jminatel's Blog

Wrox DRM-Free ebooks now lower priced than print

Posted 11:41 am, June 29, 2011

If you’ve been following my blog since February, you know that we started then with 24 Wrox ebooks that we began selling as DRM-free PDFs (PDFs with no digital rights management). We’ve listened to a lot of feedback about our DRM-free PDF ebooks this year and are happy to announce two really big permanent steps for Wrox ebooks.

 
First, our DRM-free PDF ebooks from Wrox.com now come with a lower price – 35% off of the print book price – every day.

 
Update May 19, 2011: Finally, we’re now very happy to report that the lower ebook prices are now automatically reflected on the ebook pages on Wrox.com. No longer any need to know the secret password to get this lower price.
 
Second, we’re greatly expanding the list of available DRM-free ebooks. As of today, we’ve got more than 100 books available this way, mostly published from the last 18 months. Over the next few months, we’ll be working to add close to 200 older books into the DRM-free PDF sales to make them easier for you to find and use. Update January 20, 2011: We’ve added the first batch of older books and I’ve added them to the list here.
 
Beyond today’s 2 announcements, we recently published our first ebook that used color figures where the print book was black and white only. And we’ve taken a lot of feedback for other improvements we could make that we’re still working on.
 
To continue to make it as easy for you to find Wrox’s newest PDF ebooks, I’ll continue to update the list of books here:

When you buy one of these ebooks, please note that the Wrox ebook terms and conditions are all the way at the bottom of the "important ebook information page". At the bottom of the page you’ll find this, which is what you want to read if you want to know more about our ebook PDF policies:

Wrox e-books sold from Wrox.com and Wiley.com are sold with different requirements and restrictions as described here. (We’re working to update the system to just display the Wrox terms for Wrox books instead of having them buried at the end of the Wiley terms.)

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Comments

30 Comments

30 Responses to “Wrox DRM-Free ebooks now lower priced than print”

  1. Roland says:
    June 29, 2011 at 11:41 am

    Jim, thank you for listening to the comments about e-book pricing in your February blog post!
    This makes much more sense than offering a 1:1 price ratio in comparison to the printed version (which you can get discounted anyway at Amazon or other book-sellers).
    One further suggestion: Most of the popular e-book readers today have only 6" screens with a 600x800px resolution, so they are not up to displaying the full PDF versions of your books. I think offering the e-books in .epub or .mobi format additional to the PDF would be the next logical step.

    Reply
  2. OHS says:
    June 29, 2011 at 11:41 am

    Awesome! One little thing: could you differentiate newly added titles from the other books? That would be great!
    Or, how about a newsletter that can be sent out regularly where new titles are listed?

    Reply
  3. Jeremy Ellis says:
    June 29, 2011 at 11:41 am

    Please consider adding the following books as DRM-free PDF eBooks:
    Professional DotNetNuke 5: Open Source Web Application Framework for ASP.NET
    ISBN-10: 0470438703
    ISBN-13: 978-0470438701

    DotNetNuke 5 User’s Guide: Get Your Website Up and Running
    ISBN-10: 0470462574
    ISBN-13: 978-0470462577

    Professional DotNetNuke Module Programming
    ISBN-10: 0470171162
    ISBN-13: 978-0470171165

    Jeremy

    Reply
  4. Mike Walsh says:
    June 29, 2011 at 11:41 am

    I’d just like to add to the request of you offering in addition to PDF e-books also .epub and .mobi formats.

    In fact I think that all three (or at least the first two as DRM-free .epub files can easily be converted to .mobi) should be offered as part of the same payment.

    I recently bought (at a one-day only 70% reduction) a Microsoft Press book that I was able to download in both the .pdf and the .mobi formats so that whether I was using my PC or my Kindle device, I would still have access to the text.

    For me that’s important because especially with technical computer books the diagrams / screen shots are often impossible to read on a Kindle so access to the pdf version as well is of major importance.

    ————————-

    On another point, in the listings could you indicate whether sample chapters are available or not. Typically they are for released books but some “upcoming” books already have sample chapters available and some don’t so you at present need to open the book page to find out.

    Reply
  5. Mark Johnson says:
    June 29, 2011 at 11:41 am

    You just lost a sale. I came here to buy ‘Professional asp.net design patterns’ as a pdf. It is on your list of drm-free pdf’s that are supposed to be 35% off the list price.

