page layout, so doesn't include the kind of information needed for a reading device to "reflow" the text for different screen sizes and/or font faces and sizes.

Those limitations were one of the primary motivating factors for the development of the EPUB standard, and EPUB is a much better choice for viewing the content on a small-screen device.

Glad you're able to now enjoy your O'Reilly ebooks!

Andrew Savikas replied on April 08, 2009 01:01 to the question "ebook formatting problems" in O'Reilly Media:

The ebooks aren't really meant to match the print book (since they need to "reflow" for different screen sizes), though if you view the PDF version in Adobe Reader it will match the print version.

Stanza Desktop isn't really the best desktop reading app; you may find Bookworm (bookworm.oreilly.com) a better reading experience for EPUB, or Adobe Digital Editions.

For Stanza on the iPhone, you should make sure "show styles" is enabled under Settings->Display.

There's more on various devices and platforms at oreilly.com/ebooks.

Andrew Savikas replied on April 08, 2009 00:41 to the question "ebook formatting problems" in O'Reilly Media:

Hi hope,

Can you tell me which titles you're dissatisfied with? We try hard to produce quality ebooks, and I'd like to better understand which ones you're having a bad experience with so I can investigate. If you can provide more detail about location within the book, that's extremely helpful.

Andrew Savikas replied on March 14, 2009 17:15 to the problem "in app no text" in O'Reilly Media:

Sometimes the installation doesn't quite take. Please delete and reinstall the app (you won't be charged again).

Thanks!

Andrew Savikas replied on March 10, 2009 15:32 to the question "Kindle support?" in O'Reilly Media:

Indeed it has improved in Kindle 2. It's still not ideal (for example, while constant-width font is supported, bold and italic variants are not). Ironically, the Kindle web browser does support all of these features (visit http://m.bookworm.oreilly.com from your Kindle).

We're currently testing our content on Kindle 2, and expect to begin uploading titles for sale on Kindle soon (I can't yet be more specific, unfortunately).

Andrew Savikas replied on March 06, 2009 15:26 to the question "GIS ebooks availability" in O'Reilly Media:

Hi Radu,

Those titles are actually from one of our partner publishers, the Pragmatic Press. (We handle their distribution, but they're a separate company.)

I'll pass your feedback along to them, and if/when possible, we'll be happy to make those available in ebook format(s) from oreilly.com.