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Woohoo! Tor/Forge To Drop DRM For Its Ebooks!

Tor/Forge has announced plans to make all of its ebooks free of DRM by July of this year. This is the first major imprint to do so, and hopefully others will follow, although at this time Tor’s parent company (Macmillan) is not following suit. Let’s face it, DRM is more annoying than it is effective. In an awesome statement of the kind rarely heard from publishers- the kind that acknowledges readers- Tom Doherty, president and publisher of Tor/Forge, said, “Our authors and readers have been asking for this for a long time… DRM is a constant annoyance for them. It prevents them from using legitimate purchases in perfectly legal ways”. Yeah, that!

First steps are good. Publishers everywhere, take note!

Libraries Asserting Ebook Independence from Overdrive?

Peter Brantley at PWxyz reports that Califa, a library cooperative servicing much of California, has announced that it will create and host its own ebook library lending platform instead of using an existing one such as Overdrive, which is the platform used by most libraries. The idea is to purchase the titles directly, when that’s possible, instead of using the “cloud based” platform Overdrive currently uses (Correction: Commenter Jeff Allen notes that Overdrive does NOT use a “cloud based” model- see below). They aren’t expecting to be able to acquire frontlist titles from mainstream publishers, and instead will focus on small and independent presses. That’s kind of cool for those kinds of presses! According to Brantley, though, most independent and small publishers depend on a distributor to package ebooks, and it doesn’t benefit distributors to sell ebooks directly to libraries.

I neither publish, distribute, or purchase ebooks for libraries. I do think it would be great for libraries to have independence from Overdrive, and for independent publishers to get a shot at getting their titles into libraries. So I’m interested to know what you think about this? Is it feasible? Are Brantley’s concerns warranted? Or is this an idea whose time has really come?

Fifty Shades of Shame

I haven’t read Fifty Shades of Grey, but I am outraged by the media’s assumption that women are reading it on ereaders because they’re ashamed for the world to know what they’re reading. While it’s true that most of the copies sold have been ebooks, some of that is probably because print copies have been scarce. I can’t speak for all women, of course, but the last time I checked the catalog in the Indianapolis library system, there were 77 holds.  That’s 77 people, probably mostly women, who are okay with marching up to the circulation desk to check it out- 77 people who aren’t ashamed to read a physical copy with a cover that other people might see, even though Dr. Drew announced his disapproval, the media has anointed it “mommy porn”, and many reviewers have not been kind (Jesse Kornbluth at the Huffington Post called it “a sad joke”). The point is, it’s turning a lot of people on to books. Those people are not hiding their taste in reading, they’re celebrating it. Good for them. It’s fine to keep your taste in reading private, of course. But no one should be made to feel that they need to justify or defend it.  Why do I read genre fiction on my ereader? It’s not because I’m worried that someone might see I’m reading a book without the Oprah seal of approval. It’s because I read so damn much of it that if I bought physical copies of everything I read I’d be buried in them, and sometimes I’m too impatient to wait for the library.

Whatever you read, be it Fifty Shades of Grey, gory zombie novels, steampunk with parasols, witty Regency romance, or all of the above… here, we stand by your right to read what you want, the way you want to, regardless of what anyone else says, does, or thinks.