eBooks for palm, mobipocket, pocket pc, mac and pc

Barnes Noble and Microsoft Form ‘Newco’—A New Chapter for Ebooks
by
Nancy K. Herther



Posted On May 10, 2012

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On April 30, 2012, Microsoft (MS) and Barnes Noble (BN) announced the end of their ongoing litigation and a joint partnership to further develop the Nook and ebooks lines. The joint press release called this “a strategic partnership in a new BN subsidiary, which will build upon the history of strong innovation in digital reading technologies from both companies. The partnership will accelerate the transition to e-reading, which is revolutionizing the way people consume, create, share, and enjoy digital content.”

BN has struggled in recent years and the infusion of $300 million from Microsoft will only help shore up the Nook platform and allow for further innovation (most probably based on some form of MS Windows operating system). For MS, after missing out on much of the internet and social media trends, this offers a chance to capture a segment of the ereader, apps, and tablet markets—something it has failed at, despite a strong historic interest in the areas dating back to CD-ROMs in the 1980s.

The new entity, now called Newco, will include BN’s digital and college businesses—there is no date for this spin-off. MS will hold a 17.6% stake in the new company and plans to include a Nook application in its upcoming 2012 Windows 8 release. For MS, this investment is minimal given what it hopes to gain. The college etextbook and tablet markets are expected to grow quickly in the coming years. In the device marketplace, MS needs to re-assert the Windows brand, in an area dominated by Android and Apple’s iOS, to continue to gather marketshare as people switch to mobile versus desktop systems.

In making this deal, MS gets its foot in the door to ebooks, tablets, and etextbooks. BN gains stability and the chance to grow Nook into a true contender in the ereader and ebook marketplaces against giants Amazon and Apple. Until details of the new company and partnership are announced or become apparent, it is difficult to forecast the vitality or direction this may take the companies, the industry, or the products.

Both MS and BN seem extremely pleased with the new arrangements. However, things looked very different between the two companies just last year.

Strange Bedfellows

Although the BN and MS agreement provides mutual benefits—as well as an opportunity to up-end or at least provide a legitimate challenge to Amazon’s dominance—it also results from an ongoing legal battle that is underlying much of the device marketplace today.

Just a year ago, BN was counter-suing MS in an effort to stop MS’s collection of patent royalties for Android devices. “Microsoft is attempting to raise its rivals’ costs in order to drive out competition and to deter innovation in mobile devices,” BN charged. For its part, MS may indeed hope for a “cash cow” coming from Android. “In fiscal 2010, the Entertainment and Devices division, which includes the Xbox business and mobile software, made $8.1 billion in sales and $679 million in operating profit,” a McClatchy-Tribune article noted last year. The article went on to suggest that, if successful, Android could bring in about a billion dollars annually to MS to fuel their future developments. Clearly, the stakes are high.

With a proliferation of devices—smart phones, tablets, and ereading plus systems—issues of licensing various aspects of the interfaces, look-and-feel, and operation of these systems have become major issues. In March 2011, MS sued BN, and others, in U.S. District Court over patent infringement of five specific patents used in BN’s Nook ebook system.

BN counter-sued in April noting that the claimed infringements were nonexistent and that “MS is misusing these patents as part of a scheme to try to eliminate or marginalize the competition to its own Windows Phone 7 mobile device operating system posed by the open source Android operating system and other open source operating systems.” BN asserted that the lawsuit, in fact, consisted of “five insubstantial and trivial features,” including what MS has itself described as (1) the “display of a webpage’s content before the background image is received, allowing users to interact with the page faster,” (2) the “super impos[ing of] download status on top of the downloading content,” (3) “easy ways to navigate through information provided by their device apps via a separate control window with tabs,” (4)“[p]rovid[ing] users the ability to annotate text without changing the underlying document,” and (5) “[p]ermit[ing] users to easily select text in a document and adjust that selection.”

In its April 2012 press release, MS noted that the two companies had “settled their patent litigation, and moving forward, BN and Newco will have a royalty-bearing license under Microsoft’s patents for its Nook eReader and Tablet.” Thad McIlroy, blogging at The Future of Publishing, believes that BN “has agreed to pay MS for some or all of its previously disputed patents via this new company (currently called ‘Newco’). And that means MS managed to gain the upper hand in these negotiations.” Which would also imply that the infusion of capital into BN for the future development of Nook and ebook ventures was worth the legal resolution. Amazon is rumored to be working on a larger version of the Fire, along with enhancements to its 7-inch Kindles for a launch later this year. It will be interesting to see the role of MS and its Windows operating system in these first products off the Newco production line.

This doesn’t end the ongoing litigation concerning intellectual property in, especially, the Android arena. Android, a Linux-based operating system developed specifically for mobile devices like tablets and smartphones, is available on more than 300 million devices in use by February 2012. Although Google acquired Android Inc. on Aug. 17, 2005, making it a wholly owned subsidiary of Google, Linux-based systems remain popular, open development platforms.

Today, Android is the leading mobile handset software and in this highly charged competitive environment, lawsuits are bound to arise. Today lawsuits are pending involving Google, MS, Apple, Oracle, and many others. The issue of “prior art” to substantiate claims of innovation (and thus patentable ideas or products) is a tricky one for the industry. As recently noted by Groklaw, discussions or imaginations of mobile or tablet-types of computing devices and their operation go back to at least the 1960s. How the courts sort all of this out will be interesting to follow—and only points to the ongoing need for patent and copyright reform.

In this case, although the exact terms are not available, at least there is resolution, an end to the acrimony, and a chance to focus on the future instead of bogging down the industry further in litigation.

What About Amazon and Its Critics?

Amazon continues to innovate, but seems to be facing more serious challenges to its dominance in online retailing, publishing, and other arenas. Well-known for its hard-dealing with producers and manufacturers over pricing, Amazon still sees Fire as the best hope to topple Apple’s dominance and establish Android as a serious contender for future computing. The final word hasn’t been written on that one; however, Amazon is clearly seeing some push-back from some of their brick-and-mortar partners. On May 2, Target announced that it would stop selling Kindle e-readers in their 1800 stores. Called “showrooming” in the industry, this practice allows potential users to go into stores to get hands-on experience with products—and then going online to get the best deal on that product. Amazon itself almost gleefully promoted this during last year’s holiday sales period by offering discounts if people bought products from Amazon after visiting brick-and-mortar stores. In a letter to Target vendors last January, the company reportedly warned that “what we aren’t willing to do is let online-only retailers use our brick-and-mortar stores as a showroom for their products and undercut out prices.” Target began selling Kindles in 2010 and recently announced plans to expand its Apple product lines through 25 “mini-stores.”

This action alone won’t dramatically affect Kindle sales or Amazon’s overall profits, but represents a long-overdue wake-up call by stores already negatively impacted by e-retailing. This action follows earlier decisions by BN, Canada’s Indigo Books, and Books-A-Million to not stock titles published by Amazon in their stores.