    First – I’ve bought ebooks here before with no problem.
    But now…
    In the shopping cart when I tried to checkout I would get sent to an address verification screen. That screen failed saying the email addresses entered do not match. THe problem is the screen only displays the email address once, so there is no way to make two addresses match. I probably tried a dozen times going out of the cart, back in, deleting the cart and rebuilding, each time the same thing.

    Ok, then I gave up on the cart in Firefox and tried in IE. Gee, the very first time I tried there it worked ok. BUT… the coupon code blank would not accept FROST and said that the promotion had expired. So I tried resetting the shopping cart, readding, going back into checkout. Guess what? The ‘email addresses don’t match’ problem where only one copy of the email address is displayed problem came right back.

    After 30 minutes of frustration trying to do what should be a 1-minute returning customer checkout, I gave up and bought the book on Amazon. Not the pdf that I wanted, but it doesn’t seem possible to get that here.

    Reply
  6. Mark Johnson says:
    June 29, 2011 at 11:41 am

    By the way, if it didn’t come off in my posting above, I am really ticked off about your screwed up shopping cart checkout process. Fix it; you are losing business and it is incredible to me that in this day and age you can have such bad problems with a simple shopping cart.

    Reply
  7. jminatel says:
    June 29, 2011 at 11:41 am

    Mark: Thanks for letting us know, for wanting the book enough to go through this hassle, and for your patience. These things always seem to break on long weekends and holidays: FROST code: Fixed as of this morning. We’d accidentally let it expire thinking the permanent ebook pricing fix would have been implemented by now. Sorry. "email address won’t match:" I’ve reported that to support and will have someone check on it. If you’ve got anything else I might need to know on this, please feel free to contact me directly, jminatel at wiley dot com.

    Reply
  8. Brenda Rueb says:
    June 29, 2011 at 11:41 am

    Just wanted to let everyone know options on the ebook formats. I’ve been using Calibre, which is an open source ebook library management system, and one of the things it does is convert between formats. It will only work on non-DRM files, so thank you Wrox for going with that format. I’ve successfully converted pdf files to epub format & they display great on the NookColor. One of the gotchas of epub format, however, is if the line length is too long & there’s no space for it to wrap, you can’t scroll to see the rest of the line. I hit this with namespace lines in code examples. With the nookcolor, you can also turn the reader in landscape, and the pdf will switch, so you can zoom in for page width view. With epub, it doesn’t rotate. You can change text size and margins, but that line of code stays hidden.

    Reply
  9. Michael says:
    June 29, 2011 at 11:41 am

    Nice efford, but why not in a different, real ebook format. Or better, why not in 2 or 3 formats (mobi, epub and  pdf).
    Take a look at O’Reilly, they offer many of their books (and MS Press) in DRM free ebooks formats (mobi, epub, pdf).
    PDF is such a bad format, expecially when you want to read it on a ebook reader!
    I would love to buy "Professional ASP.NET Design Patterns", but I want to read it on my Kindle!
     

    Reply
  10. Ndulue Chukwudi says:
    June 29, 2011 at 11:41 am

    Your web page does not specify how to purchase the ebook. I am interested because i want to buy Duckett Jon’s book "Beginning web programmung with xml,hxml" and css. I suggesting you to include Afilliate program in your web site as this will attract more traffic in your site, i have interest.

    Reply
  11. jminatel says:
    June 29, 2011 at 11:41 am

    If you follow the links above to the book you want, or find another ebook on the site like the one you are looking for:
    http://www.wrox.com/WileyCDA/WroxTitle/Beginning-Web-Programming-with-HTML-XHTML-and-CSS-2nd-Edition.productCd-0470381442.html

    There’s a “PurchaseThis E-Book” link.
    Don’t forget to apply the “FROST” code during checkout to get your 35% off!

    Reply
  12. Lancy says:
    June 29, 2011 at 11:41 am

    I am very interested in .NET

    Reply
  13. Anonymous says:
    June 29, 2011 at 11:41 am

    wrox books are very good

    Reply
  14. naveen says:
    June 29, 2011 at 11:41 am

    thanks

    Reply
  15. naveen says:
    June 29, 2011 at 11:41 am

    thanks

    Reply
  16. PanosP says:
    June 29, 2011 at 11:41 am

    I’d like to add another vote for epub versions of Wrox books. PDF files are handled rather badly by most ereaders.

