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Comment by absconditus | Hacker News Reader

Beware if you plan to buy electronic books from Manning. Unlike O'Reilly and Pragmatic one may only download purchased electronic books from Manning for a short period of time.

http://manning.com/about/ebook_support.html#downloadtime

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That's not true (at least not any more). You now get an account on Manning the first time you buy a book and you can download the electronic versions of those books any time from your account.

Screenshot of my account page - http://imgur.com/Hu7qT

The URL is - http://beta.manning.com

To clarify, the time limit applies only to the links that are sent via email to you. The latest version of the MEAP and the published versions are always available for download.

Try: http://beta.manning.com/

Lists all of your ebooks with quick download links and last updated times for meap books. Been using it for a while now with no issues.

That made me extremely hesitant to order from them, but it turns out that I can download all my Manning books without time restrictions. (Clearly inconsistent with the policy you point out; dunno what it all means.)

They might have changed this recently. Several months ago I wanted to download a copy of a book that I had purchased in the past and discovered this policy. I was not able to download it again.

Are you using the original links that were emailed to you? I no longer had the download message and I see no way to login on their site.

That is a definitely usability flaw IMO. I forget the exact dance I did, but I think in the end it was simply to create an account, and they associate all books you've previously ordered with that email address with your new account.

The emailed links expire, but the accounts page is permanent as far as I know.

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