Tor/Forge ebooks going DRM-free

mpclemens

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The timing of this decision is interesting -- right on the heels of the DoJ issue about the agency model. It may just be coincidental, as I expect such a choice took a while to pass through the layers within TOR (getting clearance from legal, making sure it wasn't violating contracts with authors, running it past the accounting department, etc.)

I would not be surprised at all to find that this is a life preserver against Amazon, too. Being able to move your catalog over to Barnes & Noble (say) gives them a little breathing space. I hope other publishers follow suit.
 

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mpclemens

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"How much it changes things" is probably best measured by the influence of TOR et al within the publishing industry. I hope other publishers see the wisdom of the move, though. DRM-locked formats essentially hand a very large stick over to Amazon with which the publishers can continue to be flogged.

Someday soon I hope to never again have to explain to a non-technical friend why they are locked into an e-tailers ecosystem (Kindle, nook, etc.) I don't know if the agency model will continue to have legs after the DoJ is done with their case, so publishers -- trade and self- -- may need as many escape hatches as possible.
 
James D. Macdonald

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The DOJ's case is weak and tenuous. That's just Amazon using lobbying money to force publishers to waste time and resources defending a bogus suit. It's a no-lose for Amazon. If the DOJ wins, it'll hand Amazon a monopoly. If the DOJ loses, the cost of defending will have weakened Amazon's enemies. From Amazon's point of view, what's not to like?
 

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James D. Macdonald said:
The DOJ's case is weak and tenuous. That's just Amazon using lobbying money to force publishers to waste time and resources defending a bogus suit. It's a no-lose for Amazon. If the DOJ wins, it'll hand Amazon a monopoly. If the DOJ loses, the cost of defending will have weakened Amazon's enemies. From Amazon's point of view, what's not to like?
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The language in the actual suit reads like Amazon wrote it, or like they did their research via the Kindle boards. The assertion that ebooks are substantially cheaper to produce, the references to "traditional publishing," the dismissal of publishing as something requiring skilled labor, the references to "bricks and mortar bookstores"—they didn't do their homework.
 
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DRM doesn't stop copyright thieves who are determined and can easily do a quick Google search for instructions. They will always find a key for any digital lock, and in fact find it challenging to break the latest schemes. DRM discourages legitimate readers, and I believe it stunts sales somewhat. I applaud TOR/Forge for taking this step, and hope others follow suit.
 

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It's word of mouth sales that concerns me with no DRM.

Wouldn't want to see the money to be taken from providing quality to selling low quality products that are short lived and rely on advertising and hard sell tactics.
 
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thorjansen said:
DRM doesn't stop copyright thieves who are determined and can easily do a quick Google search for instructions. They will always find a key for any digital lock, and in fact find it challenging to break the latest schemes. DRM discourages legitimate readers, and I believe it stunts sales somewhat. I applaud TOR/Forge for taking this step, and hope others follow suit.
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This. Especially the bold part. I, for one, refuse to buy any e-book with DRM. Not because I intend to pirate it, because I don't. It's because it makes it hard for me to deal with the e-book. Easiest solution: I don't buy books with DRM. That means lost sales.
 
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Arpeggio said:
It's word of mouth sales that concerns me with no DRM.

Wouldn't want to see the money to be taken from providing quality to selling low quality products that are short lived and rely on advertising and hard sell tactics.
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I'm not sure what you're trying to say here.

I think you possibly don't know what DRM is?

The presence or absence of DRM has nothing to do with quality, at all.
 
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James D. Macdonald

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DRM doesn't stop the pirates for even one second.

It keeps your legitimate readers from doing lawful and ethical things with the books they've paid for, while telling them that you think they're thieves.
 

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Medievalist said:
I'm not sure what you're trying to say here.

I think you possibly don't know what DRM is?

The presence or absence of DRM has nothing to do with quality, at all.
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Hi Medievalist. My wording on the second paragraph was poor. I mean if there was no DRM and a products sales suffered due to word of mouth sales being almost non-existent.

While few bad businesses / products rely on word of mouth, instead more on marketing and advertising.
 

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Arpeggio said:
Hi Medievalist. My wording on the second paragraph was poor. I mean if there was no DRM and a products sales suffered due to word of mouth sales being almost non-existent.

While few bad businesses / products rely on word of mouth, instead more on marketing and advertising.
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Books don't though. Books sell based on personal recc from another reader--or even more--because a reader read a previous book by the same author and liked it.

DRM or not, books can still be recommended and reviewed and even advertised.