Exactly What is an Ebook? An App?

Although librarians, authors, publishers, and other information professionals see the ebook as an entity, it is clear from many studies that, for many users, they are another form of app. Seen as information products (such as Wikipedia or most library-oriented online reference tools), everyone is using “ebooks” as defined as online/electronic versions of printed material or information. As these become further enhanced in the future with social media elements, video, stills, and other media, the distinctions between apps and ebooks will become less significant.

Although the numbers of people having ever read, cover-to-cover, the great literary tomes are few, Allison Flood, former news editor of The Bookseller, recently asked the question “can literary fiction survive the ebook age?” Citing Julian Gough’s estimate that “only 5% of literary fiction sales were electronic,” Flood notes that she believes the unique qualities that mark the genre will save it: “Literary fiction can be about anything, so long as it’s beautifully, intriguingly, surprisingly, gorgeously written, so long as it’s brilliantly constructed—from the word, to the sentence, the paragraph, the chapter, the novel, and beyond.” Clearly, however, the ebook marks a transition to new forms and formats for information and 21^st century publishing.

Britain’s 2010 Publishers Association Statistics Yearbook was released this week, finding that of the 250 member publishers, there was a 366% increase in ebook sales over the previous year, making ebooks equal to 6% of books sales. Academic and professional titles led the way with 72% of “digital sales.”

As an example, J.K. Rowling’s Potttermore estimates it sold more than one million British pounds worth of ebooks in the first 3 days of sales and has had more than a billion visits to its interactive website in just the first 3 weeks. Pottermore is also note-worthy for waiving digital rights management (DRM) for its ebooks. Something that may be catching on.

In April, science fiction publisher Tor Books announced it would be ending DRM from all their ebooks by July. “Our authors and readers have been asking for this for a long time,” said president and publisher Tom Doherty. “They’re a technically sophisticated bunch, and DRM is a constant annoyance to them. It prevents them from using legitimately-purchased ebooks in perfectly legal ways, like moving them from one kind of e-reader to another.” Could this signal we are nearing the end of all of the licensing headaches and format wars? Time will tell.

In terms of content trends, Amazon is now reportedly considering high-end clothing and accessories as another area for their sales program. Forbes’ Kelly Clay noted that “considering Amazon has nailed its approach to shipping and methods of disrupting nearly every other industry it integrates, it won’t surprise me if Amazon does the same to high-end fashion—and likely sooner than later.”

Amazon also recently announced a new 6.3.1 software upgrade for the Kindle Fire that adds new parental controls to its Android tablet. “The ability to password-protect purchases, disable access to specific content libraries, and block access to the Silk web browser. As with all software updates, these new features will be delivered automatically to your Kindle Fire.” These are efforts in response to customer interest in better control of kids’ use of the devices.

Nooks, Kindles, and Tablets—Oh, My!

Given the lack of standards for information (text and media) display and manipulation, we continue to be left to consider trends in the various devices being used to access information today.

Good E Reader reports that the new BN Nook Simple Touch with Glowlight for reading in the dark (using e-ink technoology) is having problems with fulfilling even pre-orders and customers are experiencing a 2-week wait to receive their units. The unit was released earlier this month to good reviews.

Perhaps most interesting is the issue of reliable information on the market share for different types of e-reading devices. Due to the December holiday sales period, Amazon Fire reportedly shipping nearly 4 million units, taking 4% of the marketshare. IDC and Jumptap are both reporting that the surge in Kindle sales hasn’t continued into the new year.

“It seems some of the mainstream Android vendors are finally beginning to grasp a fact that Amazon, BN, and Pandigital figured out early on: Namely, to compete in the media tablet market with Apple, they must offer their products at notably lower price points,” IDC’s Tom Mainelli notes. “We expect a new, larger-screened device from Amazon at a typically aggressive price point, and Google will enter the market with an inexpensive, co-branded ASUS tablet designed to compete directly on price with Amazon’s Kindle Fire. The search giant’s new tablet will run a pure version of Android, whereas the Fire runs Amazon’s own forked version of the OS that cuts Google out of the picture.” Does this represent normal, seasonal changes or something more? Time will tell.

Data from Jumptap show a continuing surge in tablet growth, particularly for Apple, in the first quarter of 2012. comScore data released in the past month, supports the growth of tablets finding that, as of February 2012, Amazon’s Kindle Fire now accounts for 54.4% of all Android tablets in the U.S., giving it a major lead over competitors. “Within the Android tablet market, Kindle Fire has almost doubled its share in the past two months from 29.4% share in December 2011 to 54.4% share in February 2012, already establishing itself as the leading Android tablet by a wide margin,” comScore noted.

Regardless of who you might prefer to believe, the market is clearly heating up. Apple, Amazon, and other major players are working hard to solidify the market and their positions. The MS/BN partnership only adds to the mixture and ensures a more interesting, and hopefully diverse, playing field.

The worldwide tablet market is entering a new phase in the second half of 2012 that will undoubtedly reshape the competitive landscape,” forecasts IDC’s Bob O’Donnell. “While Apple will continue to sit comfortably on the top for now, the battle for the next several positions is going to be fierce. Throw in Ultrabooks, the launch of Windows 8, and a few surprise product launches, and you have all the makings of an incredible 2012 holiday shopping season.” 

Article source: http://newsbreaks.infotoday.com/NewsBreaks/Barnes--Noble-and-Microsoft-Form-NewcoA-New-Chapter-for-Ebooks-82555.asp

As China’s Zhou Enlai would say, it’s always too early to predict the outcome of a revolution – but wherever it’s headed, the one that’s happening in the publishing world looks to have reached a point of no return.

This week, the Publishers Association Statistics Yearbook – collating information from 250 publishers – announced that ebook sales in the UK had increased by 366% last year. Meanwhile, JK Rowling’s Pottermore sold more than £1m of ebooks in its first three days of trading, and has had a billion visits to the interactive website since it opened to all-comers three weeks ago.

One of the less trumpeted innovations of the Pottermore experiment is that Rowling has waived digital rights management for her ebooks – which means they can be shared across multiple devices. The world’s biggest science fiction publisher, Tor, followed suit, in a move that has been welcomed by champions of open access as “tearing up the rulebook”, and will be watched beadily by more conservative players fearful that it will also tear up defences against ebook piracy.

So a lot is happening but what does it all mean? Much of the focus of the e-publishing debate in recent months has been on the ingenuity of writers such as Amanda Hocking, who muscled her way into a conventional publishing contract by demonstrating that there was a mass readership for her self-published novels of the paranormal.

Admirable though Hocking and her kind are in commercial terms, nobody would claim they are changing the aesthetic landscape – and a lot of the ebooks published so far are just digital versions of traditional codex books. But in literary terms, too, a revolution is under way.

