Amazon removes DRM information from Kindle book pages?

[starrigger]

A friend of mine just put up his first book in the Kindle store, and I asked him, "Why'd you decide to go with DRM?" He said he hadn't, and I took a look at my own books' product pages.

There used to be a line under product details that indirectly told you if a book was DRM-free:
"Simultaneous device usage unlimited." They never actually came out and told you straightaway, but that was what the line meant--if it said that, the book was DRM-free. If the line was absent, that meant there was DRM.

They've removed that information from the product page, it seems. I guess there's now no way to know without actually buying a book, unless the publisher or author includes it in the description. Am I missing something?

[CWatkinsNash]

No, I don't think you're missing anything - I just looked at several that I know have no DRM and several that definitely do have DRM. There is no longer any mention of device usage limitations at all.

I'm curious what brought on the decision.

Edited to add: Time to shoot an email to KSupport and see what sort of robo-response I get.

[Fbone]

It's been that way for awhile now. I've complained about it here before.

It was suggested to add a "no DRM" comment in the description or tags.

Examples
http://www.amazon.com/Lime-Blues-Dar...8642772&sr=1-7

http://www.amazon.com/Tales-Night---...642916&sr=1-16

[ATDrake]

Apparently they did that sometime after Feb 1, because that's the last day I was able to point out a DRM-free book.

This is a very annoying and unhelpful change which basically drops into negative numbers the probability* that I'll ever bother buying anything from a KDP Select exclusive-or-else author/publisher, much less recommending the selected titles to others.

I already dislike the limitations and frustrations associated with working with the Mobi format and the way Amazon slaps a $2 extra per-book surcharge on customers living in less-privileged countries who may or may not own actual Kindles to read said books upon,

And I haven't been too keen on the way that people have been yanking stuff I was kind of interested in getting from other venues in the rush to cash in on the KLL lottery pot with the resulting Kindle-hardware-or-app-that-only-runs-on-certain-platforms lock-in marginalizes anyone with a different reader/PC setup who might have wanted to get that book. (Offering KDP-exclusive new stuff is okay, but yanking the series out from existing customer/readers elsewhere seems like a really unhelpful move, especially if there's DRM and file format conversion involved).

But at least they used to still list a clue to the DRM status so that people who wanted to read an exclusive title could still go buy and load it without having to take apprenticeship lessons if they didn't want to.

Having to play DRM-Or-Not Roulette every time from now on totally kills the likelihood that I'll personally consider their work sufficiently good enough to overcome the existing hat trick of retailer-purchasing DO NOT WANT.

If I have to do that, I'd much rather pick B&N, whose format I prefer and whose DRM I find considerably more palatable and from whom I can get a tiny amount of cashback on a gift card purchase, almost enough to offset the currency conversion loss from paying in USD and having to jump through hoops since they don't officially sell to mere Canadians.

Well actually, I tell a lie. When one of those backlist author sales came up over the holidays and I was tempted by several titles which turned out to be only on sale at B&N (not available to Canadians!) and Amazon (have developed a pathological aversion to even downloading in Mobi format!), while a perfectly good Smashwords version (openly DRM-free! multiple formats of my choice! doesn't charge the unfortunate foreigners extra for the privilege of shopping there!) existed at full price, I just ended up saving money by not buying any of those at all.

Anyway, I encourage authors/publishers to start including the DRM status of their particular titles in their Product Descriptions if Amazon will no longer supply that information to the customer by any means.

And I also suggest offering special promotional sale prices across all the existing venues, or at least offering them in a combination of venues that cover more than only one country and file format at a time, but then that's just my shopping preference.

* I do not exclude the possibility entirely. Only one would have to be a favourite author offering an extremely compelling value-added work which was proven to not be available anywhere else and not likely to be that I really and truly wanted to read enough that I would have bought a deluxe limited edition hardback version of the whole.

And I don't see that happening any time soon, unless there ends up being a mash-up of John Morressy and Meisha Merlin both returned from the dead long enough to offer up their planned-but-never-printed 3rd Kedrigern compilation which would have included the later novels originally written in English but only ever printed in Polish translation because the regular publishers didn't think they would sell, along with a bunch of magazine-printed short stories I've apparently never read.

Because yeah, that's about what it would take.

[pidgeon92]

It could be a temporary thing. I remember a few times when this info disappeared for a time.

[ATDrake]

I certainly hope so, but Amazon also seems to have at some point removed the previously useful "Print Length"-only indicator of whether a book came in the dreaded Topaz format or not, so they seem to be making an overall move towards unhelpfulness in the Product Descriptions.

However, you can still kind of tell the latter by going to Look Inside and generally (but not always) it'll say that a preview of the Kindle book is not available and that the sample is taken from the paperback/hardcover version instead.

