From the press release:
OverDrive announced today that booksellers, libraries, and schools in its global network will soon have access to DRM-free eBook titles from O’Reilly Media. The publisher’s entire eBook catalog will be available to OverDrive’s channel partners, including those in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and dozens of other territories worldwide. Bestselling eBooks on computer technologies available through the distribution agreement will include: “iPad 2: The Missing Manual, Second Edition,” “Head First Java, Second Edition,” and “Windows 7:Up & Running,” as well as O’Reilly’s legendary ‘animal books’ like “Learning PHP, MySQL, and JavaScript.”
To find a bookseller, library, or school in OverDrive’s global network, visit OverDrive Search.
“O’Reilly’s commitment to providing eBooks without DRM is fully supported in OverDrive’s Content Reserve, a marketplace that enables publishers to offer a variety of licensing models and DRM options to our channel partners,” said Karen Estrovich, manger of content sales for OverDrive. “We’re pleased to offer the O’Reilly titles to booksellers, libraries, and schools through our existing distribution systems and platforms.”
O’Reilly’s catalog of 1,500 eBooks features titles from popular technology writers, such as David Pogue, J.D. Biersdorfer, and Robin Nixon. Bestselling series provide developers, administrators, and users with information on topics, including JavaScript™, iPad®, iPhone®, Perl, jQuery, PHP, HTML5 & CSS, Windows 7, Mac® OS X, and more.
The launch of premium DRM-free eBooks in OverDrive’s library channel is part of ‘OverDrive WIN,’ a series of platform enhancements to streamline user experience and provide access to more content. To learn more about these upgrades, visit OverDrive at the American Library Association (ALA) Annual Conference (booth #3326) in New Orleans, June 24-27, 2011.
O’Reilly’s ebooks are still overpriced, no pun intended.
I wonder how that works with libraries? Without DRM, there would be no expiration. Is the user expected to mark the checkout date on their calendar and then voluntarily delete the item when the loan period ends? Or maybe that is handled via email or push notifications? Can you do “early delete” so someone else can now check out “that” copy? Maybe it is just a “metered” source for free copies? That could make some sense actually. I’d imagine the waiting list on such titles would consistently be quite long. Should be interesting to see how that is handled.