Last week, the independent publisher Profile launched an updated, interactive version of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, which leapt straight into the top 10 in the books section of Apple’s App Store on both sides of the Atlantic.

The point about Frankenstein – and other innovative ebooks – is that it is a new type of monster, one that would be impossible to create within the pages of a paper book. Created by a writer with a background in video games, the reader can influence the route the story takes by making choices in the character of the monster or of Frankenstein himself. Because it deals with multiple pathways, Dave Morris’s new text is longer than that of the original novel.

Another departure is promised for the end of the month, when the “enhanced ebook” of a new work by Ewan Morrison is released. Tales from the Mall takes its structure from the floorplan of a shopping mall. It mixes history with sociology, reportage with fiction. Anecdotes are repeated in print and on video, creating a text that can only be fully appreciated by “reading” both versions.

The educational potential in the new technologies is nowhere more apparent than in Faber’s iPad app of TS Eliot’s The Waste Land, which became one of the pace-setters on its release last year and took just a month to make back its production costs. It offers the treat of reading this difficult modernist poem in a specially designed digital typeface while listening to your favourite archive performances – from Alec Guinness, Ted Hughes, Fiona Shaw or Eliot himself. You can puzzle your own way through Eliot’s manuscript and Ezra Pound’s edits, or seek help from experts such as Seamus Heaney or Jeanette Winterson, who share their thoughts on video.

However, no innovations come without health warnings – and a recent article in Time Magazine suggested that digital reading might damage your learning. It quoted Kate Garland, a psychology lecturer at Leicester University, whose studies on memory and digital reading appeared to show that the human brain doesn’t navigate digital texts as efficiently as paper ones. Her findings suggested that computer readers needed more repetition to absorb the same information as from a book, and that book readers seemed to digest the material more fully.

But Garland’s experiments were carried out on students whose brains had been trained on the printed book – and it is in children’s books, particularly for the youngest readers, that much of the innovation is happening. Today’s three-year-olds don’t just read about the three little pigs, but can huff and puff and blow the house down.

In all the excitement, though, it’s worth bearing in mind that, even in children’s books, not all innovation is digital. Coming shortly, thanks to a “ground-breaking new technology based on micro-encapsulation and touch activation”, is a range of books that will smell of their subject. And which do we think will be most successful with the digital natives of tomorrow? Why, The Story of the Famous Farter, of course. Some things never change.

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Article source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/may/04/pottermore-frankenstein-new-kind-monster

At the end of April, Tor Books, the world’s largest science fiction publisher, and its UK sister company, Tor UK, announced that they would be eliminating digital rights management (DRM) from all of their ebooks by the summer. It was a seismic event in the history of the publishing industry. It’s the beginning of the end for DRM, which are used by hardware manufacturers and publishers to limit the use of digital content after sale. That’s good news, whether you’re a publisher, a writer, a dedicated reader, or someone who picks up a book every year or two.

The first thing you need to know about ebook DRM is that it can’t work.

Like all DRM systems, ebook DRM presumes that you can distribute a program that only opens up ebooks under approved circumstances, and that none of the people you send this program to will figure out how to fix it so that it opens ebooks no matter what the circumstances. Once one user manages that, the game is up, because that clever person can either distribute ebooks that have had their DRM removed, or programs to remove DRM (or both). And since there’s no legitimate market for DRM – no readers are actively shopping for books that only open under special approved circumstances – and since the pirated ebooks are more convenient and flexible than the ones that people pay for, the DRM-free pirate editions drive out the DRM-locked commercial editions.

What’s more, books are eminently re-digitisable. That is, it’s very easy to retype a DRM-locked ebook, or scan a physical book, or take screenshots of a DRM-locked ebook, and convert the resulting image files to text. Google has scanned some 16 million books in the last few years.

It’s a solved problem.

Bad for business

If all DRM did was drive legit customers to pirate downloads, that would be bad enough for publishers. But that’s just the most obvious way that DRM is bad for business. Most developed countries have signed up to the WIPO Copyright Treaty of 1996, and have implemented it in laws that make it illegal for anyone except a DRM vendor to remove DRM. If Tor sells you one of my books for the Kindle locked with Amazon’s DRM, neither I, nor Tor, can authorise you to remove that DRM. If Amazon demands a deeper discount (something Amazon has been doing with many publishers as their initial ebook distribution deals come up for renegotiation) and Tor wants to shift its preferred ebook retail to a competitor like Waterstone’s, it will have to bank on its readers being willing to buy their books all over again.

Because only Amazon can authorise you to take the DRM off your Kindle books, and because doing so would mean giving a commercial advantage to Amazon’s direct competitors, it’s not likely that they would cooperate with Tor on this. It’s a rare business that volunteers to cut its own throat.

Back when ebook sales began to kick off, most major publishers were still DRM believers — or at least, not overly skeptical of the claims of DRM vendors. They viewed the use of DRM as “better than nothing”.

When queried on the competitive implications of giving control over their business relationships to DRM vendors, they were sanguine (if not utterly dismissive). They perceived “converting ebooks” as a technical challenge beyond the average book buyer. For the absence of DRM to make any kind of difference in the marketplace, they believed that book buyers would have to download and install a special program to let them convert Kindle books to display on a Nook (or vice-versa), and they perceived this to be very unlikely.

But it’s only the widespread presence of DRM that makes “converting ebooks” into a technical challenge. Your browser “converts” all sorts of graphic formats — GIF, JPEG, PNG, etc — without ever calling your attention to it. You need to take some rather extraordinary steps to find out which format of the graphics on your screen right now are using. Unless you’re a web developer, you probably don’t even know what the different formats are, nor what their technical differences are. And you don’t need to.

A troubled history of formats

Publishers have had some very bad experiences with formats, which may explain their misperception of the difficulty of “converting” ebooks.

Many publishers began their conversion to digital typesetting with QuarkXPress, which was an extraordinarily clunky product, especially in its early days. Quark files were difficult to import into any

program, including other versions of Quark. When publishers began to shift their typesetting to Adobe InDesign, they spent millions on the conversion, and technical problems with this changeover haunt them to this day. But that’s an exception, not the rule. In most cases, application developers handle the existence of new formats without breaking a sweat. Your word processor, browser, spreadsheet program, video player, music player and photo editor can handle a titanic variety of formats.

But when the only DRM-free ebooks are those from independent authors, small and medium publishers, and the occasional stiff-necked author like me, who convinces a major publisher to release his books without DRM, there’s not really much point in making programs that read “all the ebooks”. Readers will still have to maintain multiple readers, one for each of the DRM formats they consume, and one for everything else. There are a few apps that do a good job of converting between formats, especially the donation-based program Calibre. But there haven’t been any big venture capital investments in splashy, jack-of-all-trades ebook readers, because there’s no market for them for so long as DRM is the norm.