But a lot of people won't buy a DRMd book. For even more people, knowing they can buy a book without DRM and thus have it longer/on more devices/in other file formats is an inducement to buy.
 
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DRM = Digital Rights Management.

That is, essentially, encrypting the text so that it will only work on one device, once.

Let me tell you a story about DRM.

A while back I rented a couple of DVDs at my local video store. I went to watch them on my computer (as I generally do, rather than take over the family TV/DVD player/game station).

One of them worked, no problem. The other didn't.

After an entire evening of trying, I finally got to the TV and the dedicated DVD player to watch the one that didn't work (I'd actually thought the disk was faulty). Turned out that it was broken to create that DRM. What did I do? I praised the movie that didn't have DRM (in addition to the rental fee, my beloved bride got me a copy as a prezzie, more money for the film makers) while I panned the movie with the DRM (not only a loss of income from a purchase, but lost income from anyone who decided not to rent it based on my words).

Funny thing? I could have had either of those movies, free, no money to anyone, inside of a couple of minutes, if I'd decided to go the pirate route.
 

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Medievalist said:
Books don't though. Books sell based on personal recc from another reader--or even more--because a reader read a previous book by the same author and liked it.

DRM or not, books can still be recommended and reviewed and even advertised.

But a lot of people won't buy a DRMd book. For even more people, knowing they can buy a book without DRM and thus have it longer/on more devices/in other file formats is an inducement to buy.
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Incase I haven't articulated myself well enough; I was concerned about recommendations also becoming a case of simply passing the book on to whoever they are recommending it too. I hope the benefits of no DRM you speak of would outweight any degree of that, while it seems a few sellers are already doing this successfully.

I have some links similar to the first of this thread that I bookmarked a while ago about this for anyone who is interested...

http://support.diesel-ebooks.com/kb...ons/do-you-sell-unencrypted-books-without-drm

http://paidcontent.org/tech/419-random-house-to-sell-audiobooks-without-drm/

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/techno...piracy-is-about-to-arrive-on-a-massive-scale/

http://www.quora.com/Which-best-selling-authors-sell-their-ebooks-direct-without-DRM

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-06/23/harry-potter-e-books-drm?page=all

http://blog.threepress.org/2009/11/10/list-of-drm-free-publishers/

http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2011/0411/focus-tim-oreilly-media-e-book-antipiracy-steal-this.html
 
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James D. Macdonald

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Let me see if I understand you, Arpeggio.

Are you worried that, in a DRM-free world, that rather than saying to my friend Bill, "Hey, Bill, this is a great book, you ought to read it," I'll say, "Hey, Bill, this is a great book, you ought to read it, and here's a copy"?
 

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Arpeggio said:
I hope the benefits of no DRM you speak of would outweight any degree of that, while it seems a few sellers are already doing this successfully.
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Baen has been doing it for years.

People pass on and resell printed books all the time.

People who borrow books, whether from libraries or friends, if the like the book, buy a copy; better still, they may buy future books by that author.

Baen has released and put online entire CD-ROMs of DRMless books by David Webster and Lois MacMaster Bujold, among other writers.

Their sales are better for more readers buying more books.
 

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James D. Macdonald said:
Let me see if I understand you, Arpeggio.

Are you worried that, in a DRM-free world, that rather than saying to my friend Bill, "Hey, Bill, this is a great book, you ought to read it," I'll say, "Hey, Bill, this is a great book, you ought to read it, and here's a copy"?
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Yes, that people might do that.
 

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Medievalist said:
Baen has been doing it for years.

People pass on and resell printed books all the time.

People who borrow books, whether from libraries or friends, if the like the book, buy a copy; better still, they may buy future books by that author.

Baen has released and put online entire CD-ROMs of DRMless books by David Webster and Lois MacMaster Bujold, among other writers.

Their sales are better for more readers buying more books.
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How can you compare print books to eBooks? Printed books can't be duplicated like electronic files and you can't resell an eBook like it is second hand. If someones "borrows" an eBook then decides to buy because they like it then they must be very honest!

I'm not denying the advantages of no DRM on sales for others who have done so, I'm publishing with no DRM myself. For a company like O'Rielly media I think DRM could be more bad for business than it would be for other kinds of book sellers because of their market which appears to be skilled professionals; DRM would be patronising and I can't imagine there'd be many people looking for a pirate copy of "Designing and Deploying Messaging Solutions with Microsoft® Exchange Server 2010" or "Java Fundamentals" (I might be wrong!).
 
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