Tom Doherty Associates, publishers of Tor, Forge, Orb, Starscape, and Tor Teen, today announced that by early July 2012, their entire list of e-books will be available DRM-free.
“Our authors and readers have been asking for this for a long time,” said president and publisher Tom Doherty. “They’re a technically sophisticated bunch, and DRM is a constant annoyance to them. It prevents them from using legitimately-purchased e-books in perfectly legal ways, like moving them from one kind of e-reader to another.”
DRM-free titles from Tom Doherty Associates will be available from the same range of retailers that currently sell their e-books. In addition, the company expects to begin selling titles through retailers that sell only DRM-free books.
In addition, Tor UK announced on Wednesday, April 25 that it will also be going DRM-free.
About Tor and Forge Books
Tor Books, an imprint of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC, is a New York-based publisher of hardcover and softcover books, founded in 1980 and committed (although not limited) to arguably the largest and most diverse line of science fiction and fantasy ever produced by a single English-language publisher. Tom Doherty Associates, LLC, is also the home of award-winning Forge Books, founded in 1993 and committed (although not limited) to thrillers, mysteries, historical fiction and general fiction. Together, the imprints garnered 30 New York Times bestsellers in 2011.
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Now for your next trick, try if it is possible to agree to non-exclusive worldwide distribution at one point.
Of course, I'm wondering if Tor/Forge will offer their ebooks at a more reasonable (IMO) lower price.
Baen does quite well by selling ebooks for $6.
Now I can finally buy ebooks without having to worry if I'll still be able to read them a few years later.
Y'all rock.
Baen also sells e-books at $15. Tor also sells e-books at $6.
But removal of drm is an impressive result already, and even with the recent rumours not something I expected to happen this soon.
And rather than just echo my usual plea that you sell to folk who live outside the US because of course you are doing your best in that regard, right? I am instead going to ask "Is Tor UK going DRM-free too?"
TOR may offer some of their books for $6 but most are more than that. Mind you, if TOR offered the majority of their books for $7.99 that would be better than it is currently.
Natasa, ebook pirates aren't stopped by DRM. It's very easy to remove DRM. While DRM can be a problem for the majority of ebook readers .
IMO talk about ebook pirates just assumes that everybody who reads ebooks are crooks.
Baen sells their ARCs at $15. You are paying more to read it early. Their regular books are $6.
Many of them are also legally free from
http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com/
That is a repository of every Baen cd put out. They are freely redistributable. They contain complete drm free collections in multiple formats of many popular series including the Vorkosigan, Posleen War, many other John Ringo books, the Honor Harrington series, and the Ring of Fire (1632) series.
Actually, DRM has another effect: it locks you into buying eBooks in a particular system's vertically integrated ecosystem. I expect this is the primary reason that Tor/Forge is taking this wonderful, marvelous, highly intelligent step. It will now be easier to sell to Kindle customers (the vast majority of the market) without selling through Amazon. This gives Tor/Forge/McMillan tremendously more leverage when their renewal negotiations come up again. Removing the "Buy" button simply means customers looking for Tor's books can go get a .mobi copy from somewhere else. Amazon loses a sale, not the publisher.
This is one step towards my dream of physical+ebook bundles. Without having to DRM the files this has become a whole lot easier to implement. Whether it will be a retailer who does this promotion first, or Tor themselves has yet to be seen.
Now if only ebooks weren't geographically restricted - I love the US Wheel of Time ebook covers, the UK ones however are identical to the UK book covers - and give the impression of being poor quality conversions as well. Perhaps I should post this rant over at Orbit though ;)
And now you don't need to worry about one company cutting you off, readers with their device will be able to purchase elsewhere and convert - you could even help them do so :)
My only complaint is that it means I will buy more ebooks.
Contemplates "entire list of ebooks" - does this mean that already purchased copies will now be available DRM free (not that it matters to the technically more adept?) Or only newly purchased copies?
We've been working for more than a year to get our backlist converted to ebook format, which is more complicated than just file conversion. Sometimes we need to acquire rights, often we need to create files from archived hard copies. But it's happening. It's just that there are a lot of books.
I can understand that agents might sell books to different publishers, but there really needs to be some kind of deal by which if a territory's rights holder has no interest in using those rights then they should be persuaded into passing them, to someone that will use them.
Yes, whoever is preventing the sale of Wild Cards ebooks in Europe, I would be looking at you if only I knew who you were.