Reading the market

Most people don’t really read books. A typical book buyer can be expected to buy a single book every year or so. On the other hand, a small minority are avid readers, the sort who’ll buy 100-150 books a year. This market is one that publishers are eager to protect, and it’s likely that anyone who spends $100 or more on an ebook reading device is an avid book reader already. That’s why publishers spent so much time worrying about whether Amazon was discounting new ebook releases too deeply. Kindle owners overlap with avid readers, and avid readers are the target market for new, full-price hardcovers.

Discounting ebooks when the hardcover is just out is likely to cannibalise one of the critical profit-centres for the industry.

However, these readers are also the ones most likely to run up against the limits of DRM. They’re the customers who amass large libraries from lots of suppliers, and who value their books as long-term assets that they expect to access until they die. They may have the chance to change their ebook reading platform every year or two (the most common platform being a mobile phone, and many people get a new phone with each contract renewal). They want to be sure that their books travel with them. When their books don’t, they’ll be alienated, frustrated and will likely seek out unauthorised ways to get books in future. No one wants to be punished for their honesty.

There’s the other population of readers – the very occasional reader, someone who’ll grab a book on the way to a beach holiday or a weekend away and then toss it out afterwards. Avid readers start off as occasional readers, and there are a lot of occasional readers in aggregate, so it’s not a market that publishers can afford to alienate.

These readers are also poorly served by DRM, since they aren’t likely to know much about ebooks and ebook readers, and are thus prone to buying books that aren’t compatible with their reading devices and vice-versa.

Absent DRM, these customers will also have tools that effortlessly read any vendor’s ebooks.

In mature gadget markets – like DVD players and MP3 players – formats stop mattering altogether. Especially at the low end of the market, these devices support every format their makers can discover. The cheap-and-cheerful manufacturers at the low end don’t have a secondary market they’re trying to protect, no app store or crucial vendor relationship with a big distributor or publisher. They just want a product that ticks the box for every possible customer. Since multiformat support is just a matter of getting the software right, what tends to happen is that a standard, commodity firmware emerges for these devices that just works for just about everything, and the formats vanish into the background.

Now that Tor has dropped DRM – and acquired a valuable halo of virtue among committed ebook readers, who’ll celebrate their bravery – it’s inevitable that the competition will follow. It seems we have reached the beginning of the end of the ebook format wars, which is good news for readers, writers and publishers.

Article source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/may/03/death-of-drm-good-news

Almost a full year has passed since I last wrote about Digital Rights Management (DRM), but the restrictive technology continues to plague users around the globe. To help bring attention to the ongoing negative consequences of DRM, the Free Software Foundation has declared Friday this year’s International Day Against DRM.

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“While DRM has largely been defeated in downloaded music, it is a growing problem in the area of ebooks, where people have had their books restricted so they can’t freely loan, re-sell, or donate them, read them without being tracked, or move them to a new device without re-purchasing all of them,” the advocacy group wrote in its announcement of the event. “They’ve even had their ebooks deleted by companies without their permission.”

To protest the use of restrictive measures like these, events are being held around the world today in cities including Cincinnati; Orlando; San Francisco; Boston; Madrid; Rome; Manchester; Nagoya, Japan; and Aveiro, Portugal, the FSF said.

“Bad for Business”

DRM–dubbed “Digital Restrictions Management” by the FSF–has been widely decried by individuals, groups, and businesses around the globe.

I’ve already outlined why I think it’s a problem, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation has published its own similar views.

The past year has seen some progress made. Science fiction publisher Tom Doherty Associates, for example, just last month announced that by July it plans to abandon DRM.

Bloggers and authors including BoingBoing editor Cory Doctorow have also recently spoken out against DRM, calling it “bad for business.”

“As an author, I understand that DRM doesn’t do squat to protect my interests,” Doctorow said. “As a businessperson, I understand that DRM usurps my commercial relationships with my customers and hands them to DRM vendors.”

Four Ways to Protest

So what can you do to add your voice to the growing masses standing in opposition of DRM? Here are a few of the FSF’s suggestions.

1. Attend an Event.

There are many events taking place around the world today. Check the list on LibrePlanet to see if there’s one near you.

2. Spread the Word

Even if you can’t attend an event, you can still help increase awareness of the issue by blogging about it, posting banners, writing letters or creating videos about it, sharing links, and tagging products on Amazon.

3. Speak Up

Users of Netflix can ask the company to drop DRM from its own shows and to support DRM-free streaming, the FSF suggests. Mini-letters are even available for free download.

4. Vote with Your Wallet

Last but not least, you can also help by buying products and supporting artists who oppose DRM, the FSF notes. For that, the group offers a handy “Guide to DRM-free living.”

Article source: http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/255066/four_ways_to_celebrate_day_against_drm_today.html

Too stingy yo pay for your media?

Let me tell you about my first Kindle purchase. I paid $12 for a novel that retailed on Amazon at $13.

I read the book, thoroughly enjoyed it and told a friend a couple of days later. She responded by saying she’d love to borrow it. I had to explain that wasn’t possible.

So, I saved a dollar.

The publisher saved the cost of printing a paperback book, physically transporting it to Amazon. Amazon saved having the physically store the book in a warehouse and didn’t have to pay UPS to deliver it to me.

Once I had read the book, I couldn’t lend it or sell it. The bits were used and might as werll be deleted. The publisher and Amazon win again, as there’s no second hand market for that purchase.

I have made Kindle purchases since, but I’m much more selective. Typically I’ll only do it where I need a book now, or I can be sure it’s a book I won’t want to share.

It’s not because I’m too stingly – I’m still buying books. What I don’t want is to lose the rights I have through the first sale doctrine simply because I purchased bits and bytes rather than tree pulp.

Article source: http://news.slashdot.org/story/12/04/26/1315213/sci-fi-publisher-tor-ditches-drm-for-e-books?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed

Science fiction publisher Tor UK has announced it is dropping digital rights management (DRM) from all of its e-books, in a move that could set a precedent for the rest of the industry.

DRM is class of access control technologies used by copyright holders to limit the distribution of digital content. Publishers use DRM to protect their e-books from piracy, but it is unpopular among many customers because it prevents them from sharing titles between electronic devices.

Tor UK, whose parent company Macmillan is currently embroiled in a U.S. lawsuit over accusations of e-book price fixing, said that the decision to ditch DRM was made alongside similar moves by its U.S. partners, including Tor Books and Forge.

“We know that this is what many Tor authors passionately want,” said Jeremy Trevathan, Pan Macmillan’s fiction publisher. “We also understand that readers in this community feel strongly about this.”

Tom Doherty, president and publisher of Tom Doherty Associates in the U.S. — which publishes Tor, Forge, Orb, Starscape, and Tor Teen — added that authors and readers are “a technically sophisticated bunch,” and DRM is a constant annoyance to them.

