Delphi Classics?

[jgaiser]

Yeah.. I'm done with Delphi. It's been a week since the OP's posting and the site *still* does not work. There is *no* excuse that will convince me that this is a viable company.

[jersysman]

Looks like this site has joined the long list of ebook sites that have gone under. This is strange that they did not at least give a warning or anything.

I hope I'm wrong.

[Dr. Drib]

Originally Posted by jersysman

Looks like this site has joined the long list of ebook sites that have gone under. This is strange that they did not at least give a warning or anything.

I hope I'm wrong.

If they've gone under, they're at least still authorizing Kindle to sell their titles.

Better get them while you can!

[Dr. Drib]

Here's some negative spillage concerning Delphi Classics and some of the confrontational smegma attached to founder Peter Russell, and the author of the article Chris Elliott:

http://www.ibechris.com/bad-business...iclassics-com/

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by Dr. Drib

Here's some negative spillage concerning Delphi Classics and some of the confrontational smegma attached to founder Peter Russell, and the author of the article Chris Elliott:

http://www.ibechris.com/bad-business...iclassics-com/

Wow, this info is three years old! The threads I've seen here have praised Delphi for the completeness of the works they sell.

[Dr. Drib]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

Wow, this info is three years old! The threads I've seen here have praised Delphi for the completeness of the works they sell.

Right, it is three years old, but I thought it might be of interest regarding the allegations by Chris Elliott and the manner [reportedly] in which Peter Russell conducted himself.

ADDED: I should have added that the article was three years old.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by Dr. Drib

Right, it is three years old, but I thought it might be of interest regarding the allegations by Chris Elliott and the manner [reportedly] in which Peter Russell conducted himself.

I appreciate the information and wasn't questioning the age of the article, but rather how the info itself is just now coming to light here at MR. Considering this revelation, I'm beginning to question Peter's statement from Jan 2013:

Unfortunately, last Friday our webhost company deleted from their servers the entire files of several websites, including the Delphi Classics store. This was an error which we had no control over.

Was it really someone else's fault or was Delphi to blame?

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by Dr. Drib

Here's some negative spillage concerning Delphi Classics and some of the confrontational smegma attached to founder Peter Russell, and the author of the article Chris Elliott:

http://www.ibechris.com/bad-business...iclassics-com/

That's years old. That post complains about a "Complete Work" missing one or another extremely obscure piece, and errors that can be found in the books. I have 50+ Delphi Classics, and while they are not perfect, they are better and more complete than most other PD books I have; except maybe those from Feedbooks.

Mostly, I use the books from Feedbooks, except if the Delphi Classic is illustrated (as they often are), or of Feedbooks simply doesn't have the title. I split the book I want off from the bigger Delphi Classic book using EPUBSplit.

So, even if they dissappear (which would be disappointing), I'd just treat them like another bankrupt company. I've done my share to keep them in business, buying over 50 books from them. Now, they even don't have any books that I want anymore.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

Was it really someone else's fault or was Delphi to blame?

The only reason I can think of why I company would make such a 'mistake' deliberately, is to get rid of all customer accounts, and therefore, the possibility for the customers to redownload books.

I wonder why a company would want to do that. You're basically deleting your entire installed userbase. Think what would happen if Amazon decided to purge their entire database.

"We had a slight problem and destroyed our entire website. Please just register a new account."

A small company like Delphi could / can get away with this (once), but Amazon would possibly go out of business because of law suits, filed by all the people who lost their books, music, and other media.

[Capsaicin]

Rounded out my collection of the majority of their ebooks when they had the Spring buy $40 get 40% off sale. Noticed that the problems started a day or two after Delphi started selling their complete Series 1,2,etc in large bundles. Is it paranoid to think there's some underlying problem here beyond the website (or that the website issue is masking).

(1) Amazon or google books "programmer" covertly taking down their site in order to hurt Delphi business and improve their own? (Yes, I know Amazon sells Delphi books, but they likely are selling *even more* now that the Delphi homesite is down). Seems unlikely this situation could continue for weeks, however.

(2) Amazon or google or some brick-and-mortar publisher catching them in some kind of copyright violation and putting legal screws to them. Hence the hush hush. Basically Delphi was doing too much good work too quickly and needed to be shown "who's boss," so some kind of publishing "restraining order" was clamped on them. This is just a theory of course, but why otherwise wouldn't the website explain better what the problem is.

