iBooks Author explained —

Talking DRM on the CBC —

An anonymous publishing exec explains to PaidContent how he started to break DRM on the ebooks he bought (they wouldn't open on all his devices unless he did) and how, having broken DRM, he realized that DRM was total bullshit:

I believe this is justified because I realize that when I buy an e-book from Amazon, I’m really buying a license to that content, not the content itself. This is ridiculous, by the way. I feel as if e-book retailers are simply hiding behind that philosophy as a way to further support DRM and scare publishers away from considering a DRM-free world. I’m not going to say where I work, or anything about my company, but I will say that I don’t think DRM is good for the publisher, author or customer. Don’t pro-DRM publishers realize this is one of the key complaints from their customers? I’ve heard plenty of customers tell me that e-book prices need to be low because they’re only buying access to the content, not fully owning it. That needs to change.

The actual process of breaking the DRM was pretty easy. There are plenty of how-to resources that are only a Google search away from you. I’ve now unlocked books from both Amazon and Apple, and I ran into minor hiccups with both. But a bit of digging online and help from a trusted friend got me through it. Now I can read those books on any device I want to. My advice to newbies is to not give up. If you run into a problem, look around and I bet you’ll find the answer online. I think most readers would be able to do this easily. It just requires a bit of detective work and not giving up if you hit a roadblock.

Do I feel “evil”? No, not really. If I was giving these books away, I would, but I’m the only person using them.

“Why I break DRM on e-books”: A publishing exec speaks out (Thanks, hughillustration!)

Charlie Stross has posted a long essay making the case for ebook publishers going DRM-free. It's a good, comprehensive look. I'll be writing something more on this subject later this week, too.

1. The rapid current pace of change in the electronic publishing sector is driven by the consumer electronics and internet industry. It's impossible to make long term publishing plans (3-10 years) without understanding these other industries and the priorities of their players. It is important to note that the CE industry relies on selling consumers new gadgets every 1-3 years. And it is through their gadgets that readers experience the books we sell them. Where is the CE industry taking us?

2. Dropping DRM across all of Macmillans products will not have immediate, global, positive effects on revenue in the same way that introducing the agency model did ...

3. However, relaxing the requirement for DRM across some of Macmillans brands will have very positive public relations consequences among certain customer demographics, notably genre readers who buy large numbers of books (and who, while a minority in absolute numbers, are a disproportionate source of support for the midlist).

4. Longer term, removing the requirement for DRM will lower the barrier to entry in ebook retail, allowing smaller retailers (such as Powells) to compete effectively with the current major incumbents. This will encourage diversity in the retail sector, force the current incumbents to interoperate with other supply sources (or face an exodus of consumers), and undermine the tendency towards oligopoly. This will, in the long term, undermine the leverage the large vendors currently have in negotiating discount terms with publishers while improving the state of midlist sales.

More on DRM and ebooks

Today, Tor Books, the largest science fiction publisher in the world, announced that henceforth all of its ebooks would be completely DRM-free. This comes six weeks after an antitrust action against Tor's parent company, Macmillan USA, for price-fixing in relation to its arrangements with Apple and Amazon.

Now that there is a major publisher that has gone completely DRM-free (with more to follow, I'm sure; I've had contact with very highly placed execs at two more of the big six publishers), there is suddenly a market for tools that automate the conversion and loading of ebooks from multiple formats and vendors.

For example, I'd expect someone to make a browser plugin that draws a "Buy this book at BN.com" button on Amazon pages (and vice-versa), which then facilitates auto-conversion between the formats. I'd also expect BN.com to produce a "switch" toolkit for Kindle owners who want to go Nook (and vice-versa).

I think 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.

Tom Doherty Associates, publishers of Tor, Forge, Orb, Starscape, and Tor Teen, today announced that by early July 2012, their entire list of e-books will be available DRM-free.

“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.

Tor/Forge E-book Titles to Go DRM-Free

US antitrust regulators have never really been able to find the right place to stick their lever and pry when it comes to the Internet (witness their failure to understand Microsoft's platform dominance in the 90s). Now they're going after various publishers and Apple over price fixing (my publisher is included, and for the record, I don't agree with their stance on "agency pricing"), but they're missing all the big elephants in the room: platform lock-in by way of DRM, prohibitions created by both Apple and Amazon on using third-party payment systems on their apps, and all the associated ticking bombs that represent the real, enduring danger to the ebook marketplace. Every dollar that is spent on a locked, proprietary platform is a dollar of opportunity cost that society will have to spend to get out from under the would-be monopolists of ebooks when (not if) they abuse their power (see my latest PW column on this).

Wired's Tim Carmody does a really good job of pointing out the fail here, as antitrust regulators miss the forest of lock-in for the trees of abusive pricing.