No inside information, but I doubt they have talked to Amazon OR B&N about this yet. Neither company will like this one bit. I imagine this is a preemptory strike on Macmillan's part, testing the waters with Amazon and B&N. In otherwords, they can't answer your question because they might not know yet.
alSeen: Baen sells their ARCs at $15. You are paying more to read it early. Their regular books are $6. Many of them are also legally free
I am well aware of the editions and free libraries. It is my simple proposal that people paying $15 for e-books of new Tor hardcovers are also paying more to read it early, just for a slightly different definition of early -- ahead of the mass market release, instead of the hardcover. Asking for $6 e-books on hardcover release day is pretty much the same (to me) as asking for $8 mmpb on hardcover release day. You can have a format preference, and a time preference, each independent from the other. None of those preferences makes it make any more sense for a publisher or author to leave money on the table from eager early adopters.
While I'm willing to pay $14.99 for David Weber's safehold books, others are not willing to do so. If the safehold books never drop in price, then those people might pass on e-versions of David Weber's safehold books.
Oh, I know that. That doesn't mean they want them from their big-selling publishing partners.
By the way, I did notice that the Safehold books apparently have been reduced in price when they came out in paperback.
I doubt it.
Tor/Forge will now let me pay for this? Deal!
I suspect I'll be buying many more of your books in electronic versions now :)
I love my ereader, but hate DRM.
I think the issue is more about when Macmillan's contract is renegotiated. See the IPG mess. This gives Macmillan leverage. Amazon won't like that at all. This is a power play, in a good way, for Macmillan.
Common sense wins!
As I have a 'no DRM' policy - if it has DRM, I won't buy it - this policy is probably not going to make my bank manager happy...
This will definitely cause me to take a look at Tor's e-books especially as you put your back catalog online.
@montsamu @DrakBibliophile
Baen's practice of pricing the vast majority of their e-books at $5-6 has caused me to purchase more books more often.
The comparison between the e-ARCs and a just published hard-cover is not entirely apt, since the e-ARCs are just that, Advanced Reader Copies that have not always been proofed to the same level as the final product. They also come out *earlier* than the hardcover books which is part of what justifies their price.
'Windowing' books, and lowering the price as the price of the paper copies comes down is not an unreasonable solution to prevent the sales of e-books from cannibalizing hard-covers. However I think publishers in general will have a difficult time convincing readers (and purchasers) of e-books that an e-book should be the *same* price as a hard-cover. Consumers believe that the physicality of a paper book has some inherent value, value that they do *not* receive with an e-book. Especially when they have invested in a chunk of hardware in order to be able to read said e-book.
Applying a step-down from the paper price to the e-book price would allow these consumers to feel that they are being compensated in some way for the difference in value between paper and e-books. For example, pricing the hardcover at $25 and the e-book at $20 during the hard-cover window, and the paperback at $8, and e-book at $6 during the paperback window would be less likely to leave a bad taste in the readers mouths, and perhaps concentrate more sales during the hardcover window.
(I am simultaneously thrilled that I will be able to buy all the Tor
ebooks on my long wishlist and horrified about the implications for my
credit card balance...)
I love ebooks. I've been reading them for more than a decade (started on a Palm Pilot), long before they were ever available from legal sources. I still buy far more physical books than ebooks though.
When you buy a physical book, you aren't just buying access to the story. You are also buying the ability to loan it to as many people as you want, the ability to recoup some of your costs if you find you don't like it by selling it to someone else, and a physical object that will last for far longer than an ebook (sure, an ebook is potentially longer lasting, but with the occurrence of computer failures and technology drift, a physical book will last longer). So yes, paying the same for an e-book as for a hardcover is absurd. And paying more for an e-book than for a paperback is ridiculous.
Selling books without DRM helps to alieviate some of the issues, but not all. You still can't resell the book legally
While you are correct in stating that a physical book has some upside that an eBook doesn't, you are neglecting the fact that an eBook has upsides that a physical book can never have. The following are just a few examples of things that DRM-Free eBooks offer that physical books cannot:
1) Portability. In the physical sense, and other senses. For instance, with an eBook, I can have the book on multiple devices, stored in the cloud, available wherever I have access to a computer, or my phone, or my tablet, or my Kindle, etc...
2) Accessibility. Looking to make a reference from a book? No problem! Want to copy the text out to use as a quotation? No problem!
