For a couple of months now, I have been using Safari Book Online as my main source of learning material. Since I am very happy with the service so far, I thought I would write up my experience.

How I have been learning

So first off, I think you should know how I was reading books before I met Safari Book Online. Now I would on average purchase a new digital book every 1-2 months. When I wanted to purchase a new book I would look though Amazon or Google books, choose a topic that peaked my interest, and based on reviews and popularity I would download a sample of book to try it before I commit to buying it. This is where I came across one of problems I had.

Each book sample varied in its size and educational content. When I say educational content I’m talking when the main bulk of the book which excludes things like table of contents, introduction, acknowledgements etc. Now if you have downloaded books samples from these services you’ll know what I’m talking about but for those that haven’t here are a couple of examples. One book sample I downloaded stopped at the first page of chapter 1, another had 3 complete chapters. Granted these are the edge cases but it gives you a sense of how much these samples can vary.

Of course at times this doesn’t really matter because I already am aware of the book or the author, or it was recommended by someone. When this isn’t the case though, having a limited sample to go on makes it a lot harder to make the decision whether I want to buy the book. Indeed there were occasions where I haven’t bought a book purely because of this reason. Its also annoying to find out that only a part of the book was useful for whatever reason. With a feeling that my time and money have been partially wasted. Now I know of services that let you buy a book on a per page basis however my experience (which is limited) is that the cost for a full book is higher than that of services where you can only buy the whole book. I suppose this is the price you have to pay for having that flexibility.

Why I gave Safari a go

I can’t remember exactly how I came about discovering Safari books online but I think it was either a recommendation from a colleague or just seeing their site on Google. Anyway the initial appeal was its specialism of technology topics and therefore the hope that I would never again have to search through the various digital book services till I found what I was looking for. I was also interested in their subscription pricing model, giving me the scope to read any available book knowing that the price is fixed. And so with a sense of optimism, I signed up for a trial.

2 Months Later

So I am now about 2 months into my subscription with Safari and I have not looked back. No longer do I have to consider forking out £40-60 on a book with the possibility that I won’t read all of it. One of the main things that hits you straight away is the ease at which you can find new things to learn. Because Safari is geared towards technology, topics are sufficiently broken down so you can find what your interested in quickly. I also very much like their queue concept. This is basically a list of material you want to read at some point and so it serves as a kind of narrowed down search, concentrated on what you want to read but giving you the choice of what order to read it in.

Another feature, which I should use more often, is that you can search their entire library down to the word level. So when you’re searching, its looking through the entire contents of every book not just on their titles or chapters. I found this really useful when I didn’t have much success googling a problem and so I would then start to cherry pick through books on Safari to help me come up with the answer.

Now this review of sorts of Safari Books Online is biased on the positives, but still there are 1 or 2 bits that I’m not fully happy with. What I realised in the first week is that Safari has got reading on a desktop licked, but when reading on a mobile device it lacks some usability or features that I had gotten use to while I was using the Google or Amazon app. Although their site does work on a touch device it just isn’t as nice to use. The side menu is particularly irritating as once its expanded it can’t be retracted unless you refresh the page. However with that being said Safari do seem to be working on it. They have released a Queue app on Apple devices which allows you to download items from your queue and read them offline. Unfortunately I don’t have a mobile Apple device to test with but they do have an Android version in Beta which I’m currently using which when released will solve my device support issues. So if you’re using Apple you’re good to go and Android users will just have to wait a little bit for full mobile support.

I also found that a side benefit of using Safari is that I am actually reading a great deal more than I was before, probably double. Their subscription model is partially to blame for this - I want to get value for money so I read enough so that the price is easily justified. The rest of blame falls on the fact that it is able to keep me interested by allowing me to jump from book to book whenever I like.

So to conclude, if you are learning in a similar way to how I was, then I suggest that you give Safari a go.