    Reply
  17. Emeka says:
    June 29, 2011 at 11:41 am

    Hi,
    I made a purchase of an e-book. I was given six free downloads. How do I download them?
    Regards
    Emeka
     
     

    Reply
  18. Christopher says:
    June 29, 2011 at 11:41 am

    Any chance of a more significant discount for the e-book version, when the print version has already been purchased? Apress publishing offers a DRM free e-book for $10, after answering a question about the print version like what page is figure 15-10 found on.

    Reply
  19. jminatel says:
    June 29, 2011 at 11:41 am

    Emeka: If you are having trouble with downloads, please contact customer service and they can help you:
    http://wrox.custhelp.com

    Christopher: We absolutely want to offer that. Expect to see something along these lines and some other better offers from us later in the year.

    Reply
  20. GarthVader says:
    June 29, 2011 at 11:41 am

    I’m with Christopher…any chance of getting a greatly discounted (or better yet…free) ebook after having purchased the hard copy?  I love the convenience of having access to the book on my computer or Kindle, but I’ll likely never give up buying hard copies.  There’s just something about knowing my hard bound copy is always there on the shelf…don’t have to worry about batteries, thieves or the technology investment/format going extinct in a few years.

    Reply
  21. KevinS says:
    June 29, 2011 at 11:41 am

    Any update on a discounted ebook after hardcopy purchase?  I would really like to ‘take it with me’ on the train without having to lug several tens of punds of books…
     

    Reply
  22. jminatel says:
    June 29, 2011 at 11:41 am

    Kevin, Garth, and others: We’re still working on an option that technically will allow a discount on the printed book when it’s bought together at wrox.com with the ebook. We’d actually thought it was done last month, ran into a few problems in launching it, and are reworking a schedule and plan for launch.

    Reply
  23. Anonymous says:
    June 29, 2011 at 11:41 am

    i really need this books…

    Reply
  24. Anonymous says:
    June 29, 2011 at 11:41 am

    i really need this books…

    Reply
  25. rahul says:
    June 29, 2011 at 11:41 am

    thanks

    Reply
  26. Siti says:
    June 29, 2011 at 11:41 am

    I am a little bit confusing seeing a lot of ebook up here, could you make sort of category for each ebook ?
     

    Reply
  27. Anonymous says:
    June 29, 2011 at 11:41 am

    I would like to see the Rexx Programmer’s Reference by Fosdick as a true eBook or PDF. It is being offered on the Android Market but it is a very poor scan which makes the text very fuzzy on any size screen. The paper copy is $26 on Amazon. The price for the PDF on the Android Market is $32! If Wrox is taking that $32 for that useless product then I am quite unhappy with Wrox! And if Wrox is not getting the $32, whoever is is giving Wrox a bad name. I will be ordering the paper copy, but I would like a legible eBook or PDF as well.
    Regards,
    Gord

    Reply
  28. Anonymous says:
    June 29, 2011 at 11:41 am

    I would like to see the Rexx Programmer’s Reference by Fosdick as a true eBook or PDF. It is being offered on the Android Market but it is a very poor scan which makes the text very fuzzy on any size screen. The paper copy is $26 on Amazon. The price for the PDF on the Android Market is $32! If Wrox is taking that $32 for that useless product then I am quite unhappy with Wrox! And if Wrox is not getting the $32, whoever is is giving Wrox a bad name. I will be ordering the paper copy, but I would like a legible eBook or PDF as well.
    Regards,
    Gord

    Reply
  29. jminatel says:
    June 29, 2011 at 11:41 am

    O’Reilly.com is one of our retail partners with a true PDF of the Rexx Programmer’s Reference and they’re current ebook price will probably be more to your liking:
    http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780764579967.do

    If you have any problems with the ebook if you purchase it there, please let us know and I’ll look into the Android Market quality issue.

    Reply
  30. David says:
    June 29, 2011 at 11:41 am

    Apress provides the e-book of any purchased hardcopy text for $10.  I have a lot of hardcopy Wrox books and I would love to be able to load their electronic conterparts onto my laptop for traveling and especially for class.  I frequently find examples in a Wrox book that I like better than my textbook and that I would like my class to see.  I like to think that serves as good advertising for Wrox as well as improving my class.
    I also display and recommend Wrox books on my class websites.
    David

    Reply

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