“It prevents them from using legitimately-purchased e-books in perfectly legal ways, like moving them from one kind of e-reader to another,” he said.

Tor UK said it is now consulting with its authors about future plans and aims to start offering DRM-free e-books within the next three months.

The move has been interpreted as a watershed moment in the history of digital book publishing. Science fiction writer Charlie Stross, who is published by Tor is the US, said that, in the long term, removing the requirement for DRM will lower the barrier to entry in ebook retail, allowing smaller retailers to compete effectively with the current major incumbents.

No Deterrent to Buying

Meanwhile, Tor author John Scalzi dismissed suggestions that people will stop buying e-books after DRM has been dropped.

“As an author, I haven’t seen any particular advantage to DRM-laden eBooks. DRM hasn’t stopped my books from being out there on the dark side of the internet. Meanwhile, the people who do spend money to support me and my writing have been penalised for playing by the rules,” he said.

“The idea that my readers will, after July, ‘buy once, keep anywhere,’ makes me happy.”

In his blog post, Scalzi quoted a conversation with Patrick Nielsen Hayden, senior editor of Tor Books, in which Hayden said that Macmillan had no intention of scaling back its anti-piracy efforts. The company currently has a legal team in place to pursue major infringers.

Last year, rival publisher Penguin removed its e-books from libraries over concerns that they could be stripped of DRM and kept by the borrower without penalty.

Meanwhile, JK Rowling offers Harry Potter books DRM-free from her Pottermore store, instead using digital watermarks to discourage users from copying e-books illegally.

Article source: http://www.pcworld.com/article/254690/ebook_publisher_drops_drm.html

Kim Newman will be joining us for a webchat between 1pm and 2pm on Thursday 26 April. Newman is the ideal person to ask about the enduring appeal of vampires, the meaning of Dracula and the delights of genre fiction. He is a journalist and film critic renowned for his knowledge and his engaging and sharp-fanged prose, not to mention his ability to sit through hundreds of straight-to-video horrors that would make lesser men quake in their boots.

He is also is the author of the fantastic Anno Dracula series, in which a certain well-known vampire makes appearances in a number of alternative history settings with suitably bloody results. His career is further burnished by a number of important awards and plaudits – most notably for our purposes, he is a past recipient of the Bram Stoker award for superior achievement in horror writing. I for one can’t wait to hear what he makes of Twilight…

Please post your questions below.

The chat has been posted here to make it easier to follow.

BigbadD asks:

Are there any gothic tropes which you feel are ripe for the picking or, perhaps more importantly, are glad haven’t been touched or wish hadn’t?
Read the question in full

KimNewman replies:

Hi – thanks for the kind words. The Twilight films aren’t to my taste – and the books even less so – but I think there are interesting things to be said about them. And teenage horror has been a vital area since I Was a Teenage Werewolf – one of the best titles of anything ever – in 1958. Though there’s a version of The Monk out in the cinemas this week, the vast bulk of British and continental gothic literature outside a few famous examples remains surprisingly untapped by the movies. David Pirie pointed this out in 1973 and the situation remains unchanged – last year, we had the umpeenth versions of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, but where are the films of Melmoth the Wanderer, The Mysteries off Udolpho, The Castle of Otranto, ‘The Vampyre’, Uncle Silas, The Midnight Bell, Confessions of a Justified Sinner or The Beetle? And that’s just the pre-20th century canon – modern masters like Robert Aickman, Ramsey Campbell, Algernon Blackwood, Peter Straub, etc., are similarly neglected by the cinema.

Notsowhatso asks:

Hi Kim,

A simple question: A few months ago I read your astounding novel Jago.
I just wondered what was the genesis of that story and how did it develop?

Kim replies:

I wanted to write on of those big community-based horror novels that were around in the 80s, like Salem’s Lot or Ghost Story but with a British setting. I suppose if all the American versions are spins on Peyton Place, with added horror, then the British take must be a spin on The Archers. The basic idea of effective dreaming – altering reality with wishes, conscious or not – has been about in genre for a while, and I deliberately named the main character Anthony after the kid in the ‘It’s a Good Life’ episode of The Twilight Zone (from a story by Jerome Bixby).

CatherineShoard asks:

hi Kim: has your interest in horror ever waned? when did it peak? do you think there’s any difference in the way horror fans are perceived or treated in literature and film?

KimNewman replies:

It’s been a constant thrumm since I was about eleven, but there have been patches when the genre has been in a sorry state artistically or commercially – there was even a period when the ‘horror’ section of bookshops got taken out – which probably just made me look to the old stuff more. The representation of fans of all kinds in fiction and film is bizarrely skewed, considering that fans might be a potential audience – obviously, Annie in Misery represents one type of extreme fan but even most sympathetic depictions of fan culture make fun of fringe elements like costuming and trainspottery fact-hoarding while avoiding potentially more interesting stuff. Exceptions – Emily Hagins’ movie My Sucky Teen Romance, a funny vampire movie set at a science fiction convention which is affectionately sent up yet realistic, and the TV movie Cruise of the Gods, which is also very perceptive and tries to explore the relationship between creator and fandom.

boydetective asks:

How do you explain the continuing interest in zombie stories when they seem such limited monsters? What is the relationship (if any) between the vampire and the zombie?

Kim replies:

Personally, I could do with zombies taking a rest for a while – the genre seems so overworked and overexposed at the moment that it just feels lazy to add to the pile, as if the creatiors were stumbling forward on blind consumerist instinct. Actually, maybe there’s room for a retuyrn to Haitian style, pre-George Romero/zombie apocalypse voodoo zombies. It’s been said that the flesh-eating zombies of modern fiction are just grosser, mindless vampires – the need to consume and transform the living was bolted into the zombie myth by Night of the Living Dead, which was inspired by Richard Matheson’s (excellent) vampire novel I Am Legend.

DamienGWalter asks:

Hi Kim,

Drachenfels is one of my all time favourite fantasy novels, and Genevieve Dieudonne is my single favourite vampire. Lots of great British writers have written great novels in established worlds like the Warhammer universe. What do you think writers can learn from working in collaborative worlds like that?

Kim replies:

Thanks for that. I wrote a bunch of novels (as Jack Yeovil) for Games Workshop early in my career. It served as on-the-job training in the business of writing – with the added attraction of publication and payment. I wrote those things very fast, so they have a lot of narrative drive – and some slapdash elements that I only noticed when I had to proofread them all together for the omnibus edition. I like to think of them as like those Roger Corman movies made over a weekend – they’re not the best movies ever made, but they’re pretty good for a weekend’s work on no resources. I didn’t pay that much attention – because I didn’t have time – to what else was going on in GW’s worlds, though I did look at the manuals and the other novels and work in cross-references. It was also early enough in the evolution of their empire that I could change or establish things for them. I’m glad it’s still a way in for young writers.

