But now comes word from BusinessWeek that Sony will also sell e-books elsewhere—in the new Sony Online Store, the current name.

This one will sell music, movies and downloadable apps, too. The feeling among Sony watchers is that the new Sony store will use an iTune-ish approach.No startup date has been announced. 

I’m curious if or how the new Sony store may works with the existing eBook Library software. What’s more, might the current eBookStore vanish? I don’t think so, but who knows?

Is Sony in time going to do the e-book-capable multimedia table that Apple is supposed to offer us? That certainly would jibe well with Sony’s history as a hardware company and the store’s multimedia approach. I’m just extrapolating and guessing. But if you work for a publisher and need to anticipate future possibilities, add this one to the brew.

Also, what e-book format will the new Sony store use? ePub? And what about the DRM situation? Will Adobe-DRMed ePub be the norm? And what if publishers don’t want DRM? Will Sony in fact offer publishers a choice, as I believe it’s indicated?

Apple has backed off from DRM in the real iTunes Store, at least when it comes to music (it is selling “protected” books in the ScrollMotion format). Sony should do the same with e-books.

Perhaps social DRM could be a compromise. I’ll query Sony to see if it has any word on the DRM and format issues and other book-specific details.

Related: Techmeme roundup and Google News roundup.

“Do I really have to answer? I’m not sure,” Friedman told New York University publishing students after someone asked about Open’s position on DRM. “Initially, I was very against the idea of no-DRM. But now I’m not sure."

DRM as the Lysenkoism of big publishing

Ideally she soon will be sure—of the negatives of DRM for consumer trade publishing. Among big New York publishers, the DRM ideology is a little like the old Soviet genetics. If you were a geneticist and wanted to get ahead in the Stalin years, you toed the party line and favored Trofim Lysenko’s brilliance over the shaky, unproven theories of Mendel (sarcasm alert).

Like Lysenkoism, DRM is a laugh—since it’s so easy to scan paper editions of bestsellers and put them on P2P networks; and as for typical books, publisher Tim O’Reilly is right on the mark when he says obscurity is more of an obstacle than piracy. If you want to discourage pirates, the embedding of readers’ names in e-books would be far, far more effective than the usual DRM.

Will the top people in book publishing ever wake up, given the Depression—yes, the D word, not the R word—that book publishers and other communications-related companies have been in? DRM isn’t merely an inconvenience for legitimate buyers of e-books. It just might be a job-killer—as a reducer of books’ value as a medium.

On top of everything else, DRM is a tax on readers and publishers. The technology tends to be proprietary and DRM providers need to charge for their services. In addition, DRM adds to the cost of publishers’ infrastructure and increases the compatibility challenges of the e-book industry. For now at least, reader gizmos from Amazon, Sony and B&N can’t read each other’s “protected” books. Sony and B&N hope to be able to play with each other soon, but then there are scads of other brands out there—not just dedicated e-readers but many other devices such as cellphones.

Smartly, Harlequin’s new digital-only imprint, Carina Press, tells writers that its contracts will not cover use of DRM. And O’Reilly, one of the most tech-hip of publishers, is shunning the technology in line with the wishes of the company’s founder.

For more information on Jane Friedman and Open Read: Read Sarah Weinman’s AOL Daily Finance article, source of the Friedman quotes on DRM.

In the DRM area: See The Pirates of Publishing: A view from the crow’s nest, by William Johnson, a Masters Candidate in the NYU publishing program.

Without doubt, Sony’s Steve Haber and Adobe’s Bill McCoy have been more sensible on DRM than Amazon, with more flexible approaches. I applaud their efforts. But we’re a long way from nirvana. Gang, what do you think of this snippet from Boing Boing?

I recently talked to Sony’s Steve Haber, President of Digital Reading, about its flagship ebook reader. Named the "Daily Edition," it hits stores next month. Notwithstanding differences between each manufacturer’s respective libraries, it offers all the best features of its main rival, the Kindle. But Sony says it offers one thing that Amazon won’t: actual ownership of your books.

