![]() ![]() ![]() Publishing, Doherty argued, has always been a community of support and conversation, driven and refreshed by the excitement generated by the authors and their stories. But because Hachette allowed - insisted! - that Amazon put its own DRM on Hachette books, the only company that can authorize converting Amazon Kindle titles to work with other readers is Amazon.ĭoherty spent a good portion of the speech discussing the community that these arguments exist within: a publishing community that consists of all levels of participant, from "bookseller, author, reader, and semi-pro."Īs it turned out, framing DRM within this larger context was quite intentional and key to understanding the motives behind the move. If Hachette books were DRM free, the company could announce an "Amazon-refugee discount" of 10% of all its ebook titles at Google Play, Ibooks, and Barnes and Noble, and offer a tool to convert your Kindle library to work on one of those other players. ![]() Meanwhile, Hachette - publishing's most ardent DRM advocate - and Amazon continue to duke it out in a ghastly and abusive public spat in which Amazon is attempting to extort deeper discounts from Hachette by de-listing, delaying and obfuscating its titles. ![]() Doherty's philosophy is that books get sold by being part of a wider context in readers' lives - being something they talk and think about and share, and that DRM just gets in the way of that. Doherty spent some time talking about the business outcomes of life without DRM (in short, there's no new piracy of Tor books as a result of publishing without it), but really focused his talk on the community of readers and writers, and their conversation, and the role Tor plays there. Two years ago, Tor Books, the largest sf publisher in the world (and publisher of my own books) went DRM-free yesterday, Tor's founder and publisher Tom Doherty took to the stage to explain why he dropped DRM from his books. ![]()
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