ClockWorkRingmaster asks:

Hi Kim,

I loved Anno Dracula, and I thought the sense of fun balanced the horror perfectly. How important do you think this balance is to successful horror writing?

Current vampires being a bit-teenish and heart-achy doesn’t particularly bother me, since they transpose themselves so well between generations: AIDs panic in Near Dark, fear of the outsider in the early-mid 20th century etc.

I was wondering what you see as the next likely incarnation of the vampire’s cultural threat? Bankers as bloodsuckers seems a little on the nose…

Kim replies:

The politically-connected property developer as vampire in The Satanic Rites of Dracula seems more pertinent now than it did in 1973 in The Satanic Rites of Dracula. My favourite yuppie vampire novel is Anne Billson’s Suckers – just now republished as an e-book. The era of the sympathetic vampire might be fading, and – yes – the next wave will probably represent the kind of people we hate, fear or feel are ruining our lives at the moment.

samjordison asks:

who (or what?) is your favourite vampire? And why do you think they have such strong appeal?

Kim replies:

Dull answer, but it’s Dracula. I think we wouldbn’t have a vampire genre without him, and he has shown up in all manner of forms. I also like LeFanu’s Carmilla, who is a fascinating passive-aggressive vampire: she poses as an invalid and gets healthier as her nurses fade away. The Count from Sesame Street, who has real folkloric roots in the notion of vampires as obsessive counters, is also way cool. Maybe the sexiest vampire for me is Delphine Seyrig in Daughters of Darkness.

Bjerkley asks:

A boring book question from me. But I picked up Anno Dracula last year for first time and loved it. Wanted to read the rest of the series – are any due to be re-published?

Kim replies:

Not boring at all to me. The Bloody Red Baron is republished today! Dracula Cha Cha Cha will be out in the Autumn. Johnny Aliucard next year. And another book is in the works. The new editions all contain new stuff – BRB and DCC have whole new novellas which add up to basically a new novel slipped into the gaps of the previously published stuff.

Damehedwig asks:

Sorry to be a suck-up here but, Mr Newman, your work has been a great pleasure of mine for decades now, and I’m delighted my son, almost a teenager, is being slowly drawn in as well, although I grow weary of explaining we can’t afford all the dodgy dvds you recommend each month. Your imdb entry is thin though. This feels like a deliberate choice on your part, is it? Why am I not able to watch Kim Newman’s ‘Orrorshow, or similar?

Kim replies:

I have concentrated on being a published novelist rather than being an unproduced screenwriter. That said, I’m doing some work in other media at the moment – I’ve written radio plays and am working on a Halloween stage production.

pubbore asks:

I would add Galaxy Quest to that short list, Kim. Just wanted to say that I’m so pleased the Anno Dracula series is back in print – I read The Bloody Red Baron many, many years ago and occasionally wondered why I’d never seen the first book, so I was thrilled to come across it in Waterstones.

I think Joss Whedon said a year or two ago that he thought there were just too many vampires about these days. Do you share that view? Were you at all concerned about re-releasing your novels into a market where the appetite for vampires might be beginning to wane again?

Kim replies:

There are certainly more vampire novels about than I can read, though I try to keep up with as many of the movies as I can. I said above that I thought zombies were dead-ended in fiction just now, but vampires are more versatile. There always seems to be something new to say. I didn’t have that worry about the Anno Dracula books – and I don’t know if my publishers did – since, though vampires are upfront in the series, the novels are about a lot more things too. I have flet the need in the new story ‘Vampire Romance’, which is in The Bloody Red Baron reissue, to address recent trends in vampire fiction. Besides the obvious sparkly goth romance stuff, I realised that the Anno Dracula universe lacked a Japanese schoolgirl vampire – so I’ve put one in.

PaulieB asks:

Do you dispair at the teen versions of vampirism that seem to remove the intrigue from the vampire canon or are they simply a modern version of the penny dreadfuls, appealing to the masses?

Kim replies:

They aren’t my idea of interesting – but I may well be grumpy. I disliked The Lost Boys in the 1980s, and there’s a wave of people – who are wrong – going around calling it a classic now. I don’t have any problem with appealing to the masses, either: very popular things are usually interesting for the way they connect with audiences even if they’re artistiucally unexceptional. Except the Transformers films. They’re dross.

KateP asks:

Do you have any views on ebooks? Specifically, are your Diogenes Club collections coming out in e? Please say yes…

Kim replies:

I’ve a pile of unread proper books the size of a 1950s fridge, so I won’t be getting an e-reader any time soon. I spend so much of my day looking at screens that I’d rather not add to that – but I’m all in favour of e-books. The Diogenes Club books will be reissued by Titan, and I assume ebooks are part of that package.

PhilDixon asks:

Do you ever consider reviving old Jack Yeovil? For young adult material, perhaps? I rather miss him.

jno50 comments:

Bugger – I’ve stumbled on this and I don’t have a single question to ask about vampires (I find it a bit like wondering what Hamlet was majoring in at university, or whether Death Stars use Rolls Royce engines). So I’ll just note my opinion (formed over many years and from many media) that Newman is the best and most knowledgeable and readable film critic in the country and the Guardian should give him a proper job.

Okay, Bramologists, carry on.

Kim replies:

I’m sure Peter Bradshaw is quaking in his cinema seat.

indrossi asks:

I have a question about the merit and allure of the vampire as a literary figure, both in it’s significance to pure horror, and indeed the potential of the vampire as a mode of allegory or representation… How can the vampire evolve in a way that maintains its pertinence to audiences?
Read the question in full

Kim replies:

As the most successfully adaptive of all the monsters – let’s face it, you can”t do all that much with mummies – I suspect that vampires will continue to evolve, and keep pace and popularity and relevance … but I don’t know what’s happening next … I hope it’ll be interesting.

samjordison asks:

Have you read any of Bram Stoker‘s other books? There have been plenty of articles around the 100th anniversary of his death saying he was a one hit wonder. Do you think that’s right?

Kim replies:

I kind of like Jewel of the Seven Stars – the mummy novel – and I have read a few other things. Lair of the White Worm is wonderfully demented. And some of the short stories in Dracula’s Guest are terrific. He was one of those Victorians – like Disraeli – who was well-known for something enormously demanding (as the business manager of Sir Henry Irving and the Lyceum Theatre) but miraculously also found time not just to write novels but to be prolific too. His death certificate said ‘overwork’, so that perhaps says something.

tomcasagranda asks:

The modern-day vampire stories are purely teen-centric , i.e. Twilight. I would suggest that Twilight is a by-product of Buffy The Vampire Slayer TV series.

