Tor Books UK on Dumping DRM: "no discernible increase in piracy"

[danskmacabre]

Originally Posted by GeoffR

You can only buy paper books directly from the Tor/Forge site, ebooks you need to get from a third party. There are regional restrictions for some books, but quite a few are available outside US/Canada too. Kobo discounts Tor books in a lot of countries, so where they are available outside US/Canada they can usually be had a lot cheaper than the US/Canada price.

Thanks for the info.

Having never bought an ebook off the Amazon or Kobo site before, if a publisher (such as Tor) is selling DRM free ebooks, can I tell by just browsing the ebook stores that a drm epub version is available BEFORE I purchase?

Ugh, I hate regional restrictions, it just doesn't make sense to me.

[GeoffR]

Originally Posted by danskmacabre

Thanks for the info.

Having never bought an ebook off the Amazon or Kobo site before, if a publisher (such as Tor) is selling DRM free ebooks, can I tell by just browsing the ebook stores that a drm epub version is available BEFORE I purchase?

Ugh, I hate regional restrictions, it just doesn't make sense to me.

I think all Tor books will be DRM-free on Amazon, Kobo, etc. but how you tell is different on each site. Kobo will specify "EPUB (DRM-free)" in the download options if the books is DRM-free, or "Adobe DRM EPUB" if not.

I buy mainly backlist SF/Fantasy and about 90% of the books I buy from the big publishers are from Tor/Macmillan (All the Macmillan books I have bought were DRM-free too, not just the Tor ones). I think the prices might have more to do with how much the books are pirated, and in New Zealand at least, where there is a Tor edition and another publisher's edition of the same book, the Tor edition is often half the price or less.

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by danskmacabre

So can I buy ebooks directly from the Tor site from Australia or do I have to go through a 3rd party and are there any region restrictions?

I've generally avoided buying books from big publishers because of the DRM and stuck with indie authors with no DRM, but if I can get ebooks drm free from Tor directly I'd love to buy some of their books, especially as I'm a big scifi/Fantasy fan.

For Australia I believe TOR UK would be the publisher generally holding the rights. The publisher does sell ebooks direct from the Pan Macmillian site, but in general they're more expensive than elsewhere I believe.

[danskmacabre]

Thanks AnemicOak and GeofffR, that was very helpful.

[GeoffR]

Originally Posted by danskmacabre

Ugh, I hate regional restrictions, it just doesn't make sense to me.

A positive note on regional restrictions: I wrote to Macmillan US (customerservice@mpsvirginia.com), not a complaint, but just saying that I would love to buy Gene Wolfe's backlist books and asking whether they would be available in New Zealand in the future (most Tor editions were not available outside US/Canada). They replied that their rights team would check and make them available if possible. Less than a week later most of the books became available in NZ and other countries. It could have just been a coincidence, perhaps they were about to lift the restrictions anyway, but I think it is worth an email if there is anything you can't get locally.

[TCSimpson]

This is what Hatchette did when Tor made the announcement. Glad Tor stuck to their guns.
Hatchette Tells its authors and Tor to use DRM

[usuallee]

Great decision by Tor and I'm glad they are seeing positive results in terms of no increased unauthorized downloading.

Freeloaders will freeload regardless of DRM or not, DRM only inconveniences paying customers, DRM doesn't effect those who download for free at all, why treat paying customers like criminals, record labels finally went DRM-free, blah blah blah...we've all been beating this dead horse for a long time. Maybe now that a decently sized publisher has seen these results, the large publishers will finally take note...riiiiight....

[EowynCarter]

Originally Posted by usuallee

Great decision by Tor and I'm glad they are seeing positive results in terms of no increased unauthorized downloading.

Freeloaders will freeload regardless of DRM or not, DRM only inconveniences paying customers, DRM doesn't effect those who download for free at all, why treat paying customers like criminals, record labels finally went DRM-free, blah blah blah...we've all been beating this dead horse for a long time. Maybe now that a decently sized publisher has seen these results, the large publishers will finally take note...riiiiight....

Not that long ago , me downloading a book with my tablet, meaning to transfer it to my cybbok.
I was wondering if my cybook was autorized.
Then kobo says "download epub". Oh yeah ! TOR ebook, no DRM.
No crash from mantanoo, no problem for the cybook to read the book.