"Our commitment is that you bought it, you own it," Haber said. "Our hope is to see this as ubiquitous. Buy on any device, read on any device. … We’re obligated to have DRM but we don’t pull content back."

Um, as long as there’s DRM, Sony isn’t offering  genuine ownership of your “protected” books, a category that unfortunately includes most bestsellers. And remember, “Buy on any device, read on any device” is just a hope—and can really be achieved only without DRM or with social DRM (which could embed your name into an ePub file without destroying the ability for it to be read any ePub-capable machine). Operating systems and apps come and go. It is inherently impossible for the e-book industry to come up instantly with up-to-date, DRM-capable apps for every gizmo.

What’s more, genuine ownership means you can sell your books. Is Sony planning this?

The good news is that Adobe, Sony and B&N are hoping to provide compatible DRM approaches. That’s progress but still no substitute for lack of traditional DRM. It would also be nice to see Sony aggressively encourage publishers either to drop DRM or use social DRM, not just less restrictive forms of traditional DRM. Last I knew—this may be changing—Sony insisted that books in its store use DRM. I wonder what the more current policies of Sony and B&N will be.

With B&N, I’d call attention to the fact you can lend a book to a friend—with a 14-day period—only once as far as I know. Again, this is far from genuine ownership.

Meanwhile, in fairness to Amazon and its Kindle, let me note that you can use the K machine’s Web browser to download nonDRMed public domain books and even commercial books without “protection.”

Detail: I’m curious about Boing Boing’s mention of the Daily Edition as having a nine-inch display. Last I heard, Sony was saying the screen would be seven inches. Is Beschizza accurate here?

Related: How the New York Times was fooled? Sony’s misleading ePub-related news release, in TeleRead, and Seattle’s Bill McCoy, E-Books and Digital Distribution Expert, Leaving Adobe, in Xconomy.

Among various projects, Bill and his team have been involved with Adobe Reader Mobile SDK, Adobe Content Server, Adobe Digital Editions and Adobe InDesign. Bill sits on the board of the International Digital Publishing Forum, the e-book industry’s main trade group, and has played a major role in the ePub standards movement.

To put it mildly, Bill and I haven’t always seen eye to eye, but the “best of luck” is far from mere politeness. One of TeleRead’s main missions, as I see it, is to encourage open standards—so that people can own e-books for real, without worrying about new formats and DRM. Not all our contributors are as fervent about it as I am. But that’s my priority, at least, in addition to the fight for a well-stocked national digital library system. How has Bill figured in this? By corporate standards, he has been a positive phenomenon despite our differences.

When Jon Noring and I set up OpenReader, Bill was smart enough to realize that the IDPF needed to get more serious about open standards before we or others preempted the group. The result? ePub. Dozens of e-book devices use ePub or will use it—for example, the Sony Readers—and major publishers are standardizing on it. You can thank Bill more than a little for that. Similarly, it was Bill who had the courage to call for social DRM, the use of which would make it far, far easier to own e-books for real than the usual DRM would.

About Bill’s future hopes, he looks “forward to the opportunity to push for open standards and interoperability from a completely neutral perspective. I can be reached at whmccoy ‘at’ gmail.com.” Great priorities, Bill. Again, good luck!

Meanwhile I’ll be interested in knowing who ends up as Bill’s replacement on the IDPF board, and how that person feels about issues such as open standards and DRM. I suspect a special election will come up soon.

Bill writing on his continued involvement in the industry—and the need for vigilance: “…there is no doubt that I’ll continue to be involved in the future of digital books, especially where that future intersects with web standards and open source. I believe that Adobe will continue to play a critical role as an enabler of interoperable solutions, but I also believe that the community needs to stay vigilant to ensure that for-profit corporations don’t just talk the talk about being open, but also walk the walk. I’ve certainly tried my level best to do this from the inside, but look forward to the opportunity to push for open standards and interoperability from a completely neutral perspective.

