Science Fiction Publisher Liberates Its E-Books
Tor/Forge, the rather libertarian science fiction publishing house I profiled in "Tor's World Without Death or Taxes," has decided to eliminate digital rights management from their e-books:
“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 e-books in perfectly legal ways, like moving them from one kind of e-reader to another.”
DRM-free titles from Tom Doherty Associates will be available from the same range of retailers that currently sell their e-books. In addition, the company expects to begin selling titles through retailers that sell only DRM-free books.
Via BoingBoing's Cory Doctorow, who says there will be "more to follow, I'm sure; I've had contact with very highly placed execs at two more of the big six publishers."
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Via BoingBoing's Cory Doctorow
Just once, could we have a discussion about DRM without bringing that annoying little douche into it?
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Yeah, any mention of a Cory always gets "Sunglasses at Night" stuck in my head
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Baen Books (another right leaning publisher) has always been DRM free.
That's the really silly thing about the book publishers complaining about Amazon having a monopoly - store restrictions only exist because of DRM. If they wanted to sell books direct that will work on any reader, they could, they just had to make it DRM free.
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Baen is awesome. Forget whiny libertarian scifi. I want my libertarian scifi full of (NAP compliant) violence. Michael Z. Williamson's Freehold universe is a really good read.
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Baen also has a fairly large library of free ebooks.
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Reading Baen's free books can cost you a lot of money. :)
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Yes, it's very subtle marketing scheme they have going; they give you the first book or two of a series for free to get you hooked, then you have to buy the rest. They're like heroin dealers.
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And dozens of books that they sale are also available for free by them.
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Is this "Tor" company named for science fiction legend Tor Johnson?
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Judging by the logo, it's likely to be this Tor.
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Wake me when they actually make e-books cheaper. As it stands, I refuse to pay more than $10 for a digital book and I'd rather pay less than $5, but B&N doesn't put those out there for the most part.
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