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."

Comments

[T]

Via BoingBoing's Cory Doctorow

Just once, could we have a discussion about DRM without bringing that annoying little douche into it?

[JeremyR]

Yeah, any mention of a Cory always gets "Sunglasses at Night" stuck in my head

[JeremyR]

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.

[Virginian]

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.

[R]

Baen also has a fairly large library of free ebooks.

[CharlesWT]

Reading Baen's free books can cost you a lot of money. 🙂

[R]

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.

[CharlesWT]

And dozens of books that they sale are also available for free by them.

[Anacreon]

Is this "Tor" company named for science fiction legend Tor Johnson?

[CharlesWT]

Tor

[CharlesWT]

Tor

[CharlesWT]

Judging by the logo, it's likely to be this Tor.

[DangoRoRo]

Sounds like they might be onto something dude.

http://www.Net-Anon.tk

[Lost_In_Translation]

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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