Tor has just announced over on the SF community Tor.com that they have followed though on the promise made 2 months ago. All ebooks published by Tor are now available DRM-free from all ebookstores currently selling them.
“It’s clear to us that this is what our customers want,” said senior editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden. “We see it in the success of SF publishers like Baen and Angry Robot that have preceded us in going DRM-free. To the best of our knowledge we’re the first division of a Big Six publishing conglomerate to go down this road, but we doubt very much that we’ll be the last.”
There's no word yet on the ebookstore that Tor-Forge plans to open at Tor.com, but it is expected to launch sometime this summer.
I beg to differ: Here’s the listing for Scalzi’s “Redshirts,” copied a couple of minutes ago today from Books on Board:
Adobe ePub ePub eBook
1
Street Date(s): Tuesday, June 5, 2012
ISBN: 9781429963602
Total Filesize: 733 Kb
Copy Permissions: Disabled
Print Permissions: Disabled
Lend Permissions: Disabled
Read Aloud Feature: Not supported.
Expiration: Never expires
Notice the “Disabled”, a flare-lit tip-off that it’s DRM-infested.
I just bought a Tor title via the Kindle Store; it was DRM-free.
And I bought the one you linked to. You’re right; it’s not DRM free.
“It’s clear to us that this is what our customers want”
What the customers want is more of the pBook content available in eBook form, or at least less nonsensical choices. For example, out of Michael Flynn’s Firestar quadrilogy, there is one book available… the last one.
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