In praise of dead trees

[sabotabby]

You know what's great?

Books that are printed on paper.

You know why?

Because I can open up a 100-year-old paper book and it will still work the way it's supposed to. Unlike, say, my three-year-old Sony Reader, which now does not work because it's incompatible with Adobe Digital Editions and the Sony Reader software is incompatible with the new Mac OS, and Calibre, which is open source, can't manage library e-books. The device can't download from the library directly because it's full of garbage that Sony put on there and slow as shit to boot.

So now I can only read e-books that I steal or buy. Which is not something I'm in the habit of doing.

Thanks, capitalism!

Comments

Re: Smashwords or smash the corporations?

[ed-rex.livejournal.com]

I'm surprised TOR uses DRM.

I'm almost certain they don't. My best guess is that it was a new book and the merchant I tried added it by default (and by mistake). Or else, I managed to screw up somehow. In any case, I couldn't make it open and got a refund before I "stole" it, then gave the money directly to the writer.

I don't know if the point of DRM is paper; ebooks are ultimately not economically viable, since they can be copied infinitely.

I'm not so sure about that. Outfits like Tor or even Kristine Kathryn Rusch's WMG (or even Baen) claim to be doing good business in reasonably-priced, DRM-free books. Personally, I've found myself impulse-buying again, in part because some of these folks make it so easy for me to give them my money.

Re: Smashwords or smash the corporations?

[sabotabby]

Yeah, they're also banking on goodwill, as opposed to the less fandom-y based publishers.