Apress Books

[Nate the great]

Recently I had the freak occurrence of needing new reference books while at the same time actually having the money to buy them. I dug through the pile of borrowed books and noticed that several were published by Apress. (Yes, John, you can have them back now.)

I prefer to buy ebooks instead of paper copies, so naturally I checked the publishers website to see if they were available. I noticed a number of details. Apress is a pretty big technical publisher; if you're a SWE or in a related field look among your tech manuals for a black and yellow cover; it's their trademark.

The good news is that Apress publishes most if not all of their titles as ebooks. The not quite so good news is that the ebooks come in only 2 formats: password protected PDF and Kindle Topaz.

I, for one, don't buy PDFs. I've heard too many horror stories about PDFs mysteriously expiring and leaving the owner with no recourse except to buy the PDF again. I do not think Apress would do that; it's just why I avoid the format entirely.

Like many others, I don't ebooks in Amazon's Topaz format. Due to Amazon's ongoing mismanagement of the Kindle ebooks, I currently trust Amazon about as far as I can throw Jeff Bezos. It's good that the books are available on the Kindle; to be honest I'd like to see how they look on the DX. But I won't spend my money because I can't protect my purchases from Amazon (the DRM can't be removed).

I still bought the books, though, and I got them on Amazon for less than the ebook price. I just wish I could have them as ebooks.

UPDATE: A member pointed me at Apress's Deal of the Day. Each day a differnet title is offered for $9.99. Thanks Gary.

http://www.apress.com/info/dailydeal

[Hellmark]

I know, silly that ebooks are often more expensive than the paper versions.

I am also a fan of O'reilly books, when it comes to tech, and they've long been an ebook supporter (since '98, actually). They offer in epub, pdf and mobi. They also offer some for free (under http://oreilly.com/openbook/), although not always in friendly formats.

Originally Posted by Nate the great

The not quite so good news is that the ebooks come in only 2 formats: password protected PDF and Kindle Topaz.

Never buy a Topaz formatted book without trying it out first. A lot of them are merely OCR versions of the printed book, and as such a virtually unreadable on the Kindle. They look like xerox copies of several-generation-old xerox copies, at best.

[Riocaz]

Have you tried emailing them to ask if they intend to support epub or other formats?

[Nate the great]

Originally Posted by Riocaz

Have you tried emailing them to ask if they intend to support epub or other formats?

Not yet.

[fbrII]

Like Hellmark, I am a fan of O'Reilly when it comes to technical books. I like the multiple format options and their no DRM policy.

I normally read novels, mysteries etc. on my e-reader and do not enjoy reading literature on computer screens, at all. On the other hand, when it comes to technical books with high table and graphic content, I much prefer downloading PDFs and reading them on the computer. With my text editor, application and/or web open and running I can apply what I'm learning as I read.

The nice thing about O'Reilly is I can download a PDF for my computer and then download an epub version for my reader, should I go somewhere and not want to drag a laptop with me. You can also make a bundle purchase and get both the printed version and digital versions if you like. The bundle price is generally five or six dollars higher than the printed only version price. Having hauled several hundred pounds of computer manuals to the local library over the years so I'm pretty much all digital all the time these days and for the technical side of things O'Reilly does it for me.

[baralong]

I'm a big fan of the pagmatic bookshelf. Once you buy an ebook you can download it as any or all of PDF, epub or mobi. Here's their FAQ on ebooks http://www.pragprog.com/frequently-a...estions/ebooks

[millydog]

Have you tried Packt Publishing to see if they have similar texts? I have purchased some of their computer manuals in PDF format. They did have password protection, but they have removed that now. They include your details in the margin though.
http://www.packtpub.com/

[GarySaville]

I bought a book from Apress a while back and was pretty angry when I found out I couldn't load it onto my Sony 505 because of the password. I emailed them asking if there was anyway to get a version that I could use on the 505, even if that meant an Adobe Reader encrypted PDF. I didn't get a reply from them.
After a bit of fiddling around, I found out that the password is very easy to get around. If you open a password protected PDF in most PDF readers, you can then just save a copy. That copy will not have a password on it. I can't notice any quality difference between the two versions.
It didn't help much to be honest. It looks terrible on the 505. I'm still waiting for an affordable 8-10inch eBook reader to hit the market. I mainly read textbooks, and because of the desktop publishing layouts that are used for most textbooks, the small format screens of current eBook readers make it a tedious process to read on.

Best,
Gary

[GarySaville]

By the way, Apress have a "Book of the Day" special you can subscribe to via RSS. They cycle through their entire collection. The Book of the Day is only 9.99. Great deal!

http://www.apress.com/info/dailydeal

Best,
Gary

[Mike L]

Nate, I know this doesn't answer any of your points, but I see that all my Apress printed books advertise a "companion" ebook for USD10. In other words, if you already own the paper book, you can buy the ebook for just $10.

It's still a PDF, of course, and all your criticisms still apply, but I thought this might be of possible interest to existing Apress book owners.

[rlparker]

somewhat

If you're interested in LINQ, I highly recommend the APRESS book Pro LINQ, Language Integrated Query in C# 2008 by Joseph C. Rattz, Jr. Very thorough and highly readable imo.