Liza Daly, a TeleRead contributor, has compiled a list of DRM free publishers such as O’Reilly and Drollerie. Help out “Liza’s List,” as I’ll call it—a kind of a Good Housekeeping seal of approval in the technical sense. Send her names to add.
The definition of DRMfree can be tricky. I’d hope that little Twilight Times Books in Kingsport, Tennessee, the publisher of my novel, could go on the list. At the same time, yes, like certain other anti-DRM houses, Twilight sells through outlets that taint all books with “protection.” Twilight has no choice. Publishing is a brutal business.
Another issue is whether social DRMed books, a compromise approach, would qualify as DRMfree. Social DRM means embedding a buyer’s name into a book to discourage copying. It is not a perfect system, given the privacy risks. But it is rather different from traditional DRM, which erects barriers against copying, even the legitimate private kind for backup purposes and the like.
However Liza treats social DRM, I hope that her list can help, and that a publication like Consumer Reports will pick up her work, refine it and circulate it widely, just as she has openly built on the efforts of others. If you want books you can truly own, then think about buying from the fiction and nonfiction names on Liza’s list, especially if the titles are in ePub format, which I suspect virtually all of them are, at least as an option.
This is not just a consumer issue, by the way. It is also one for writers. I applaud Carina Press, a new imprint from Harlequin, for promising writers not to insist on DRM—a technology that diminishes the literary value of books by linking them to the survival of individual publishers and specific technologies. I want books to be a permanent medium. DRM—beyond the penalties it imposes readers, especially the disabled—is the enemy of that.
My other proposed addition, besides Twilight Times: Baen, which for years has shunned “protection” and probably has never published a DRMed book.
(Via @jafurtado.)
That list of DRM-free publishers is a simple and a great idea. It gives a resource to readers who want ebooks without DRM; and it may attract more publishers and authors to the coming DRM-free world.
Than you, Liza.
Michael Pastore
50 Benefits of Ebooks*
* = DRM free