DRM Infection Clearing up at Amazon?
Written by Scath on February 3, 2010 – 11:51 amI haven’t seen a big announcement about it, but last week, while making changes to a few of my ebooks distributed through Amazon, I noticed the following:
Personally, I immediately switched all my titles as shown: Do not enable digital rights management.
Hit the ‘publish’ button, and now they’re all DRM free at Amazon. It only took a couple of days.
Since people are still talking about Kindle versions of ebooks being DRMed, I think this has slipped under the radar. Most of those who choose Amazon as a distribution platform likely aren’t aware they now have a choice.
Just thought I’d try spreading the word a bit. 
Tags: Amazon, DRM free, e-books, readers, writers
Posted in News, Writing & Pubbing | 3 Comments »
February 3rd, 2010 at 10:17 pm
I’m afraid I don’t understand. What does DRM free mean? Does that mean that Amazon can’t cut your title’s prices?
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February 3rd, 2010 at 10:32 pm
DRM is Digital Rights Management, or a way of protecting digital content from being illegally copied.
The problem with it is that it doesn’t work, and it pisses people off to have it on something they legally purchased.
Amazon has had DRM on all ebooks distributed through them (I guess since they first started selling ebooks). Basically, it limits what the buyer can do with the ebook: only able to download it on 3-5 devices that are registered/somehow attached to the buyer’s Amazon account.
Which means an ebook buyer who upgrades their Kindle, for example, every time a new version comes out, won’t be able to download the ebooks they purchased from Amazon for it when they hit that third/fifth ereader upgrade.
They’d have to re-purchase the ebook to regain access to it.
That’s just one example of how DRM doesn’t work.
They have changed that to unlimited usage (or that’s what it says on the listing pages of my ebooks there: Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited).
But publishers/authors didn’t have a choice about having the DRM applied to their ebooks until now.
DRM is such a touchy damn subject, it’s better to not have it on your digital creations if at all possible if you want to actually sell anything.
I’m personally pleased Amazon is finally giving us the choice to have it applied or not.
February 3rd, 2010 at 11:09 pm
Oh, and them cutting your title’s prices?
They don’t cut your percentage of each sale when they do that.
Amazon takes the hit; you get your full 35% regardless.