However, it is the roots, the aetiological nature of vampirism to explain anaemia, or exsanguination, that spring to mind ? Where do you think the myths of vampirism arose ?
Read question in full

Kim replies:

Oddly enough, though I’ve looked a bit at the folkloric stuff it’s not influenced me much. I think of Tom Lehrer’s statement that the reason folk songs are rubbish is that they’re written by the people rather than professional songwriters who know what they’re doing. Vampire stories are just a collection off odd snippets, traditions and anecdotes until John Polidori finds a use for the idea in a piece of fiction – ‘The Vampyre’ gives vampires a look, a voice and a purpose, and it’s not accidental that the genre took off after that. Even Dracula feels like a gloss on ‘The Vampyre’.

drsamgeorge asks:

Enjoyed your session at the Open Graves, Open Minds Stoker Centenary event at the weekend with Kevin Jackson. I am interestd in the non reflection motif in Dracula or the old ‘not visible in a mirror’ trick as you put it. Firstly, do you think Stoker sat down at his desk one day and invented the idea of a vampire not reflecting in a mirror? Are the notebooks in the Rosenbach museum evidence of this in your opininon (associations with werewolves and silver aside) and secondly can you outline your thoughts about using this in your own work…where do you see it going…..is it outmoded now with the advent of film? Photography too…Stoker has Dracula not showing up in a photograph (‘could not codak (sic) him’) you use this as well. How do you interpret it as a metaphor? What does it mean do you think?
I’d love to know.

Kim replies:

It’s a poetic touch – I suspect it comes from ETA Hoffman and stories of missing shadows and the like – and Stoker seems to think he was adapting it from pre-existing lore even if he was making it up. This is quite common in vampire stories – I doubt if Murnau thought he was inventing the dead at dawn thing in Nosferatu. Stoker originally planned on having his vampire show up as smudges in photographs, since he was interested in modern tech interfacing with ancient legend. This trope later shows up in The Omen and Ring, where the cursed and doomed can be identified by their mangled images in photographs. I keep coming back to it in my own series because it’s one thing that means the vampire is a supernatural creature rather than completely subsumed into science fiction (even Stoker plays with vampirism as a side-effect of radium deposits in the Carpathians). I think the lack of reflection is supposed to mean the lack of a soul, though it’s not consistent – I’ve also always wondered whether vampires should appear in mirrors as empty suits of clothes rather than absences, or does the effect act like a cloaking device? In the piece I’m working on at the moment, there’s a character obsessed with devising means of photographing vampires so I’m still struggling with it.

PaulieB aks:

Well I completely agree with you on Transformers! In regards to Zombies however, how did you view the critical mauling that Max Brooks has received after attempting to introduce Vampires in to his WWZ timeline? Have to say I was thoroughly underwhelmed especially after the two previous books blew me away.and whilst the subject matter is clearly fantasy, the gritty realism and backstories to WWZ and TZSG grounded them more in reality. The introduction of another strain of undead popping up to help humans, seems tenious when they hadn’t been mentioned whatsoever and took the series in to unwanted waters for me.

Kim replies:

I’m afraid I’ve not read those. I have come across zombie/vampire team-up/confrontation efforts before. Yes, there is a film called Vampires vs Zombies. That said, in Dracula Cha Cha Cha, I went the other way and put degenerate vampires indistinguishable from zombies in the mix – mainly because the book was set in Rome and I couldn’t resist having some good old fashioned video nasty style 1980s Italian zombies stumble around.

samjordison posts:

I have a question coming in from Twitter – from non other than the excellent Jon Courtenay Grimwood: “@samjordison ask Kim if he has the rights in genevieve dieudonne (sp) and if she’s going to reappear…”

Kim replies:

Yes, indeed – she appears in ‘Vampire Romance’ and will be back in Johnny Alucard and whatever the fifth book is called. One nice thing about doing a vampire series is that they live a long time and can pop up across the centuries in different times and places. I recommend John’s current series of Venetian vampire books, by the way.

Article source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/apr/25/live-webchat-kim-newman-reading-group

Tor, the world’s biggest science fiction publisher and home to authors including Orson Scott Card, China Miéville and Cory Doctorow, has shaken publishing with the news that its entire list of ebooks is to be made digital rights management-free.

Tor, whose parent company Macmillan is currently fighting a lawsuit over accusations of ebook price fixing, is the first major publisher to drop digital rights management (DRM) from its ebooks, and the move prompted predictions that others would soon follow suit. JK Rowling’s recently launched ebooks, sold exclusively from her site Pottermore, are already DRM-free.

DRM is the way publishers currently protect their ebooks from piracy; it limits the sharing of titles between electronic devices.

The decision will cover Tor, Forge, Orb, Starscape and Tor Teen ebooks from July 2012, the publisher said, as well as Tor UK titles. “Our authors and readers have been asking for this for a long time,” said president and publisher Tom Doherty. “They’re a technically sophisticated bunch, and DRM is a constant annoyance to them. It prevents them from using legitimately-purchased ebooks in perfectly legal ways, like moving them from one kind of ereader to another.”

“The pressure to do it has come from readers and authors,” agreed Jeremy Trevathan, publisher at Tor UK’s parent Pan Macmillan. “It’s partly prompted by the launch of Pottermore, which JK Rowling has made completely DRM-free. The evidence from there seems to be that in fact piracy has gone down.”

Trevathan said the news had been received “very positively” by writers and agents, while retailers have also been upbeat. Science fiction author Charlie Stross described the move as groundbreaking; it means, he said, that even if particular e-readers become obsolete, the ebooks purchased for those devices will still be available. He also argued that smaller retailers will be able to compete more effectively in the ebook marketplace.

Doctorow predicted that “this might be the watershed for ebook DRM, the turning point that marks the moment at which all ebooks end up DRM-free. It’s a good day”.

“DRM hasn’t stopped my books from being out there on the dark side of the internet,” said science fiction author John Scalzi. “Meanwhile, the people who do spend money to support me and my writing have been penalised for playing by the rules. The books of mine they have bought have been chained to a single e-reader, which means if that e-reader becomes obsolete or the retailer goes under (or otherwise arbitrarily changes their user agreement), my readers risk losing the works of mine they’ve bought. I don’t like that. So the idea that my readers will, after July, ‘buy once, keep anywhere,’ makes me happy.”

Tor will continue to fight ebook piracy “as robustly” as it did before going DRM-free, promised Trevathan. “The reason going DRM-free makes sense is that piracy is going on already [and] we have to acknowledge it,” he said.

As yet, Macmillan is “testing the waters” to see how dropping DRM plays out. According to Trevathan, the house currently has “no thought of extending it beyond science fiction and fantasy publishing. But it’s in the air. We’ve not talked about this to other publishers, but I can’t imagine they haven’t been thinking about this too.”

Article source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/apr/26/tor-rips-rulebook-digital-rights-management

Science fiction publisher Tor UK has announced it is dropping digital rights management (DRM) from all of its e-books, in a move that could set a precedent for the rest of the industry.

