Warning: This isn’t just a cute headline. Read Paul Biba’s new post, Better not go on vacation or Adobe DRM will get you, and an Adobe employee’s unofficial reply. – D.R.
Small e-bookstores with me-too offering may be doomed to fail, given the stiff competition in this area. Does Stephen King really need another outlet?
But at first glance—I’ll welcome in-depth impressions from readers familiar with the store—Horror Mall has it right.
“Horror Mall’s mission,” says the FAQ, “is to collect the best independent horror products within a single storefront while marketing indie horror outside of its niche. Horror Mall’s focus remains heavily on literary works…a passion of both proprietors” (Shane Ryan Staley of Delirium books and Larry Roberts of Bloodletting Press).
For TeleReader community members, Horror Mall’s Darkside Digital imprint might be of special interest. I’ll leave it to horror fans to comment in a truly meaningful way on the literary quality and entertainment value of the offerings. But the excerpt for a featured book, The Stranger, by Ronald Malfi, grabbed my attention. A snippet shows the vividness of the writing:
“The man was slight of frame, haggard, and sporting several days’ growth on his face. His eyes looked like two burnt bulbs, alert but sightless, and there was a collection of small red pustules running from one corner of his mouth down to his unshaven chin. Dressed in a tweed suit and a corduroy necktie—partially undone—he looked like a salesman just off a bender.”
Horror Mall sells both paper and electronic books, and helpfully it offers ePub along with PDF and Mobipocket, with the latter readable on the Kindle. Thankfully the files are DRM free, so, for real, you can truly own the books you love.
Perhaps this is the kind of store that would be promoting Edgar Allan Poe if he were alive today and composing in Microsoft Word or OpenOffice.
What is truly interesting about the Horror-Mall is its evolution of policy on ebook formats and DRM. When its digital books division started, it was PDF only with DRM. The owner didn’t want people stealing his books; he said he could stop access if there were evidence of theft; he also dismissed other formats. But now all books are DRM free and available in Kindle and epub too.
If small publisher can change its policies, maybe the big publishers will follow given enough time.