Sci-Fi Publisher Tor Ditches DRM For E-Books

First time accepted submitter FBeans writes "'Science fiction publisher Tor UK is dropping digital rights management from its e-books alongside a similar move by its U.S. partners. ... Tor UK, Tor Books and Forge are divisions of Pan Macmillan, which said it viewed the move as an "experiment."' With experiments, come results. Now users can finally read their books across multiple devices such as Amazon's Kindle, Sony Reader, Kobo eReader and Apple's iBooks. Perhaps we will see the *increase* of sales, because the new unrestricted format outweighs the decrease caused by piracy?"

Comments

It's about time

[NabisOne]

Now we can hope the other publisher's will follow this trend.

Re:It's about time

[Chris Burke]

Too stingy yo pay for your media?

What I find hilarious is that you apparently think people who are too stingy to pay for their media will grudgingly do so anyway when piracy is made slightly more inconvenient, rather than continuing to be stingy and finding a torrent, or just not acquiring the media in question in the first place.

This is like thinking you can cure a man of his heroin addiction by putting a "No Junkies!" sign on the front of your country club.

Re:It's about time

[Albanach]

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.

Re:It's about time

[gfxguy]

It's worse... I'm not too stingy to pay for my media, but when you add in the cost of DRM on top of that (the publisher doesn't pay for it with money it grows on trees, after all) to by media in a format that is inconvenient, when I could pay the same or less for media that is convenient, idiot's comment makes even less sense.

It's always been the case with copy protection - the people who legally buy copy protected materials are the ones who pay for the copy protection that reduces the versatility of whatever it is they bought. It's always been the people who "steal" who get unencumbered versions... it's like punishing the honest people and rewarding the ones who violate the copyright. Do they even understand basic psychology?

Honest people are honest; dishonest people are dishonest... adding DRM doesn't change that, it just hurts the honest people.

Re:It's about time

[hawguy]

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.

Just wait a month or two after the book's release and you can buy the book (including shipping) for half the price of the eBook. And after you and your friend are done reading it, you can sell it again for a dollar or two.

I own both a Kindle and Nook, but I still buy most of my books on paper because they are cheaper.

Re:It's about time

[cpu6502]

For those saying you would now buy ebooks from Tor..... do you buy the Sci-Fi magazines? That is where most young authors get their start. If they die out (they lose about 1000 subscribers/year), so too does the paid outlet for future talent. And most of the mags are DRM free too:

http://www.fictionwise.com/eBooks/dellmagazineauthorseBooks.htm?cache

.

Re:It's about time

[gfxguy]

Completely agree, Albanach.

We do buy many e-books, although I'm not thrilled about it. If the physical book is anywhere close to the e-book price, it's a no-brainer.

One benefit for the family (at least) is that all of our e-readers are registered to the same accounts, which gives all of us access to all of our books.

On the subject of printing costs, I have forever heard publishers whine about printing (especially setting up a run) and shipping being a significant part of the cost of the book. Now they are claiming that's not the case at all, that those costs are minimal, that it costs nearly just as much to sell an 'e' version of the book as it does to sell a physical copy. I'm not even going to type the expletive that comes to mind, you can figure it out or come up with your own, but here's a hint: it has to do with a certain type of livestock and a certain by-product of their existence.

As for the claim that the quality of books will go down... repeat the last sentence in the above paragraph. There will still be high quality books - they will just have to start competing with self-publishers. If they have the value, people will pay.

Re:It's about time

[Chris Burke]

Well that's the irony, isn't it? DRM is supposed to make piracy inconvenient so people will buy, but what it really does is make piracy more convenient than paying for the product.

About Time

[Anonymous Coward]

and for some reason this makes me want to purchase every Tor book they offer,

Re:About Time

[Junta]

The implication being that DRM somehow encumbers piracy. The simple fact is it is completely ineffectual at slowing piracy down. You can find pirated copies of every piece of music, video, and publication you want despite the draconian DRM that is so prevalent in the industry.

Re:About Time

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope. You are wrong.

The major purpose of DRM (and I work in this industry, hence the anonymity) is to protect entrenched players from competition by new business models. All this talk about “slowing initial piracy” is hogwash, and everybody in the industry knows it. What you are quoting is marketing-speak, which is a euphemism for blatant lies—the statistics behind these have been debunked by industry veterans again and again, yet the fool public continues to drink the marketeers' cool-aid.

DRM wasn't my sticking point

[Richard_at_work]

Pricing is - eBooks should be lower priced (although not to the pennies on the pound level, I find that argument ridiculous) and currently they rarely are.

Neal Asher books - Gridlinked as an example, his earliest Agent Cormac book, first published in 2001, now published by Tor: £7.99 on the iPad, £5.11 paperback on Amazon, £4.75 Kindle edition.

Will the removal of DRM flatten out those pricing peaks and troughs? Will the eBook version go up or down? That will determine if piracy goes up or down.

Re:DRM wasn't my sticking point

[GiMP]

PDF is to preserve presentation. This is precisely what you do NOT want on an e-reader. ePub, which is really just HTML, is designed to provide reflow for e-readers. It can be used with or without DRM.

Re:hmm

[Asic Eng]

Why should I care if my eBook is multi-platform if I'm only ever going to read it on one platform?

Are you absolutely certain you will only use one platform, and will only buy books from one supplier for the next twenty years? You don't think within this time frame some new device will come out - similar to e.g. the iPad did - and you'll get this device and will want to have the content you already paid for available on it?

Don't you think at the speed new devices are developed these days, some company will introduce something to the market with an entirely new display technology - much better than e-ink, super-amoled and retina display together? Are you sure it will be your currently preferred vendor who'll pioneer that new device?

Re:Probably No significant change in sales

[Toze]

Disagree for two reasons. First, because of personal experience; I hit Baen's free library one day and encountered John Ringo's work. I have since bought about $200 worth of Baen books, mostly Ringo but frequently other stuff I found on their free library. A friend passed me a pirated copy of Jim Butcher's entire Dresden series; I now have the whole run purchased and sitting on my shelf. The specific method I've seen work is this;
1) DRM-free
2) Pirated/shared
3) Lands in the hands of someone who was never going to buy the books
4) Turns them into a trufan who buys some or all of the books.

On the one hand this may not be the precise method Tor is hoping for, and I agree that the /direct/ impact of being DRM-free isn't going to be worth much, but the long-term effect is of more people reading Tor books, and in my experience that means more people buying books. The second reason I disagree is that experiment after experiment shows that "piracy is not the problem, obscurity is the problem." Releasing stuff for free almost never decreases profits, and usually increases profits. Doctorow and Lessig have both explained this at length.

Re:hmm

[Brucelet]

I agree! Also, my glorious vhs movie collection will never be made obsolete by the introduction of new media formats, because why would the industry ever change away from such a dominant format?

Ebook pricing

[Firethorn]

Indeed. I like to say that if I'm not paying less than 2/3rds the cover price, I'm not trying. My local stores(not B&N) START at 25-30% off the cover price.

As such, ebook versions are typically $2-3 MORE than what I'd pay for the paperback. As such, I only buy books that I know I'll want to keep and reread.

The publishers need to take a page from Steam's game sale model - offer sales and deals just like the brick and mortar stores do on physical product. Declare 30% off everything every so often. You'll get loads and loads of purchases then.