3) Security. DRM-Free books may be copied and stored in a thousand devices, in the cloud, on portable hard drives, on thumb drives, on CDs. They can't be stolen from you (unless you're an idiot), you are unlikely to lose them due to fire or mishandling. They don't fall apart in water, they don't rub off after use, they don't fade in the sun. With an unlimited amount of backups available, your books are as safe as you decide to make them.
Physical books and eBooks are simply different mediums, with their own strengths and weaknesses. To call one superior to the other is to make a values-based judgement. It depends on what you value. Ultimately, the market will determine what an eBook will be priced at, once Most Favored Nation clauses and DRM-enforced vertical integration go away, paving the way for true competition. Until then, expect prices to yo-yo as much pump prices do.
So, I now try to buy as many of my ebooks from sources like Baen and Smashwords that sell books without DRM and allow you to come back and download again in new formats.
I am in no way overlooking those benefits. In fact, I agree with all of them. And the move to drm free helps make them even more beneficial.
I just don't think those benefits outweigh the losses. And neither do many many people. Even $10 a book seems outrageously expensive to me.
You can state that to you, and many of your friends, physical books are more valuable, but you can't state that they are intrinsically more valuable. Like so many things, the value of eBooks as opposed to physical books is a subjective topic. Let the market decide for itself what eBooks are worth. Right now we have publishers artificially controlling prices. Previously, we had Amazon artificially controlling prices. Remove MFN, remove DRM, let a thousand small businesses compete in an open market with Amazon, and see what prices do.
What would be better news is if @bam above is wrong and retailers allowing redownloads will let us get DRM-free copies. (There's no technical reason this isn't possible.)
And what would be best of all is if Macmillan followed up making their books equivalent to their print brethren in retail price (not list), in addition to being equally free.
Will I be able to buy them in Australia?
This is fantastic news. As someone who buys ebooks I always felt that I am being punished by the publishers for buying their books. I could always go online and find DRM removed, illegaly posted, versions of the same book I purchased. DRM does not stop the theft it just punishes the the people that are willing to spend their money on the book. This is also good for publishers that are worried about the dominance of a single vendor like Amazon. With no DRM I can buy my book from any vendor that sells it.
I hope other publishers will follow your step.
We would continue to do so as well (we have Nooks) even with DRM although with more hesitation. This sort of thing just makes Tor books the obvious and confy place to buy from.
Thanks for the DRM-free option, and thanks for years (... and years) of great reading.
My very first commercial e-book was from Tor: A Fire Upon the Deep from Peanut Press. It would be kind of cool to be able to redownload that without DRM. (Well, symbolically, anyway. Peanut Press DRM was cracked years ago, so anyone who wants books from there to be DRM-free probably already has them.)
I'd also echo what @94 said. It sure would be nice if retailers give a DRM-free option on the redownloads. I've bought around 15 Tor ebooks in the last year ... it would be great if I could get them converted.
Thanks Tor!
It's just like a vending machine.
Good luck!
www.readmill.com
I look forward to seeing your marginalia on there soon! :)
Now i might buy ebooks i actually want to own instead of just cheap on-sale read once and forget it distractions.
I prefer to clutter my house with paper version since the electronic one are much more problematic. For ebook, one need to have many sources to backup the files in case the reader or hard drive broke.
While I can read the book of my grand father without much problems. Discworld is an exemple of this, Xanth another or even Conan.
So ebook are less value to keep the content over the long term, they cost less to distribute and so, should be price accordly.
Also, PLEASE start selling ebooks directly from Tor-Forge website.
It would be so much more satisfying to be able to pay only authors and publishers (sans middlemen), and avoid Apple, Amazon, or Sony entirely.
It'll be great to have a lot more book to choose from (though we'll still have to see how well you compete with Baen's prices--I'm not really even aware how much you charge for ebooks given that I've never considered buying any of them before now).
I applaud this decision, and many of my friends who are too lazy to post also do too!
I would have been buying your ebooks for a while now if not for DRM.
Enjoy the money I will send your way now!
Thanks!
-Brian
Most of the sites that sell without DRM are not set up to validate the country of residence of a buyer so Tor won't therefore be able to use them unless resources are spent to enhance them.
I wonder if TOR will offer a rebate program. Say you send in the front cover of your book and for $1.99 you get the ebook of it?
I will also be sharing the heck out of this.
So great. Great choice, Tor!
