Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

List of DRM-Free Bookshops

libreture.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 91 posts

Re: List of DRM-Free Bookshops

#21

Post by lidavidm »

gcr wrote: post #18
plorg wrote: post #5

After the recent press for Bookshop.org I saw an author I like had a new book and thought I'd try out the service - I am okay with paying slightly more for a book if the money is going to someone other than Amazon. But I should have looked twice, because Bookshop ebooks are not DRM free unless the publisher explicitly opts for it, and DRM encumbered books can only be read on their website or in their app. I know that…

Seconding this. Bookshop.org is a terrible experience if you want to read on your own eInk device. I had to purchase the book I wanted from a different seller at double the cost.

At least they appear to be partnering with Kobo "later this year" [1]. I've been a big fan of Kobo's devices so this is a nice plus. (I just wish they could figure out some way to get Kindle exclusives, but well that's a contradiction in terms, so...)

[1]: https://bookshop.org/info/ebooks ("Can I read my ebooks on my Kindle, Kobo, Nook, etc.?")

Re: List of DRM-Free Bookshops

#22

Post by idle_zealot »

_benj wrote: post #12

I hadn’t really paid attention to DMR because I was so cozy inside the kindle bubble. That notification that Amazon was going to take away the ability to download books was a very strong wake up call… When ok buys a book for kindle, it seems that one supposedly doesn’t own the book? One “owns” it at the “goodwill” of Amazon? I put my kindle on eBay today and I think going forward I’ll consider buying physical books a…

> One “owns” it at the “goodwill” of Amazon?

Yup. Same for movies, games, music, etc. It's pretty wild how many hard-won rights we abdicated in the move to digital pseudo-property. Not wild in the sense that it's surprising consumers would place a priority on convenience when it came to making purchasing decisions. Wild that legally there's such a huge difference between physical and digital goods. Like, all the consumer rights and protections built up over centuries were deemed invalid on a technicality. "Move fast and break things" indeed.

Re: List of DRM-Free Bookshops

#23

Post by cyberax »

amazingamazing wrote: post #8

in my experience no publisher that's producing many hits will make their stuff drm free, and for good reason. looking at the archive ( https://archive.ph/zPBbZ ), almost all of the publishers do not publish popular authors. it's just too easy to share the books. you can get tens of thousands of books for what, a gigabyte? without drm that stuff will spread like wildfire, but drm can easily be broken by those who know…

> looking at the archive (https://archive.ph/zPBbZ), almost all of the publishers do not publish popular authors.

Brandon Sanderson publishes his novels without DRM. All the TOR books are un-DRM-ed as well.

> without drm that stuff will spread like wildfire, but drm can easily be broken by those who know what they're doing - but I guess for publishers, luckily the vast majority of the popular wouldn't bother to break it.

Books are so small, that even simply clicking through them and OCR-ing the screenshots is a feasible method. DRM isn't even going to buy a day or two of exclusivity. But it will annoy users.

I've been using Amazon Kindle books exactly because it was so easy to de-DRM the books and read them on my devices. Now that they're removing it, I'll switch to other providers.

Re: List of DRM-Free Bookshops

#24

Post by bluebarbet »

plorg wrote: post #5

After the recent press for Bookshop.org I saw an author I like had a new book and thought I'd try out the service - I am okay with paying slightly more for a book if the money is going to someone other than Amazon. But I should have looked twice, because Bookshop ebooks are not DRM free unless the publisher explicitly opts for it, and DRM encumbered books can only be read on their website or in their app. I know that…

The desktop web-app reader is interesting in that it's a DRM-free legal way to access otherwise DRM-encumbered e-books. Last I checked the EME DRM browser sandbox was still not required.

Personally I'm fine with this compromise solution. I've read whole books in the Kindle desktop web interface. The usual line is that it's somehow bad on the eyes, but I figure that I already spend my days reading documents and articles on a screen and it's irrational to imagine a "book" is somehow fundamentally different.

Re: List of DRM-Free Bookshops

#25

Post by jacekm »

I understand that inspiration for posting this was the Amazon taking away the ability to "Download and transfer over USB". Can anybody tell me if downloading will still work via Kindle for PC? That's how I download my books before removing DRM in Calibre.

