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Tor, the world’s biggest science fiction publisher and home to authors including Orson Scott Card, China Miéville and Cory Doctorow, has shaken publishing with the news that its entire list of ebooks is to be made digital rights management-free.
Tor, whose parent company Macmillan is currently fighting a lawsuit over accusations of ebook price fixing, is the first major publisher to drop digital rights management (DRM) from its ebooks, and the move prompted predictions that others would soon follow suit. JK Rowling’s recently launched ebooks, sold exclusively from her site Pottermore, are already DRM-free.
DRM is the way publishers currently protect their ebooks from piracy; it limits the sharing of titles between electronic devices.
The decision will cover Tor, Forge, Orb, Starscape and Tor Teen ebooks from July 2012, the publisher said, as well as Tor UK titles. “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 ebooks in perfectly legal ways, like moving them from one kind of ereader to another.”
“The pressure to do it has come from readers and authors,” agreed Jeremy Trevathan, publisher at Tor UK’s parent Pan Macmillan. “It’s partly prompted by the launch of Pottermore, which JK Rowling has made completely DRM-free. The evidence from there seems to be that in fact piracy has gone down.”
Trevathan said the news had been received “very positively” by writers and agents, while retailers have also been upbeat. Science fiction author Charlie Stross described the move as groundbreaking; it means, he said, that even if particular e-readers become obsolete, the ebooks purchased for those devices will still be available. He also argued that smaller retailers will be able to compete more effectively in the ebook marketplace.
Doctorow predicted 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”.
“DRM hasn’t stopped my books from being out there on the dark side of the internet,” said science fiction author John Scalzi. “Meanwhile, the people who do spend money to support me and my writing have been penalised for playing by the rules. The books of mine they have bought have been chained to a single e-reader, which means if that e-reader becomes obsolete or the retailer goes under (or otherwise arbitrarily changes their user agreement), my readers risk losing the works of mine they’ve bought. I don’t like that. So the idea that my readers will, after July, ‘buy once, keep anywhere,’ makes me happy.”
Tor will continue to fight ebook piracy “as robustly” as it did before going DRM-free, promised Trevathan. “The reason going DRM-free makes sense is that piracy is going on already [and] we have to acknowledge it,” he said.
As yet, Macmillan is “testing the waters” to see how dropping DRM plays out. According to Trevathan, the house currently has “no thought of extending it beyond science fiction and fantasy publishing. But it’s in the air. We’ve not talked about this to other publishers, but I can’t imagine they haven’t been thinking about this too.”
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010
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It’s easy to see the positive in the Department of Justice’s decision to file a lawsuit against publishers and Apple over ebook pricing: it means cheaper ebooks, right? And an end to the shadowy publisher/Apple conspiracy to, according to the DoJ, “end ebook retailers’ freedom to compete on price, take control of pricing from ebook retailers and substantially increase the prices that consumers pay for ebooks”.
Amazon was certainly quick to rejoice, releasing a statement calling the settlement “a big win for Kindle owners”, and saying that it looks forward “to being allowed to lower prices on more Kindle books”.
Now I read ebooks, and I like bargains, but somehow I find myself slightly terrified by the news, and about the effect it is going to have on publishing. Whether or not the publishers colluded (three have settled, Penguin, Macmillan and Apple fight on) the fact is, as pointed out here, the publishers involved were making less money under the agency model than under Amazon, but made the change to support “an open and competitive market for the future”, as Macmillan’s CEO writes in a letter to authors.
The DoJ lawsuit plays, it seems to me, right into the hands of Amazon. Yes, we’ll have cheaper books, but at what cost? Is it worth paying a little bit less for a title if it threatens the future existence of the publishers who are bringing us the books? Or will we be happy getting everything we read from a vastly reduced pool of presses?
Authors Guild president – and fantastic writer – Scott Turow says the US “government may be on the verge of killing real competition in order to save the appearance of competition. This would be tragic for all of us who value books and the culture they support”.
The ever-blunt publisher Dennis Johnson writes, “it was as if the government not only sanctified the Amazon monopoly, but they made sure it’s going to get even more dominant”.
Others disagree: self-publishing superstars Joe Konrath and Barry Eisler mount a vigorous pour scorn on the idea that Amazon could destroy bookselling by “selling tons of books”, picking apart Turow’s arguments and laying out the case for a brave new world removed from “legacy” publishing and bricks and mortar bookshops.