Also, just curious from @86, are there laws that would prevent me from selling a legally purchased DRM free ebook to a friend?
@113, you can use a free online service such as Dropbox or Wuala to back up files from your computer to the cloud.
It depends on what the license says on the book you buy. When you purchase an eBook, like any downloadable product, you are subject to the terms of the EULA. I have never seen a single EULA from a major publisher, music provider, software manufacturer, etc, that allowed someone to resell the product, with the exception of certain very permissible CC licenses. When you buy a retail package of software, with a box, and disks, etc, you generally are licensed to remove it from your computer and resell the discs. That is not generally true with downloaded software that you paid for. Once again, all EULAs are different, and should be read carefully.
EBooks have traditionally been licensed as software. The CONTENT of the book (what the author wrote) is licensed exactly the same as a physical book. You can't do ANYTHING with it legally, outside of what is allowed under the law by Fair Use. The CONTAINER is what is covered by the EULA. With a physical book, you have the right to resell it, give it away, etc. With an eBook that is not CC, Public Domain, or some other permissible license, you do NOT have the right to resell it or give it away, even if you remove it from your computer.
The reason behind this is pretty obvious: you agreed to the EULA when you downloaded the product, therefore if you illegally sell copies of it, you can be held accountable under the law. The same case would be quite a bit more complicated if you removed the file and gave it to your friend as a gift: THAT person never read the EULA, didn't agree to it, etc. Could they still be held accountable to the EULA? Maybe. Maybe not. Since they didn't agree to it... most software companies find it easier to just restrict this entirely. Book publishers have followed suit with eBooks.
1. Is there a store anywhere that will sell the ebook to me?
2. If the ebook is a backlist title is it under 10$?
3. If the ebook is a new title is it under 20$?
4. Is the ebook cheaper than the paper version?
If the answer to any of the above is "no" then I most likely will pass the book over. Point 1 happens every now and then with the Tor stuff since I'm in europe.
Thanks for doing the right thing. I will continue to buy your books and go out of my way to do so in the future.
(I've been a customer of Baen for quite a while, now).
I actually found out about this on the BBC site first so yes this applies to TorUK as well.
@90 alSeen
I just don't think those benefits outweigh the losses. And neither do many many people. Even $10 a book seems outrageously expensive to me.
for me the benefits vastly outweigh the losses; the only books i'll be keeping in physical format are a few first editions by authors who are personal friends, and art books. and i don't even think that $10 for a book is outrageously expensive. considering how much quality enjoyment a good book gives me, it seems about right for a novel compared to other forms of quality enjoyment (many, many people watch a first-run movie in a cinema, for example).
my beef with the price is primarily how little goes to the authors; if that changed, i'd be fine with $10 for a novel. it is changing in some niche market genres, and i am hoping that'll spread. whenever i can, i buy directly from the author or publisher. i think it's unjust, and harmful to society that so many people in the arts can't make a living from it, even if they sell reasonably well.
can't wait for TOR's backlist! i'll be buying a lot more from you, because i support people who listen and pay attention to shifting priorities of their customers.
I've always held Tor in high esteem and this move vindicates my faith. I will buy a book or two as a thank you.
I have several unfinished series from TOR in paperback. Since I stopped buying physical books due to no space where I now live I have mostly Baen & Project Gutenberg for new material to read.
Due to the everchanging formats and hardware I avoid DRM completely. With this change I can now finish reading those collections published by TOR that I have not purchased due to lack of DRM free ebook editions.
I am especially happy to know that you will be porting the back catalog to ebook. I have lost many of my books over the years. eBook reprints will take care of filling some of those holes nicely :D
I don't know where they are with that project, or which address you should write to if you have lists of errors that need attention. If you'll start a topic about this at the Tor.com Forums (as soon as the current technical problems there have been resolved!), I'll see what I can do to get you that info.
Thank you for caring about accurate text production. I care about it too.
I'm a bit unsure, though, where exactly I should go to browse the available DRM-free e-books that I would like to purchase.
Also, thanks for answering my question earlier.
I've always regarded Tor as high on my list of great publishers with good taste. Being sensible and customer friendly doesn't hurt either, and I hope every author realizes this means we buy more.
I agree.
Also, I hope that Tor will follow the non-greed approach that Baen Books has regarding pricing. E-books should always cost less than the paperback price, something Amazon, B&N, and Apple doesn't understand.