Re: List of DRM-Free Bookshops

#26

Post by AlotOfReading »

badlibrarian wrote: post #16
AlotOfReading wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tor is a pretty big counterexample here. They're the largest and most awarded SciFi publisher and have been DRM-free for well over a decade now. They've also said that being DRM free hasn't been a problem for them.

They also refused to make their e-books available to libraries because they said it hurt sales. Which at least is a new wrinkle on the endless DRM debates. Hell, if I ran a publishing company I'd remove DRM just so I wouldn't have to listen to Cory Doctorow rant about it. Having to proofread his books is punishment enough.

I hadn't heard that they limited availability, only that it was on a 4 month delay after consumer publication.

All of the big 5 publishers (including Tor under Macmillan) have incredibly bad terms for digital lending though. Wouldn't be surprised if they were doing the common thing of terminating the backcatalog on top of limiting initial access.

Re: List of DRM-Free Bookshops

#27

Post by wkat4242 »

jacekm wrote: post #25

I understand that inspiration for posting this was the Amazon taking away the ability to "Download and transfer over USB". Can anybody tell me if downloading will still work via Kindle for PC? That's how I download my books before removing DRM in Calibre.

Apparently you need an older version of the app and that doesn't allow downloading books published since 2023. So it's not a complete solution

Re: List of DRM-Free Bookshops

#28

Post by wkat4242 »

bluebarbet wrote: post #24
plorg wrote: post #5

After the recent press for Bookshop.org I saw an author I like had a new book and thought I'd try out the service - I am okay with paying slightly more for a book if the money is going to someone other than Amazon. But I should have looked twice, because Bookshop ebooks are not DRM free unless the publisher explicitly opts for it, and DRM encumbered books can only be read on their website or in their app. I know that…

The desktop web-app reader is interesting in that it's a DRM-free legal way to access otherwise DRM-encumbered e-books. Last I checked the EME DRM browser sandbox was still not required. Personally I'm fine with this compromise solution. I've read whole books in the Kindle desktop web interface. The usual line is that it's somehow bad on the eyes, but I figure that I already spend my days reading documents and articl…

Is it really drm free if you can't save the books? Maybe there's technically no encryption but it's not like you're free to do with the book as you please either.

Re: List of DRM-Free Bookshops

#29

Post by macNchz »

_benj wrote: post #12

I hadn’t really paid attention to DMR because I was so cozy inside the kindle bubble. That notification that Amazon was going to take away the ability to download books was a very strong wake up call… When ok buys a book for kindle, it seems that one supposedly doesn’t own the book? One “owns” it at the “goodwill” of Amazon? I put my kindle on eBay today and I think going forward I’ll consider buying physical books a…

I've been saying for a while now that I'd love to see rules restricting the use of the term "Buy" such that it can only apply to digital products when they are DRM-free and fully downloadable. Anything where the seller retains the right to claw back their product post-sale is more of an indefinite lease or purchase of rights rather than "buying" the product itself.

I think a relatively small proportion of people buying media online fully comprehend that—based on a contract negotiation gone wrong or just the whim of a senior exec—the things they've "bought" can simply be taken away from them. Sellers should be required to make it fully clear (e.g. not just in their 73 page ToS) that they're selling something impermanent and entirely unlike owning physical media.

Re: List of DRM-Free Bookshops

#30

Post by _benj »

gcr wrote: post #14
_benj wrote: post #12

I hadn’t really paid attention to DMR because I was so cozy inside the kindle bubble. That notification that Amazon was going to take away the ability to download books was a very strong wake up call… When ok buys a book for kindle, it seems that one supposedly doesn’t own the book? One “owns” it at the “goodwill” of Amazon? I put my kindle on eBay today and I think going forward I’ll consider buying physical books a…

Quick! Go to your Amazon account’s “Manage Content and Devices” and “Download or transfer over USB” to save the .azw3 files to your computer. Then, follow instructions to set up Calibre with the De-DRM plugin. Do this before next Wednesday and you might save your Kindle books! Old kindles are best for this; save books in the older .azw3 format. I’m not sure about newer Kindles that use .kfx

already did like at 2 AM... a friend of mine also tried to do it but it turns out that “Download or transfer over USB” only works if you own a kindle, which he doesn't... so there's that too
Post reply on HN