Detail: Although Adobe is laying off people, Bill writes: “While my transition comes as Adobe is restructuring, it’s really more about Adobe creating a new, expanded organization focused on digital publishing media monetization. My team is the nucleus of this group, and the additional wood that Adobe is putting behind this arrow should be great news for our customers and business partners. We’ve got a lot of exciting stuff on our roadmap, and it’s been an exceptional honor to have worked with such an incredible group of people. But, it was a logical time for me to move on.”

The definition of DRMfree can be tricky. I’d hope that little Twilight Times Books in Kingsport, Tennessee, the publisher of my novel, could go on the list. At the same time, yes, like certain other anti-DRM houses, Twilight sells through outlets that taint all books with “protection.” Twilight has no choice. Publishing is a brutal business.

Another issue is whether social DRMed books, a compromise approach, would qualify as DRMfree. Social DRM means embedding a buyer’s name into a book to discourage copying. It is not a perfect system, given the privacy risks. But it is rather different from traditional DRM, which erects barriers against copying, even the legitimate private kind for backup purposes and the like.

However Liza treats social DRM, I hope that her list can help, and that a publication like Consumer Reports will pick up her work, refine it and circulate it widely, just as she has openly built on the efforts of others. If you want books you can truly own, then think about buying from the fiction and nonfiction names on Liza’s list, especially if the titles are in ePub format, which I suspect virtually all of them are, at least as an option.

This is not just a consumer issue, by the way. It is also one for writers. I applaud Carina Press, a new imprint from Harlequin, for promising writers not to insist on DRM—a technology that diminishes the literary value of books by linking them to the survival of individual publishers and specific technologies. I want books to be a permanent medium. DRM—beyond the penalties it imposes readers, especially the disabled—is the enemy of that.

My other proposed addition, besides Twilight Times: Baen, which for years has shunned “protection” and probably has never published a DRMed book.

(Via @jafurtado.)

I did on Comcast. Yes, Ondigo, the commercial was horrible but, mercifully, rather forgettable.

Interesting, isn’t it—how Amazon is advertising on the tube, after having focused so much on its Web site and word of mouth.

Hey, I’m not knocking the Kindle in this case, just the over-cute commercial. I found a commercial done on spec (left) to be far more interesting even if it may terrify more than a few Luddites.

What I want from Amazon for the holidays: ePub and more books with no DRM—or how about social DRM as a compromise? Time to be serious about educating publishers? Harlequin’s already getting religion.

Harlequin Enterprises Limited, the global leader in series romance and one of the world’s leading publishers of women’s fiction, announced today the launch of Carina Press, a digital-only publishing house that will operate independently of their traditional publishing businesses.

Carina Press is a digital-only publishing house whose eBooks will be sold direct to consumers through the Carina Press Web site and numerous third-party Web sites. Carina Press will publish a wide range of women’s fiction—romance, erotica, science fiction, mystery, family sagas, choose your own adventures, horror, thriller and more, including every conceivable subgenre of these categories.

"As a digital-only publisher Carina Press is a natural extension to our business; it builds on our digital strength and leadership position. We expect to discover new authors and unique voices that may not be able to find homes in traditional publishing houses," said Donna Hayes, CEO and Publisher of Harlequin Enterprises. "It definitely gives us greater flexibility in the type of editorial we can accept from authors and offer to readers. As well, we hope to reach a new group of readers with niche editorial."

Brent Lewis, Vice President Digital, is delighted to announce that Angela James is joining Carina Press as Executive Editor. A veteran of the digital publishing industry, James is a well-known advocate for digital publishing. James has enjoyed a long and varied publishing career, including senior editorial positions at digital-first publishers. "I have admired Harlequin’s digital initiatives for years, and have always thought of them as leaders in the digital arena, so I’m unbelievably excited to join the Carina Press team," said James. "I believe Harlequin can bring digital publishing to the next level for both authors and readers."

Lewis added, "Angela has been a key player in growing the digital marketplace for romance. Her experience and insight is a tremendous benefit to the Carina Press team."

Carina Press is currently accepting submissions in all genres of commercial fiction. Carina Press will consider shorter stories, genre novels of 50,000 to 100,000 words and longer, and complex narratives of over 100,000 words. Carina Press will also acquire books that have been previously released in print form, but for which the author has either retained digital rights or had digital rights revert to them. All submissions should be sent to submissions@carinapress.com.