DRM is class of access control technologies used by copyright holders to limit the distribution of digital content. Publishers use DRM to protect their e-books from piracy, but it is unpopular among many customers because it prevents them from sharing titles between electronic devices.

Tor UK, whose parent company Macmillan is currently embroiled in a US lawsuit over accusations of e-book price fixing, said that the decision to ditch DRM was made alongside similar moves by its US partners, including Tor Books and Forge.

“We know that this is what many Tor authors passionately want,” said Jeremy Trevathan, Pan Macmillan’s fiction publisher. “We also understand that readers in this community feel strongly about this.”

Tom Doherty, president and publisher of Tom Doherty Associates in the US – which publishes Tor, Forge, Orb, Starscape, and Tor Teen – added that authors and readers are “a technically sophisticated bunch”, and DRM is a constant annoyance to them.

“It prevents them from using legitimately-purchased e-books in perfectly legal ways, like moving them from one kind of e-reader to another,” he said.

Tor UK said it is now consulting with its authors about future plans and aims to start offering DRM-free e-books within the next three months.

The move has been interpreted as a watershed moment in the history of digital book publishing. Science fiction writer Charlie Stross, who is published by Tor is the US, said that, in the long term, removing the requirement for DRM will lower the barrier to entry in ebook retail, allowing smaller retailers to compete effectively with the current major incumbents.

Meanwhile, Tor author John Scalzi dismissed suggestions that people will stop buying e-books after DRM has been dropped.

“As an author, I haven’t seen any particular advantage to DRM-laden eBooks. DRM hasn’t stopped my books from being out there on the dark side of the internet. Meanwhile, the people who do spend money to support me and my writing have been penalised for playing by the rules,” he said.

“The idea that my readers will, after July, ‘buy once, keep anywhere,’ makes me happy.”

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In his blog post, Scalzi quoted a conversation with Patrick Nielsen Hayden, senior editor of Tor Books, in which Hayden said that Macmillan had no intention of scaling back its anti-piracy efforts. The company currently has a legal team in place to pursue major infringers.

Last year, rival publisher Penguin removed its e-books from libraries over concerns that they could be stripped of DRM and kept by the borrower without penalty.

Meanwhile, JK Rowling offers Harry Potter books DRM-free from her Pottermore store, instead using digital watermarks to discourage users from copying e-books illegally.

Article source: http://rss.feedsportal.com/c/270/f/470440/s/1ecc3c5d/l/0Lnews0Btechworld0N0Cpersonal0Etech0C3354420A0Cscience0Efiction0Epublisher0Etor0Euk0Editches0Edrm0Eon0Ee0Ebooks0C0Dolo0Frss/story01.htm

The Department of Justice’s suit against Apple, et al, over e-books has restarted the discussion about the usefulness of DRM versus its unintended consequences. Specifically, by embracing DRM, e-book publishers have unwittingly helped provide Amazon with far more power over the nascent e-book market than is healthy for anyone (except Amazon). Since Amazon’s DRM works only with Kindle readers, all of the DRM-encumbered e-books purchased through Amazon effectively lock readers into the Kindle platform.

Tor/Forge is primarily a publisher of science fiction and fantasy titles. Because it serves a slightly geekier and DRM-averse audience than many other publishers, it makes sense for Tor/Forge to be one of the first anti-DRM publishers out of the gate. As the company noted in its blog, “[DRM] prevents [readers] from using legitimately-purchased ebooks in perfectly legal ways, like moving them from one kind of e-reader to another.”

Note that Tor/Forge isn’t the first publisher to go DRM-less. Tech publisher O’Reilly has been selling its e-books DRM-free for years. Carina Press (a digital imprint from Harlequin) doesn’t use DRM either.

But Tor/Forge is one of the first, if not the first, to have embraced DRM and thought better of it later. And it’s part of the Big Six book publishers.

The decision is coming from way up top the publishing chain. Tor/Forge is under the Macmillan umbrella, and as Charlie Stross writes in his thoughts on the move, “the final decision to drop DRM on ebooks from Tor/Forge was taken by John Sargent, CEO of Macmillan, who ultimately has to account for his actions to the shareholders.”

What About Infringement?

Going DRM-free can help solve the problem of lock-in to a single provider, but what about infringement? DRM’s effect on piracy may be a red herring. As publishers already know, DRM isn’t really that effective at stopping e-books from showing up on torrent networks, etc. The DRM on e-books can be cracked, easily. It’s a pain in the posterior for consumers, but less than a speed bump for someone intent on distributing e-books.

John Scalzi, an author who has a number of books published by Tor, will see his Redshirts e-book go DRM-free from day one. Scalzi says that he’s not concerned, and that Tor has been busy fighting online misappropriation for some time:

As an author, I haven’t seen any particular advantage to DRM-laden eBooks; DRM hasn’t stopped my books from being out there on the dark side of the Internet. Meanwhile, the people who do spend money to support me and my writing have been penalized for playing by the rules. The books of mine they have bought have been chained to a single eReader, which means if that eReader becomes obsolete or the retailer goes under (or otherwise arbitrarily changes their user agreement), my readers risk losing the works of mine they’ve bought. I don’t like that. So the idea that my readers will, after July, “buy once, keep anywhere,” makes me happy. I had been planning to ask Tor whether or not it would be feasible to offer my e-books without DRM; now I won’t have to have that conversation.

Salvation for Independent Bookstores?

E-books have also been less than a blessing for independent bookstores. Here in St. Louis, the indie stores have formed an alliance to try to bolster sales in the face of the e-book trend and competition from Amazon. But the writing is on the wall – customers want e-books more, and real books less. That’s a problem for indies right now.

If publishers abandon DRM, though, e-books might actually benefit independent bookstores. Stross writes, “Right now, there is a window of opportunity for smaller resellers: Amazon’s inclusion of masses of self-published material in the Kindle store has made it impossible for heavy consumers to browse it effectively. Smaller bookstores may be able to gain a strategic edge by curating their content, providing quality control on reviews, and other tactics we can’t predict at this time.”

That’s not a sure thing – as Stross admits – but it gives indies at least some shot at fighting against the Big Three (Apple, Amazon and Barnes Noble) than they have now.

The Big Question

The big question is whether Apple and Barnes Noble are going to embrace DRM-free e-books. Amazon already allows publishers to go DRM-free if they wish.

Offering e-books in DRM-free formats may be a selling point, just as dropping DRM from digital audio was a few years ago. It took Apple quite awhile to get on board, but it did eventually.

It’s early, but the tea leaves seem to indicate that more and more e-book publishers are souring on DRM. It may take time for DRM to disappear, but it’s got very little to recommend it. Let me know if you think e-book DRM has a future.

Article source: http://www.readwriteweb.com/enterprise/2012/04/publishers-starting-to-reject-e-book-drm.php