But it scares me, it really does.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010
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Ebook editions of JK Rowling’s seven bestselling Harry Potter titles went on sale for the first time today, marking what is being described as digital publishing’s “Beatles’ moment”.
Initially scheduled to launch last October, the anticipated Potter ebooks became available to buy from Rowling’s new venture, the website Pottermore, today. The first three novels cost £4.99 in ebook form, compared to a cover price of £6.99 for the print editions, while the final four are priced at £6.99 in ebook compared to an £8.99 cover price in print. All seven can be purchased in a bundled digital edition for £38.64, and the ebooks are compatible with devices and platforms including Sony’s Reader, Amazon’s Kindle, Barnes & Noble’s Nook and Google Play. Although the titles feature on Amazon and Barnes & Noble, they can only be bought from Pottermore.
“Today is a great day for Harry Potter fans and ebook readers alike. Not only is this phenomenally popular series available in ebook form for the first time, but across an extensive range of devices and platforms, thanks to unique collaborations with leading online retailers,” said Pottermore chief executive Charlie Redmayne. The Pottermore website, which allows users to journey through the world of the Harry Potter books, will open to all in early April.
“This is digital publishing’s Beatles’ moment,” said Philip Jones, deputy editor of The Bookseller. “These will be huge – they are a game changer because of the power of the Potter brand.”
Jones said the prices of £4.99 and £6.99 for the ebooks were “fair, given their public utterances that they don’t want to cannibalise print sales”.
“Harry Potter in print made £4m last year, so that’s a business they obviously don’t want to see evaporate, yet they do want to grow digital business too,” said Jones. “They’re not being aggressive about digital pricing but that might change as they watch how customers respond. They will also bring out enhanced editions, which will help them build a broader digital business.”
The Harry Potter series has sold 450m copies worldwide to date. Last month, Rowling announced she had signed a deal to write a new book for adults, but revealed nothing about its contents other than that the title would “explore new territory”.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010
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Jonathan Franzen has spoken of his fear that ebooks will have a detrimental effect on the world – and his belief that serious readers will always prefer print editions.
The acclaimed and bestselling novelist, who denies himself access to the internet when writing, was talking at the Hay festival in Cartagena, Colombia. “Maybe nobody will care about printed books 50 years from now, but I do. When I read a book, I’m handling a specific object in a specific time and place. The fact that when I take the book off the shelf it still says the same thing – that’s reassuring,” said Franzen, according to
the Telegraph.
“Someone worked really hard to make the language just right, just the way they wanted it. They were so sure of it that they printed it in ink, on paper. A screen always feels like we could delete that, change that, move it around. So for a literature-crazed person like me, it’s just not permanent enough.”
For serious readers, Franzen said, “a sense of permanence has always been part of the experience”. “Everything else in your life is fluid, but here is this text that doesn’t change,” he continued. “Will there still be readers 50 years from now who feel that way? Who have that hunger for something permanent and unalterable? I don’t have a crystal ball. But I do fear that it’s going to be very hard to make the world work if there’s no permanence like that. That kind of radical contingency is not compatible with a system of justice or responsible self-government.”
The acclaimed author of Freedom and The Corrections – which are published as ebooks – has said in the past that “it’s doubtful that anyone with an internet connection at his workplace is writing good fiction”. He seals the ethernet port on his own computer to prevent him connecting to the internet while he writes, also removing the card so he is unable to play computer games and wearing noise-cancelling headphones to prevent distraction.
The disruption posed by technology is even voiced by one of his characters, Walter Berglund, in Freedom. “‘This was what was keeping me awake at night,’ Walter said. ‘This fragmentation. Because it’s the same problem everywhere. It’s like the internet, or cable TV – there’s never any centre, there’s no communal agreement, there’s just a trillion bits of distracting noise … All the real things, the authentic things, the honest things, are dying off.’”
Franzen said at Hay that “the combination of technology and capitalism has given us a world that really feels out of control”.
“If you go to Europe, politicians don’t matter. The people making the decisions in Europe are bankers,” he said. “The technicians of finance are making the decisions there. It has very little to do with democracy or the will of the people. And we are hostage to that because we like our iPhones.”
If printed books do become obsolete in the next 50 years, Franzen is pleased that at least he won’t have to see it. “One of the consolations of dying is that [you think], ‘Well, that won’t have to be my problem’,” he said. “Seriously, the world is changing so quickly that if you had any more than 80 years of change I don’t see how you could stand it psychologically.”
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010
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