Carina Press plans to launch in summer 2010 and will release new titles on a weekly basis. Between now and the launch, readers and writers can follow the progress of Carina Press via its blog

For full submission guidelines and more information on Carina Press please go to www.carinapress.com.

About Harlequin Enterprises
Harlequin Enterprises Limited is the global leader in series romance and one of the world’s leading publishers of books for women, with titles issued worldwide in 28 languages and sold in 114 international markets. The company produces more than 110 titles monthly in print and digital and publishes more than 1,100 authors from around the world. Harlequin Enterprises Limited is a wholly owned subsidiary of Torstar Corporation (http://www.torstar.com), a broadly based media company listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TS.B). Harlequin’s Web site is located at www.eHarlequin.com. Harlequin has offices in 19 countries, including offices in Toronto, New York and London. For more information please visit www.eHarlequin.com or press.eHarlequin.com.

SOURCE Harlequin Enterprises Limited

(Found via the Reading 2.0 list and Jane of Dear Author fame. By the way, Carina’s Twitter page is here.)

Beyond more formats, Foxit now includes the ability to organize your book into folders—and you can use the new virtual keyboard to type out names. Foxit has also added bookmarket.

Existing users will be able to upgrade..

Related: News release, Gearlog, Engadget and MobileRead.

You don’t have as many DRMed commercial books to choose from as with more modern readers, and the display is an LCD, not E Ink. But thanks to Calibre, you could choose from zillions of nonDRMed ePub books available via Google and convert them to the .rb format for the eBookwise.

Feedbooks, Manybooks and Project Gutenberg are among other sources of ePub titles and others, including .rb books in Manybooks’ case.

In the place of eBookwise, now owned by Barnes and Noble via its Fictionwise subsidiary, I would commission a simplified version of Calibre designed especially with eBookwise users in mind.

Adobe’s interests are far more aligned with the adoption of open formats that we can address with our authoring tools and services. We see e-book DRM as an enabler for a larger market, one that we can address with our tools and services on a level playing field vs. proprietary silos that give a choke-hold to players who have a strong position in the book distribution value chain. We don’t forecast revenue from e-book DRM even in the best case ever itself being a large material business for Adobe—large enough to pay its way and allow us to sustain and enhance the solution, but quite small relative to our other tools and services.

I’ve said before that Adobe’s open to evolving towards a non-proprietary ubiquitous DRM standard, even as we see obstacles to getting there in the near future (especially around IP enablement). What we don’t want to see is one proprietary solution taking over control, or fragmentation of multiple proprietary solutions. Publishers have already voted with their feet, so to speak, by requiring/letting Amazon deploy DRM. If the only reasonable cross-platform alternative for eBooks was to go DRM-free, then some publishers would distribute only through Amazon, leading to everyone else getting "iTunesd". So to me it’s pretty obvious that cross-platform eBook DRM that works with EPUB and PDF is necessary to ensure that the open, cross-platform alternative wins. But if every publisher were to choose to go DRM free, using PDF & EPUB but not DRM, hey I’d have absolutely no problem with that outcome.

Like most e-book fans, I read the news with interest. Following the not unexpected but still disappointing news that neither the international Kindle nor the B&N Nook would be made available to Canadians soon, I started wondering about people who shop based on features and people who shop based on brand loyalty.

I always thought I was a tough customer who researched every purchase carefully and shopped on the features. But as I read the details about these spiffy new products—available to everyone but YOU, Ficbot, you CANADIAN, you—I looked at my Sony in a new light.

Canada love from Sony

Sony loves Canada. They want me to buy their readers. I got mine in a store, even! Retail! From a clerk who even was properly trained and knew his stuff! Sony has given me the Mac software. They have given me the Google Books access.

