“I have saved the money to buy a Kindle 2, but have now decided NOT to do it. Rather I will begin to look for other ebook readers to see what they have and how their system works. The reason I won’t buy a Kindle 2 has to do with how Amazon handles the ebook DRM. As I understand it you will allow me to download a book I pay for on a “few” Kindle compatible devices that are in my account, but this figure of “few” is not published and changes from book to book. Amazon will even allow me to download the book to this “few” devices as many times as I like. This approach is nothing like I am used to from buying regular books. I would think that Amazon handle the DRM as follows:

1. Allow me to download to only one machine at a time that is on my account as often as I would like. Insist that I delete the book from one machine before you allow me to download it to another. Or delete the book from the machine it is on when it is downloaded to another of my machines.
2. Delete from my machine and download the book to a friend’s machine, that is Kindle compatible, that I identify for a specific length of time.
3. Allow me to identify a new friend who has a machine, that is Kindle compatible, and download the book to that machine for a specific length of time.
4. When the time is up for my specified friends make sure the book is deleted from their machines and allow me to again download the book to one of the machines on my account.

This is a huge difference from how Amazon is handling DRM now, but it is more reasonable for something I pay for. I may not be able to find another ebook reader company that handles things this way, but Amazon is capable and I don’t want to buy a Kindle 2 the way things are now. It also has the advantages of encouraging others to buy Kindles because they must buy one in order to borrow one of the books I have paid for.”

I’m a a avid reader and traveller, so eBooks see like a perfect solution.

The problems of Pricing, Availability and DRM however made me hesitate to buy DRM’d books unless the DRM has been cracked.

Now, I don’t want to crack the DRM to steal the books, Heck I’ve already paid for it, often more then I might have paid for a paper version. What I do want is to preserve my investment in eBooks.

Indeed, I refused to buy eReader and Mobi books until scripts to remove DRM became available. So in my experience, removing the DRM or at least having the ability to remove DRM increased the value of the eBooks for me, and made me willing to pay the high prices.

Granted, it would be better to have no DRM, but you hold all the keys to your eReader books.

I do understand that all DRM systems have drawbacks, but after reading your post I really think you are misunderstanding the system. The total time to “fix” this problem is perhaps 2 or 3 minutes:

1) register your new card on ereader.com
2) delete your old card from ereader.com. It is not needed any longer, and doing this will not affect your old content in the slightest.
3) First time you download a new purchase type in the new card info when prompted.
4) Perhaps the next time you upgrade your hardware you would want to download the content over again using the new card. There is no pressing need to do this, it will keep working as-is.

In short, this should take you considerably less time that it took for you to post this blog article!

Most ebook fans I know of consider eReader’s DRM by far the least hassle. With other systems you have to re-download every purchase every time you upgrade your hardware, which for most people is pretty frequent. eReader books keep working without re-download, as long as you simply write down your old card numbers as they change. People who downloaded their purchases first in 1998 have reported still reading them on hardware that did not even exist at that time.

There is no need, as you suggest in this article, to ask us to convert anything. It’s all automatic. Just put in the new card, make it your default card, then delete the old card. Anything you download from that point, including old purchases, will use the new card by default.

You only have to type in the new card number twice: once when registering it on our site before making a new purchase, and once on your ipod touch after your first download.

I also do not understand your point about eReader only allowing 3 cards on our web site. That really has nothing at all to do with it. You would want to delete the defunct card from our site and enter the new one. Your old content is not affected by this at all. There is no communication between our site and your old content.

I am asking our team to review the FAQ and make sure it is clear on these points.

-Steve P.