[koland]

Originally Posted by ATDrake

I certainly hope so, but Amazon also seems to have at some point removed the previously useful "Print Length"-only indicator of whether a book came in the dreaded Topaz format or not, so they seem to be making an overall move towards unhelpfulness in the Product Descriptions.

However, you can still kind of tell the latter by going to Look Inside and generally (but not always) it'll say that a preview of the Kindle book is not available and that the sample is taken from the paperback/hardcover version instead.

Some of the topaz books are kindle only samples, with no print version to see....

Topaz is easy - download a sample and look at the extension. DRM is not (it seems that all samples are DRM-free, from what I can tell).

[ATDrake]

Originally Posted by koland

Topaz is easy - download a sample and look at the extension.

But, but that's extra work! And uses up more of my time and bandwidth (and Kindle for Mac seems to give the same .azw extension to everything, regardless, for samplers who don't have hardware Kindles, though I suppose one could always run the samples through the tools to see what comes out).

But at least the Topaz kindle-only samples tend to have the wonky-looking fonts so one can usually guess upon visual inspection.

The lack of DRM info is really the most annoying. Topaz samples are in fact DRM-ed, but the Mobi samples are not, regardless of what the original book is set to.

[CWatkinsNash]

The robo-response to my email was less than relevant, so I took it to chat:
(spoilered for length)

Spoiler:

You are now connected to Ramon from Amazon.com.
Me:I sent an email yesterday but the response did not address my question. Why was the "simultaneous device usage" information removed from the Kindle book product information, and is there / will there be another way to get this information on any given book?

Ramon:Hello, my name is Ramon. I'll be happy to help you today.
Please wait while I try to pull-up your account.

Me:Thank you.

Ramon:Thank you for waiting, Christa. Just a clarification when you say, simultaneous device usage, are you referring to downloading the same book on multiple devices on your account?
Me:Yes. This information used to be in the product information section of the product page. It would indicate 6 devices, or unlimited and occasionally something else. But this information is no longer on the product page for any book.
The information is specifically referred to in the Kindle Licence and TOU, so there is now a conflict because it isn't there.

Ramon:I understand, thank you for clarifying that one for me. I have also checked on that feature and it is not showing that information on the product detail page.

Me:Correct. It was there as recently as just over a week ago, so it is a recent change.

Ramon:I'll be sure to pass your message along to the appropriate people as we continue to determine ways to improve the Kindle experience for our customers. Customer feedback like yours is always important to us.

Me:Thank you. Can I bring up one more issue while you're here?
Ramon:Sure.

Me:Kindle books that are free-for-lending for Prime members show up sorted with free books. That can be annoying. Just wanted to mention that as well. :-)
Sort by price should sort by purchase price, not by lending price.

Ramon:Oh I see. Good catch on that one. I will make sure that we will also address that one.
Thank you for your feedback.

Me:And thank YOU for listening. :-) That's all of my complaints today. Hope you have a wonderful rest of the day! :-)

Ramon:You're welcome. Have a good one! Bye!

Don't know if it will do any good, but it can't hurt. :-)

[QuantumIguana]

Perhaps they think that the DRM issue will go away if they just don't mention it.

[CWatkinsNash]

Originally Posted by QuantumIguana

Perhaps they think that the DRM issue will go away if they just don't mention it.

I suspect pressure from the bigger publishers is behind this. I could be wrong, but it seems like something they would push for - wanting the remove the distinction between their locked-down books and those that are not.

I left any mention of DRM out of the chat discussion because I didn't want to turn it into a discussion of how it's irrelevant because the Amazon platform just makes everything work and so on and so on. Figured it was best to approach it simply as a customer who found that information useful and wants to know why it's not there. I hope some others can find a few minutes to do the same.

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by CWatkinsNash

The robo-response to my email was less than relevant, so I took it to chat:
(spoilered for length)

Don't know if it will do any good, but it can't hurt. :-)

Was that an email to CS or to Kindle Feedback? (kindle-feedback@amazon.com)

[CWatkinsNash]

Originally Posted by AnemicOak

Was that an email to CS or to Kindle Feedback? (kindle-feedback@amazon.com)

I went through the Kindle support page. I selected the email option after selecting Kindle Device>Kindle Content>Pre-purchase questions. The response just said that "publishers determine the device limitations" rather than answering my question about "where did that info disappear to?"

That's when I went back and chose the chat option this time.

[Little.Egret]

I see that "Simultaneous device usage: Unlimited" has returned !

To Amazon.com anyway.

I checked Lois McMaster Bujold's The Spirit Ring and "Legacy Systems" and other books from Pinbeam Press.

Has this been announced ?

Also the very same books on Amazon.co.uk are still missing that no-DRM indication.

[starrigger]

Aha. I just went and checked one of my own books, and it's returned there, too. Good news. Thanks for letting us know.