What’s left out of the Justice department’s lawsuit might be even better news for Amazon than what’s included. There is no broader look at any of the anticompetitive vagaries of the e-book market beyond publishers’ negotiations with retailers in the period before and after the launch of iBooks.

The suit blasts most favored nation agreements without noting that Amazon has aggressively pursued MFN agreements with publishing partners, including partners whose books it sells wholesale. It’s completely silent on retailers’ and device manufacturers’ use of DRM to lock customers into a single bookstore. Amazon is purely a market innovator, not a budding monopolist, even as the DOJ notes that Amazon’s pricing power helped determine pricing power across the industry.

Blogger Mike Cane wrote a powerful email to attorneys at the Department of Justice listed in the lawsuit titled, “Dear DoJ: You Need To Sue Apple Again.” It cites Apple’s in-app purchasing rules that prohibit Amazon, Kobo, Barnes & Noble and other retailers from offering books for iOS devices on the same terms that Apple can offer in iBooks, without browser workarounds.

This, Cane says, “is every bit as much restraint of trade as the collusive price-fixing that made the Department bring Apple and its co-conspirators before the court for remedy.”

But it’s actually great news for Amazon that the DOJ isn’t opening up restrictions on in-device purchases. Once thrown, that stone bounces back to hit Amazon in the face right away.

Jeff Bezos Should Send Eric Holder a Christmas Card

In a break from the typical sci-fi/fantasy based Kindle Singles, I just read a biography of one of my all-time media favorites, Humphrey Bogart.

Stefan Kanfer's Tough Without a Gun is a fairly detailed analysis of what makes Bogie so iconic. If you believe the AFI, Bogart is the greatest American film star of all time. Yes, his acting was rather monotone and his ability to play outside a rather narrow band of characters was slim. But Bogart represents an America that many of us are nostalgic for, hence his staying power.

I found the story of Bogart's youth and his struggle to achieve his fame to be rather amazing. I'd never known that he was so lost -- the directionless son of a wealthy family. Poor little rich kid. Acting was really a trade he fell into, via family friendships and a lack of marketable skills.

I think I'll put on my trench coat, fedora, and go wander around Manhattan.

Stefan Kanfer's Tough Without a Gun

Sorry to have disappeared; work got a hold of me and I spent a week living on planes. It did give me time to read a lot of Kindle Singles...

I really enjoyed Harry Connolly's Child of Fire: a Twenty Palaces Novel -- it is a witty and fast-paced urban fantasy in the genre of 'Whoa! I've got magical powers!'

Ray Lilly is a convict an ultra-mysterious secret society called Twenty Palaces springs from jail to investigate some no-goodery going down in the Pacific Northwest! His boss Annalise is pretty tough and has a penchant for raw meat; seeing as Ray doesn't know much about the Twenty Palaces society and she doesn't seem to want to tell him much, a mystery unfolds.

I'm actually back on a plane later today and looking forward to reading Game of Cages, Connolly's second in the series. Warning, however, the price goes up to $4.99 from .99 once you're addicted (as I am.)

Harry Connolly's Child of Fire: a Twenty Palaces Novel

Fiverr, an online "gig" marketplace offering Mechanical Turk-style piecework, has a thriving market for cheap offers to write positive reviews of your self-published Kindle books. Caveat emptor.

Displaying Gig 1 - 30 of 107 best matches (via Making Light)

Chuck Klosterman's Downtown Owl is no cheap .99 Kindle Single. It cost $12 but looked so interesting I couldn't pass.

Downtown Owl is a story about life in the tiny town of Owl, North Dakota. We watch the several characters' lives unfold -- a high school teacher who has just moved to town, a HS kid who doesn't quite fit in, former football heroes, and folks who've lived their entire lives in Owl without ever leaving.

They live and they learn. Klosterman's characters are very engaging and by the end of the novel I found myself caring about what happened to them.

Downtown Owl by Chuck Klosterman

Talk about crazy eBook genres -- I started with Zombie novels; survive the apocalypse, rebuild society after the apocalypse, zombie break-outs through history -- you name it we got it. Then I was reading super-hero fiction that was surprisingly similar to the teen-angst magical powers; just replace the dark and brooding black outfits with capes and cowls. One totally mind-bending jumble of genres, however, is Ex-Heroes by Peter Clines.

Meet a whole bunch of super-heroes! Think they were useful before the zombie apocalypse? They seem to be the only thing standing between humanity and a really bad ending. We meet and learn the backstory of 5 or 6 varied heroes with great names like "Zzzap!" He has the power to make electricity! Very useful when the zimbos have shut down your generator. Anyways this LA-based group of heroes gathers a bunch of survivors at Paramount Studios and sets up a society. They fight off Zombies, LA Gangs, former LA Gangs turned Zombie and other heroes turned zombie.

This one is fun. I laughed out loud at how ridiculous the genre could get -- but the story telling is great and I was entertained.

Ex-Heroes by Peter Clines