Solomon Scandals back on track for Diesel eBooks—but only after Lida gives up part of her weekend to deal with Mobipocket’s required DRM
Remember how I said that Mobipocket’s DRM requirement—no distribution by Mobi without it!—was delaying the appearance of The Solomon Scandals at Diesel eBooks? Lida Quillen, publisher of Twilight Times Books, had hoped that Mobi would accept a non-DRMed file of my novel. No such luck! So she wrote me of the resultant delay.
I’m pleased to report that the delay was short, perhaps a day or two. This weekend she was able to track down the documentation and create a DRMed file. But guess what. Lida is far, far sharper technically than the typical small publisher, and up until then, she didn’t know what would happen. Elsewhere there might well have been a DRM-caused delay of days—or maybe even weeks if an overworked publisher had to move on to something else.
The big lesson: Amazon IS inflicting DRM on publishers who hate it
Of course, the main question remains. Why is Jeff Bezos going on TV and giving the impression that he doesn’t care about DRM—at least in a Kindle context, and presumably in a Mobi, too. Jeff, your company is very keen on inflicting DRM on Quillen-style publishers even when they intensely dislike it. Otherwise why couldn’t Lida do business with Mobi without messing with this anti-consumer technology that prevents us from owning e-books for real? Can’t you give publishers a choice, just as you promise to do in the case of text-to-speech on the Kindle 2?
Meanwhlie stay tuned for Diesel eBooks to post and promote Scandals; I’ll let you know. Like Books on Board, Diesel will be giving Scandals a nice sendoff (for several weeks on the Diesel home page in rotation, according to owner Scott Redford).
Out of fairness to Mobipocket: The DRMed Scandals is now on sale at the Mobipocket store at the list price of $5.95.
March 2nd, 2009 at 2:03 pm
David, I can’t help but think that other authors and publishers are being put through a similar inconvenience — but without the happy ending. You would think that THIS would be the kind of issue the Authors Guild would concern itself with.
The Guild’s protest over TTS regarded a feature that *might* impact authors at some future date. Proprietary DRM and Amazon’s refusal to support epub on the Kindle are issues that impact authors right now. So, why isn’t the Authors Guild taking on Amazon over these more immediate concerns?
As a recently published author you might contact the Guild and ask what, exactly, they’re doing to sort these issues out.
March 2nd, 2009 at 2:47 pm
> As a recently published author you might contact the Guild and ask what, exactly, they’re doing to sort these issues out.
Excellent idea, Kirk! I’ll probably query the Guild to see if it cares about ePub and also about the right of writers NOT to have their works DRMed.
Meanwhile I’ll do the next-best thing thing refer people to your own commentary on the Guild’s role:
Authors Guild Gives Amazon the Perfect Alibi
http://booksquare.com/authors-guild-gives-amazon-the-perfect-alibi/
Excerpt:
“It’s unfortunate that the Authors Guild chose to make an issue out of Kindle’s TTS feature. If the Guild really wants to do well by authors, it would lobby Amazon to support industry-wide standards like epub, and encourage the development of an open and interoperable marketplace for digital content. Instead, the Guild has given Amazon the perfect excuse for creating a closed system that will limit consumers’ options and fragment the industry.”
Yes! Meanwhile, to treturn to what I wrote about, I’ve love to see Amazon try to reconcile Lida’s situation with Jeff’s talk about being “DRM agnostic.”
Thanks,
David
March 2nd, 2009 at 3:04 pm
I find it astounding that Diesel can’t deal direct with the publisher.
http://www.di2.nu/200903/02.htm
March 2nd, 2009 at 3:08 pm
Hi, Francis. I’m sure Scott could if he had more resources, but he’s spread pretty thin as it as. I wouldn’t be surprised if DRM is one of the reason why he can’t do things directly with Twilight. If so, what a sorry reflection on the industry! David
P.S. Interesting URL, thanks. I’d encourage Twilight and others to go there. Maybe there’s a possibility of a link with Baen’s distribution system to augment the current one. I see roles for all kinds of different models.