Would I be upset if I couldn’t read my ebooks in five or ten years? Of course. I bought the unabridged audio cassettes of “Lolita” by Vladimir Nabokov in 1997; then, in 2007, I wanted to listen to the book again, but I’d gotten rid of all my cassette players over the last ten years and couldn’t hear them unless I got a new player and spent time digitalizing them for my iPod. Too much trouble, those cassettes. I used one of my yearly credits on Audible.com for a digital audio file of a book I own already. Not the best scenario, but it is what it is. The same holds true for ebooks: there is some risk involved in buying product with DRM, I’m stilling going to do it. To hell with the maybe future of inaccessiblity.

While, yes, ebooks without DRM are better, theoretically, then books with DRM, and if given a choice I buy without it, but ultimately I think the tradeoffs out weighs the risks. The key, I think, to ease the fears of publishers about piracy. Just about every brick and brick-and-mortar bookstore will have some theft—ebooks will be no different—but they stay in business for the most part, despite the shrinkage. But how this can be done remains to be seen.

I don’t know the solution.

But I agree that “playing by the rules” has it’s problems. I have bought very few DRM ebooks. I have some micropay dollars left at Fictionwise and I think when they’re gone, I’m done.

Every time I buy I remember that I am totally dependent on Fictionwise for these books I HAVE BOUGHT AND PAID FOR. If I change readers I have to get them to enter a new PID so I can read the books on the new reader. I notice that there are only a few PIDs allowed, and they don’t allow you to delete any!

If Fictionwise goes out of business, or simply refuses to add a new PID (please raise your hand if you know of anyone with good customer service these days!), or their system fails, etc. . . all the books I’ve bought will be lost to me.

I just can’t see spending a lot of money on books that I may or may not be able to read in the future. Perhaps if the price of ebooks were much much lower I’d be more comfortable spending the money for a one time read. When I buy a pbook I have something I can read forever, or give away. Or sell even. And they’re asking as much for ebooks as for pbooks. I’m just not buying it the way it is. Something has to change before I will invest any more in DRM’d ebooks.

Of course, these are dependent upon the company remaining solvent. But given that they belong to Fictionwise—probably the biggest non-Amazon vendor of e-books—there seems to be very little danger of that changing in the short term. And in the long term, she’ll have time to re-download the books if she wants to.

The only other solution, as you’ve said, is to strip out the DRM and store backups of your books in a format that is easily converted to any other format (html for now, probably epub very soon now) or in a drm-free proprietary format for which there are lots of free conversion tools (mobi works well, but ereader does not, as the conversion tools for ereader only work if it has DRM, not on DRM free versions).

And this is exactly why ebooks won’t catch on for a few years (maybe, but hopefully not, more).

I know I’m not going to purchase an ebook that I can’t take with me anywhere, read on any machine. I’d rather buy a paperback, which CAN be taken anywhere, CAN be read anywhere. And many others out there feel the same way. At this point, reading digitally is risky, unless you’re talking pdf files (EVERYONE has Adobe Reader!).

Don’t get me wrong; I love ebooks. I just am discouraged that the book industry is not looking at the bigger picture.

And what happens when you want to change software or reading devices? I bought quite a few MS Reader format DRM’ed books before I realized it wasn’t the best reader out there and switched to Mobipocket.

What’s going to happen to all those Kindle fans when they realize that forever-and-ever they’re ’stuck’ with the Kindle to read their Kindle-format DRM ebooks, even if someone else comes out with a better device? Or even if they just want a second, smaller device?

Is it any wonder that some people turn to stripping the DRM to ensure future access to what can be a sizable investment? I really don’t understand why the book publishers and retailers aren’t learning from the experience of the music industry, which had a lot more to lose, since more people listen to music than read.

I’ll agree that re-downloading all your books might be a hardship (since there doesn’t seem to be any way to download them other than one-at-a-time or the-contents-of-one-order-at-a-time). But on the other hand, if you’re reading with your iPhone, you can just re-download the updated book into the client directly from eReader’s website if and as you want to re-read it.

I’ll be the first to agree that DRM on e-books is pointless now that cracks for all formats (including eReader) can easily be found on the Internet. But I think eReader’s isn’t quite as bad as you make out.