(3) Website was susceptible to overflow bug/hacking, and Delphi is attempting to determine if/how many customer accounts may have been stolen/affected before they have to disclose the lapse. \

(4) CEO or other high-up decided to travel the world on impulse and left the rest of the company in the lurch

Although I was not even aware of Delphi Classics when their last outage happened, I can't see any reason they--then or now--would want to deliberately get rid of customer accounts and hence frustrate many of their customers. I always immediately downloaded purchases (and later backed them up offline as well), and assumed most others would do the same. I don't put much stock in "Chris's" one-time problem with Delphi CEO--I even wondered if Chris had a vested interest in hurting Delphi (Amazon, Google, print publisher?)....In trying to determine what's happened to them in the past weeks, I keep seeing 'ibechris' post near the top of google results...why?

But some underlying legal/copyright conflict, or hacking exposure both seem plausible to me.

If Delphi is being attacked by some "big boys" of e-publishing or publishing, I'd sure like to help them--they seemed like a quality small company doing quality work, at very reasonable prices.

[jgaiser]

Or they're incompetent. I'll go with door two.

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by Capsaicin

Although I was not even aware of Delphi Classics when their last outage happened, I can't see any reason they--then or now--would want to deliberately get rid of customer accounts and hence frustrate many of their customers.

I can't really either, but it did allow them to change their terms and stop offering lifetime updates to customers they had previously promised them too. From what I'm told it takes them a few updates after a new release to get all the typos and stuff fixed in their products (no personal experience).

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by Marcy

Dang, and I just discovered them! I'm currently reliving my childhood by reading the works of L.M. Montgomery that I bought from them a few weeks ago. It is really a lovely collection and has a bunch of short stories that I don't have in my older collections I got off Gutenberg.

There were more books I wanted to buy -- hopefully they'll be back.

Yep, that's the book I picked up -- also my first Delphi Classic. Seems to be complete and of high quality -- and it had two books in the series that most of the other collections don't include. At the cost it was a pretty amazing deal. So far I'm okay, because it looks like DelphiClassic titles are still available on Amazon. I think most of these outfits make much more money on Amazon than they do on their own websites anyhow. Another publisher that I buy from -- Catholic Way Publishing -- doesn't always even update their own website when they publish new books. They're on Amazon for months before they show up on their own website. That could be why Delphi Classics is in no big hurry to get their site back up -- though it seems kind of self-defeating.

[stutzj]

[QUOTE=Dr. Drib;2834522]Here's some negative spillage concerning Delphi Classics and some of the confrontational smegma attached to founder Peter Russell, and the author of the article Chris Elliott:

http://www.ibechris.com/bad-business...iclassics-com/[/QUOTE

I think the author of that article 'doth protest too much'. They really can't prove that A)the Delphi classics guy was leaving fake reviews B) the authors argument about the collections being complete is kind of ridiculous - acts like its the end of the world when the collections are MASSIVE, they may not be complete but they are very close, with tons of extra material. The author uses language like 'scam artist' because some collections were not entirely complete. That's a big accusation to lob at someone. Give me a break.

While I have no proof about the author being attacked for leaving negative reviews or the content of the original reviews themselves (and also because the author provided no proof, interestingly enough of what he had originally written), I wouldn't be surprised that the author of the article was unfairly negative and outraged in his reviews.

Delphi has been my go to publisher for classics collections and I can say that the collections are hands down the best I've seen in the amazon store.

My guess as to why he got shut down? He sells two versions of a lot of his work to US and to Europe. I live in the US and I have easily been able to buy a European version of a collection (I did it just to see) - that included work not in the public domain in the US. The only thing stopping US buyers from purchasing the Europe version is a note of 'only available for European residents'.

I have purchased from his webstore so I am miffed that this has happened for a second time. It seems to be down much longer than 1st time it happened. A shame because unlike the author of the article above, I actually really like the collections.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by stutzj

My guess as to why he got shut down? He sells two versions of a lot of his work to US and to Europe. I live in the US and I have easily been able to buy a European version of a collection (I did it just to see) - that included work not in the public domain in the US. The only thing stopping US buyers from purchasing the Europe version is a note of 'only available for European residents'.

Could be, but if he was shut down by the authorities, there would probably be a page in place telling customers that the site was seized by the police, FBI, CIA, or whatever, because of investigation regarding possible copyright violations.