I was ready to come to Amazon’s defense (and I will, eventually). In their long letter to the writing community, they made some excellent points. They inflamed our passions, gave us historical context for our discontent, and then quoted none other than George Orwell on the disruptive nature of paperbacks and the need for evil publishers to crack down on upstart, low-priced alternatives.
Asides
Why I’m DRM Free
All of my books are DRM free. I know that DRM is useless – I can break Amazon’s in a few clicks and almost every major DRM system has been shattered upon release – and I want people to read my books. That’s why I give them away when it makes sense (you can get Mytro free on the iBooks store now, for example) and try to offer my own download pages when possible. I’ll continue to do this.
I thought I’d share a talk by Cory Doctorow on this very topic and explain my position on books these days.
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