Microsoft Press Enters Strategic Alliance with O'Reilly

by Tim O'Reilly | @timoreilly | comments: 32

Today, Microsoft and O'Reilly Media announced an agreement to support and expand Microsoft Press. Under the terms of the strategic alliance, O'Reilly will be the exclusive distributor of Microsoft Press titles and co-publisher of all Microsoft Press titles, on Nov. 30, 2009. We'll be working with Microsoft to develop new books, as well as distributing both existing and new co-published books to bookstores, and, perhaps most importantly, to the emerging digital book channels that represent the future of book publishing. Microsoft could have chosen to partner with any of the major computer book publishers. That they chose to work with us is a testament to three advantages we bring to the business:

1. O'Reilly is more than a book publisher. We are an advocate, a connector, and a community builder. We help developers and users make the most of technology, with a focus on what they need to know. Microsoft has a history of building great developer communities, but in today's world, those communities need to be connected with other communities outside Microsoft. Especially in technology, "the world is flat."
2. O'Reilly plays a unique role in the technology ecosystem: from our earliest days, we provided the documentation for important technologies for which there was no "vendor." The internet, the World Wide Web, Linux and other open source software, and Web 2.0 all were documented and given mainstream awareness by O'Reilly books and events. We identify and evangelize the disruptive technologies that reinvigorate the industry.
3. O'Reilly has been a pioneer in the new world of ebooks. In the early 1990s, we co-developed docbook, one of the first standardized formats for ebooks, and the progenitor of future XML-based ebook formats. In 2001, in partnership with the Pearson Technology Group, we launched Safari Books Online, the largest and most comprehensive electronic subscription library of computer books and videos. We've built a successful direct business with DRM-free downloads of ebook bundles that work on any device. We're an early leader in publishing books for the iPhone and other portable reading devices, and understanding how to use ebook channels to reach new customers. And of course, our Tools of Change for Publishing Conference (TOC) has become the place to share knowledge about the changes sweeping through publishing.

On this last point, I'm particularly excited that as part of this agreement, Microsoft has committed to make its ebooks DRM-free and device-independent. One of our goals at O'Reilly has been to make sure that ebook customers can read them on any device, and have the ability to keep using them even if they change their preferred device. Having Microsoft Press join us in this commitment is a big step forward towards an open ebook market.

State of the Computer Book Market 2008, Part 3: The Publishers

by Mike Hendrickson | @mikehatora | comments: 5

In this third installment, (see part one and part two; part four to come later this week), we will look at how Publishers fared in 2007 when compared to 2006. The chart below shows our dashboard view of the Large publishers’ results for 2007. The most notable factor is that Wiley continues to hold the leading spot as the largest publisher, with 30% market share of units sold, while Pearson lost 2% market share and O'Reilly gains 1%. (We’ll look at revenue share later in the analysis.)

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O'Reilly Media on Twitter

by Tim O'Reilly | @timoreilly | comments: 12

Laurel Ruma (@laurelatoreilly) just did a quick census of the number of O'Reilly employees on twitter. She came up with 74 twitter accounts out of about 300 employees worldwide, plus five people who were controlling departmental or project-based O'Reilly twitter accounts like the following:

Official O'Reilly account: @oreillymedia: The top level O'Reilly Media site.
@oreilly_verlag: O'Reilly Germany

Number of O'Reilly products or divisions on Twitter: 8
@make: Make: Magazine and makezine blog
@craft: Craft: Magazine and craftzine blog
@hacks: Hacks book series and hackszine blog
@insideria: Our Inside RIA microsite sponsored by Adobe.
@missingmanuals: The Missing Manuals
@headfirstlabs: Head First book series
@tocTools of Change for Publishing conference and blog
@radar: The O'Reilly Radar blog

Number of O'Reilly conferences on Twitter: 12
@oscon: The O'Reilly Open Source Convention
@etech: The O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference
@moneytech: Money:Tech
@foundconf: Found: The Search Acquisition and Architecture Conference
@where20: Where 2.0
@railsconf: RailsConf
@MySQLconf: The MySQL User Conference
@web2summit: The Web 2.0 Summit
@RailsConfEU: RailsConf EU
@w2esf09: Web 2.0 Expo SF
@w2e09: Web 2.0 Expo NY
@velocityconf: Velocity

Many of you have probably seen some or all of these accounts in my retweet stream. For better or worse, my personal account (@timoreilly) has garnered the most followers, and so I've become a switchboard for passing on the best of the news from others in the company.

I do find this to be an interesting exercise in managing corporate social media. I don't follow every O'Reilly employee, as we have no formal method for tracking them, but often, people who have posted something they want to bring to my attention send me an email requesting a retweet. (So do lots of outsiders. My habit of retweeting has ended up building a great extended information network!)

The fact that I don't automatically pass on company propaganda, but require it to be interesting, makes for a great teaching opportunity with employees. As I explain to them what I consider retweetable and why, and how to write tweets that make me want to share them, we improve the overall social media marketing IQ of the company.

State of the Computer Book Market, Part 4 - The Languages

by Mike Hendrickson | @mikehatora | comments: 24

Note: An inadvertent draft of this post went out in our RSS feed and was posted for about an hour on Tuesday. It was cloned from Q1 '07 and most of the data and information was wrong.

In this fourth post (one, two and three are found here) on the State of the Computer Book Market, we will look at programming languages and drill in a little on each language area.

Overall the 2007 market for programming languages was down (1.67%) in 2007 when compared with 2006. There were 1,809,695 units sold in 2006 versus 1,779,523 units sold in 2007 which is (30,172) fewer units in 2007. So the modest 1% growth in the Overall Computer Book Market must have been fueled by non-programming oriented books. You don't need a programming language to learn to use MacOsX, Vista or Office and that is where the growth was in 2007.

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