More than 60 Wrox DRM-free ebooks available

Jim,

Yes, I see your generous offer of 20% off. But you appear to have missed my point. You have provided a temporary discount of 20% of the price off the dead tree edition. Apress sells their ebooks at 30% *every day* and Manning sells their ebooks at greater then 30% off *every day* and O'Reilly sells their's also at a 30% discount. So... I expected to see the 20% off an already 30% discounted price of the dead tree edition.

For example $49.99 dead tree, $34.99 ebook, $27.99 with your 20% off coupon.

So, although I am greatly appreciative that Wrox has chosen to go DRM-free with the ebooks, I am not inclined to vote with my money for a company who chooses to charge 30% more than for a competing product. (Especially since we all know the profit margin on an electronic book is much greater than the dead tree edition even taking into consideration a 30% off-the-top discount.)

I applaude Wrox for this endevour, but will choose to show my support via any purchases only when their prices are inline with products of similar quality available at other publishers.

(And to complete my opinion, I often wait until ebooks are 30%-50% off due to customer loyalty discounts or $10 "Deal of the Day" offers.)

Thank you for listening.

OK, let's say the price is fair..but please do something about the bookmarks!

Have you ever tried to read ~500 pages PDF without bookmarks?

I'd definitely love to hear more about the pricing thoughts.  Considering that the production costs and distribution costs are lower than the dead-tree edition, I'm pretty stunned that the electronic edition would be $48 after discount codes.

Are you going to sell the PDF versions through Amazon and other online resellers?

1 question/1 comment

1. What about those of us who have already purchased DRM-ed copies of your e-books?
2. I agree with the whole thing about e-books should be less than dead tree copies.

It's for these reasons that I started looking at other publishers as my primary source of e-books, and that's trickled down to other books also.  One is satisfied- the other isn't.  Though I like to read books from a lot of different sources, since I've gone completely electronic, I've been buying less of Wrox than I formerly did.

A simple watermark with purchaser email information on every page is sufficient. If the pdf is stolen and posted on the web the purchaser can be notified about the problem. In some cases, such as at work or in PC maintenance or repair, we might catch the culprit.

I hate paper books. I always prefer the pdf over paper version, but many of my friends have the opposite preference. There is likely a marketing curve to balance the ethical customers against the trend in some countries to pay nothing for IP copyrights.

I definitely purchase far fewer (<5%) DRM e-books (e.g. Adobe Digital Reader) than DRM free e-books. But, I prefer the paper book over DRM Adobe Digital Reader unless I need the electronic version on a consulting assignment.

I used to purchase lot of printed books. I have thousands of books in my house. I literally own a library.  But then reality hit and I started losing my eye sight.  Recently I am buying more and more eBooks since it is easy to enlarge on screen or even zoom it with my special mouse :-)

I was one of the very first members of http://wrox.books24x7.com I ended up not renewing it after second year because of unnecessary restrictions i.e. not to read fast and not able to print.

At that time, I started looking for digital format.  I bought couple of eBooks in the beginning of eBook era and regret it immediately because of DRM.  Yes, there may be unethical people out there but I don't like the idea to get punished for those people.

I have bought literally hundreds of book from O'Riely, SitePoints and Apress because of heavy discounts on eBooks. I especially love Apress' daily deal at http://www.apress.com/info/dailydeal for $10 bucks only.

During past Chrismas SitePoint had 10 days promotion.  I bought every single eBook from them.

Yes, Wrox books are great but for such a higher price, it may not worth, especially with evolution of Internet, experience programmers may not need books any more.

Moral of story is, if you like to stay alive in this competing society you have to offer more or less same discounts other offers.

I sincerely appreciate the no DRM eBook idea.  But the same time, I do appreciate the fair pricing on eBook as well.

I tweeted this as well but here's the long version...

I'd be more inclined to purchase the physical book if I knew I'd also get a digital copy (pdf). I personally hate reading pdf's, but it would be nice to have a copy around for times when you want to refer to the book but don't have it with you. "Cloud computing" (excuse me while I puke) makes this possible.

It's still great to see a DRM-less option and I applaud you for taking that step, but why hurt the people that still want to buy and read the pulp?

Cheers!

First off let me say I am glad WROX has moved to DRM Free E-Books. Great idea, and the list of books you list as a starting point seems to be a great selection covering major points of development.

I do want to echo conerns over pricing however, it seems a bit high to sell an electronic version at a higher price than I can get the "dead tree" version for at an on-line retailer.

I would also like to see a discounted price of the e-book for people who also bought the dead tree version. I love having a physical book to kick back in my recliner and read, but I find when I need to reference something in it I'm usually at a client site or away from home.

Having an e-book version adds value. I wouldn't mind paying a small cost (say 5 to 10 dollars as one of your competitors does) to get the e-book, but don't ask me to pay full price when I've already bought the physical book.

I must say i at first was delighted to see the word free with e-book, after all havign bought and paid for well over 50 to 100 wrox books i thought great i can now download the e-book to the paperbook i already have purchased and take the e-book with me when not in the office.  To me this should be the law, if i have purchased the book already do i not already own the rights to that copy, somthing along the lines of music or DVD format.  Therefore, i think a small perhaps 5 dollar or less charge should apply to those of us who buy the paperback.  Should you opt to not buy the paperback then by all means you should pay the same price or a slightly lower price.  you guys are on the right track but keep going.

I would also like to read the reasoning behind the pricing. I'm interested in the Professional Android 2 Application Development, 2nd Edition. But here this book is priced at $44.99 and $35.99 after the 20% discount, and at amazon (http://www.amazon.com/Professional-Android-2-Application-Development/dp/...), the same book goes for $29.69 paper and $26.72 kindle edition.

Why would we purchase a book directly from the publisher if it's more expensive? If you're removing the middle man, why not share the savings with the customers?