(If you come across any that aren't, please feel free to drop me a line at irene.gallo@tor.com)
Tor.com is also launching an ebook store, but that is in addition to other bookstores. You do not need to purchase books through our store to get the drm-free files.
All bookstores are being fed the same files -- if it’s available, it should be DRM-Free......iBooks, Powells, Amazon, B&N, Kobo, etc.
If it isn’t DRM-free, it’s a glitch -- let us know, we'll get on it.
Awesome! Looks like I'll be shopping at Kobo a lot. They list for Steven Brust's books:
"At the publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management software (DRM) applied."
"Download options: EPUB (DRM-Free)"
However...
Steven Brust's books aren't listed at Powells.
iBooks and Amazon and B&N only deliver, as far as I know, specific formats for their platforms/applications, with no option to download an EPUB. (Please, save me from the cursed "helper" applications for downloading files that Amazon and Apple and probably B&N love.) If I'm mistaken, please let me know if you have a link to something that shows me how to do so.
Thanks.
1) Sign into the site, and click My Nook at the top.
2) Click Library.
3) Click the Download link next to a book. (It may be in a big button, or in the row of links below that button, depending on the title.)
For example (this is far from a unique case, just a specific book I explicitly checked today across all the vendors you listed so I could cite one sample I'm 100% sure of) I tried to see what happens if I try to purchase Sky Coyote from Kage Baker. And I don't live in the US.
So:
* Amazon - Not even listed, at all, same as other Kage Bakers. This isn't a region limitation, they don't have a problem to show books and write that they won't sell them.
* Powells - Not listed. They do have some other of the Kage Baker titles, but all listed as not available.
* iBooks - It's there, but you can't even register at the store if you don't have a U.S. or Canada address.
* B&N - It's there, but they don't sell eBooks without a U.S. billing address.
* Kobo - Not even there.
* Fictionwise - Not even there.
* Not sure beyond those you explicitly listed what you include in "etc", but I did check a bunch of other smaller places that pretty much across the board either I can't buy it or they don't have it and other Tor eBooks at all.
So yes, it reall is very good that you decided to drop DRM. But until you open your own store, or make an agreement with somebody who actually gets the idea, I (and every other interested potential customer from outside the US) still can't buy any Tor eBook even though I'm perfectly willing to pay. Not granting people the right to pay you money to buy the book is also a sort of digital rights managements...
OK, that's enough venting for now, thanks.
On a more productive notes, since multiple people here mentioned Bean, and other DRM-free sources like smashwords and (sometimes) Fictionwise, I'd like to mention that there are smaller publishers/groups that do sell DRM-free eBooks either directly or in smaller stores. Angry Robot, Book View Cafe, Weightless Books, etc...
At least for the several books I checked so far the restrictions were not about specific books, but more global with the stores themselves (e.g. it doesn't matter if books don't have regional restrictions, B&N or iBooks would still not sell them outside of US/Canada).
The ones that didn't show them didn't do it based on, AFAIK, regional limits, and wouldn't have shown them even from the US (as I mentioned Amazon, for example, don't hide books with regional limits, they do show them, and just don't allow to buy them while being very clear on what is the cause. Most, if not all, others act similarly).
So I guess I'm wondering how your store will handle it.
If you're limited by existing agreements on about 100% of the existing catalog then obviously your store won't help here.
But if not then, well, it is (and so for these cases essentially it's not true that "You do not need to purchase books through our store to get the drm-free files"), and I suppose a large part of the reason why at least some people are waiting for your store to open instead of buying from the existing ones.
BTW, 29 days until the Tor e-store is officially vaporware.
please say that they're coming!
is tommorow Sept 21st the big day?
i need a DRM-free .epub of Gene Wolfe's Soldier of Arete.
ive smashed my head in with all the available e-vendors trying to find out what format the book will actually be in, if i can even get a copy outside of their software sandbox. none of them are getting my money at this point.
i have no interest in downloading any of their "easy helpful" software in order to read my book through them. ive got my own software.
if i could just shoot them a payment, and a zip/rar-ed DRM-free .epub showed up in my inbox that would be perfect.
For the past couple of years, I have hardly bought any paperback Sci-Fi/fantasy books at all, but I buy just about everything from Baen (webscription.net). I was hoping for something similar from you, and I really want to give you my money, but.....
http://www.tor.com/blogs/2013/04/tor-books-uk-drm-free-one-year-later.