Hooray for Fictionwise! Multi-format e-books rule!
By Paul Biba
It’s very nice to have multiple versions of a book available in this world of e-babel.
Recently I bought a copy of Greg Bear’s EON from Fictionwise in eReader format. I wanted to read the book on my iPhone, along with my subscription to Fantasy and Science Fiction Magazine. Well, after finishing the latest two issues of F&SF and the first third of EON I must admit that I have gotten heartily sick of reading on the iPhone. I’ve been spoiled by the Sony and the Kindle. The iPhone’s screen is just too small to make for immersive reading. I also find page turning to be a pain in the neck - or should I say a pain in the thumb. It is really not an easy thing for me to do for a prolonged time.
Luckily, EON is not in a DRMed format and I can download a Kindle version from Fictionwise with no hassle. So I did, loaded it up and am now reading the book on the Kindle. Interestingly enough EON and the rest of the series are not available from the Kindle bookstore.
February 20th, 2009 at 3:01 pm
Webscriptions has the following Greg Bear novels in an $18 bundle, and of course, Webscriptions doesn’t sell any books with DRM.
Sleepside
Beyond Heaven’s River
Blood Music
Dinosaur Summer
February 21st, 2009 at 12:27 pm
Is Amazon turning away e-books without DRM?
At TOC, Cory Doctorow said that’s what happened with “Little Brother” (and the water is muddied now about this with denials).
I wonder if Paul’s discovery about Eon is another case of a publisher/author supplying a DRM-less e-book and Amazon refusing to carry it . . .
“Eon” was published in 1991 and it might be a strategic marketing decision to make an author’s early works easier to disseminate in order to build readership who’ll buy the latest books.
So Amazon’s alleged policy could be detrimental to what publishers and authors believe are their best interests even if they agree about DRM-ing current work.
Roger
PS: And, of course, it could just be the publisher hasn’t gotten around to getting “Eon” up on the Kindle site . . .