DRM-free ebook stores

[elf]

The large ebook stores online (amazon, diesel, booksonboard) would like you to believe that *of course* you should have to give them personal info, and tie your purchased ebooks to a small set of devices (device includes your computer and ebook readers), and that it's perfectly reasonable that you can't reformat your ebooks--afer all, you can't reformat a paper book, right?

Well, yes. But you can look at a paper book's format before you buy it, and decide that the font is hard on your eyes or the letters are too cramped to read, or the table of contents sucks, or that it's just too thin for the price they want. You often don't have that option with ebooks. And with a pbook, when you're done, you can give it to a friend, or sell it, or cut it up and make paper mache out of it. With an ebook... the publishing industry, like the recording industry, has worked very hard to convince people the digital equivalents of these actions are illegal. (Some other time, I'll post about copyright law and ebooks. It's a mess.)

But some ebook publishers offer books without DRM--"digital rights management," sometimes called Digital Restrictions Management. They offer books, usually in several formats (because without DRM, it's a minor matter for them to do so), that you can reformat, or read on any device you have handy. You can also give them away to someone else; some publishers tacitly encourage this (Baen); others tell you it's forbidden (Fictionwise).

( Inside: List of some non-DRM publishers I've found )

To continue the discussion

[wide_worlds_joy]

from the other day about what I look for in ebooks and new books....

Today I was on another site that I write short stories for. There was a discussion about Gor and the author of that series. I participated in the conversation since I've read some of those books. I made my thoughts known, and someone else mentioned "If you loved Gor you will Love David Weber!"

So what do I do, go to Baen's site to see what's up there. I see that he's got several books out, like 50 or something, and then I look on Wikipedia about the author and the series of books.

Next, I plug "David Weber" into IsoHunt and pulled up three different torrents that are sci-fi ebook torrents, and so I set them to download ONLY the stuff by David Weber, and I plan on reading the start of the various series. I figure between three different torrents that it should get all the books, and if not all of them, at least the most popular.

I'll read three or four books, determine if I like the series/author and then decide whether or not to keep the rest and to buy them in the future.

While waiting, I plan on going around and checking on the book series and the author.

That's how I find new series these days.