Originally Posted by usuallee

Freeloaders will freeload regardless of DRM or not, DRM only inconveniences paying customers

I've often wondered if DRM advocates realize this. It's hard to see why they couldn't since it is their business to know. It's hard to see how they couldn't since even people like ourselves know, and it isn't our business to know.

It leaves me wondering if DRM is actually meant to inconvenience paying customers. People who lend books out, give books away, or resell books are cutting into sales from the perspective of the business. If you make the assumption that book buyers are law-abiding, then it may be possible to badger them into the one sale-one reader mentality. Pirates are a different issue. DRM may not hinder them, but it doesn't help them either. So if you can extract more sales out of law abiding readers, and are doing little to aide the cause of pirates, why wouldn't you implement DRM?

Of course, the people making these decisions may be so thoroughly hidden away in their silos that they think that DRM is effective in preventing piracy.

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by usuallee

Freeloaders will freeload regardless of DRM or not, DRM only inconveniences paying customers, DRM doesn't effect those who download for free at all

While I generally agree with the sentiment I think the one place where DRM is effective is in keeping the general ebook reading public, such as my mother, from passing their books around among friends. If she wanted to loan/share a pbook she'd have to give up the physical copy and not have access to it while it's being borrowed. If she wanted to loan/share the DRM free eBook she could send it to our entire family at once so they could all read it at the same time plus she'd still have access as well. Now I personally could do that regardless of DRM, since it's removable, but someone like my mother wouldn't be able to do this if the books are DRM'd. I think this is one of the worries that publishers have beyond "regular" piracy and a big reason they often still insist on DRM. As to if the TOR example will change any minds at MacMillan or other houses, who knows. Doesn't seem to have so far.

[usuallee]

Originally Posted by BWinmill

It leaves me wondering if DRM is actually meant to inconvenience paying customers. People who lend books out, give books away, or resell books are cutting into sales from the perspective of the business. If you make the assumption that book buyers are law-abiding, then it may be possible to badger them into the one sale-one reader mentality. Pirates are a different issue. DRM may not hinder them, but it doesn't help them either. So if you can extract more sales out of law abiding readers, and are doing little to aide the cause of pirates, why wouldn't you implement DRM?

Originally Posted by AnemicOak

While I generally agree with the sentiment I think the one place where DRM is effective is in keeping the general ebook reading public, such as my mother, from passing their books around among friends. If she wanted to loan/share a pbook she'd have to give up the physical copy and not have access to it while it's being borrowed. If she wanted to loan/share the DRM free eBook she could send it to our entire family at once so they could all read it at the same time plus she'd still have access as well. Now I personally could do that regardless of DRM, since it's removable, but someone like my mother wouldn't be able to do this if the books are DRM'd. I think this is one of the worries that publishers have beyond "regular" piracy and a big reason they often still insist on DRM. As to if the TOR example will change any minds at MacMillan or other houses, who knows. Doesn't seem to have so far.

You both make good points. I hadn't really thought about it like that. But I guess the spectre of any customer (even non-techies) emailing a book to all their friends and family could be one of the scariest things about ebooks from a publisher's perspective. And it does differ from music mp3s in that ebooks fiels are small enough to easily email.

[Purple Lady]

Is it possible to search for Tor books at Kobo? When Random House had not yet joined the price fixing scheme, I used to search Fictionwise for their books because I didn't want to give the other publishers my money. Fictionwise made this easy by having links for each publisher, but I haven't seen other sellers where you could do this.

Is this possible at any ebook store?

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by Purple Lady

Is it possible to search for Tor books at Kobo?

Is this possible at any ebook store?

I haven't found a way to do it at Kobo.

You can do it, kind of awkwardly, at Amazon using the advanced search from the books section main page.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/search/ref=...ks-Submit.y=14

[Purple Lady]

Originally Posted by AnemicOak

I haven't found a way to do it at Kobo.

You can do it, kind of awkwardly, at Amazon using the advanced search from the books section main page.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/search/ref=...ks-Submit.y=14

Thanks. Not too awkward if I just use your link!

[sqdancer]

Try this for Kobo (I hope it'll work for you folks in the US).

http://www.kobobooks.com/search/sear...&s=none&g=both