The Sony Reader is my only hardware besides a proper computer on which I can read library books—and my local library system seems to loves the Sony just as much as the Sony loves them, because they have about 200 novels, as recent as the new Dan Brown best-seller, available in ePub and PDF via Overdrive.  Add in the non-fiction and young adult categories, and there are about 300 books I can download for free, from home, and read on the go. And what does it say on the Overdrive FAQ about the Amazon Kindle? No library books for you! Take that, America!

All kidding aside, my takeaway from all this is an important one. The PR war may be as important, at least in some markets, as the actual product features. Sony has been in the game long enough to prove that they are committed to their e-book customers. I read Project Gutenberg books on a 1st gen Clie when I was living overseas where I had limited access to books. I have progressed since then to other gizmos, including my beloved 505 from Sony. When Amazon offered wireless, Sony matched it. When ePub became an emerging standard, Sony heartily approved. Lesson number one: the features aren’t so important. If I wait long enough, Sony will match them eventually.

And lesson number two: given the choice, I would prefer Sony to, because for the first time in my techie life, I am feeling brand loyal. I buy Macs because they work better for me, not from any particular love of Apple. if someone else made something cheaper that worked just as well, I’d sign up in a heartbeat. But the Sony…nobody else has cared about the Canadian market, and there was Sony going, “Hi, Canada! Amazon locked you out, but WE have a Canadian store! With Mac support! And Google Books.” There was every e-tailer slapping on the geographical restrictions, and a month later, half those books are available through Overdrive at my public library for free. Readable only on…The Sony.

So, if anyone from Sony is reading this, I have a message for you. Sony, you have won the PR war, at least as far as this reader goes. You have earned my loyalty.

I can’t promise I won’t be tempted by a snazzy new feature or two (hint: some people want to use dictionary lookups with languages other than English…) And I can’t promise an Apple Tablet won’t woo me to the dark side. But I appreciate that you’ve been plugging away at the Canadian market when everyone else is shunning us so unjustly. I’ll keep an eye on you, and prefer your products should they do the job for me.

Reminder: DRMed ePub still won’t be an open, nonproprietary standard. Alas, big publishers are still insisting on DRM.

This depends on Sony and the others updating their Adobe-supplied firmware for their dedicated e-readers. So there are gotcha indeed (yes, I’ve revised this post). Let’s hope that other companies will include the new DRM for compatibility’s sake—even though the best solution would be no DRM. See a helpful explanation from Adobe’s Jim Lester.

On the social DRM front…

Meanwhile another question arises. Could Adobe and B&N also be moving social DRM in time? With help from a reader, I noticed the following in an Adobe release:

“Barnes & Noble is adopting Adobe(r) Content Server, a server software solution that copy protects eBooks downloaded to nook, mobile phone applications and other dedicated eBook reading devices that have integrated the Adobe Reader Mobile SDK. Additionally, Adobe is integrating Barnes & Noble’s eReader social content protection technology into Adobe Content Server, Adobe Reader Mobile SDK and, eventually, into Adobe Digital Editions.

“With this enhanced version of Adobe Content Server, publishers and booksellers will be able to protect EPUB and PDF eBooks through either social password or identity-based authentication options, allowing their readers access to interoperable eBook content across diverse platforms.” That isn’t quite the same as basic social DRM—you know, simply embedding names or other identifying data in files to discourage piracy. But maybe it’ll help pave the way for it.

Fictionwise, a subsidiary of B&N, uses a DRM system based on scrambled credit card numbers (not the same as social DRM at the plain-English level).

Note: For info on the Nook e-reader from B&N, see the basics plus Paul Biba’s report from the press conference announcing the product.

Related: TeleRead on social DRM.

Even so, as long as Amazon taints bestsellers and so many other books with proprietary DRM, I’ll consider the Kindle a closed system—at least in ways that count for many readers.

Open systems, moreover, don’t include the capability for the hardware provider to zap books—even 1984! Nor do open systems let publishers prevent disabled people from using text to speech.

Looking beyond the machine, if the Kindle is so open, how come my publisher can’t even get a DRMed edition of my novel removed from Amazon.com. She couldn’t offer The Solomon Scandals at the Mobipocket Store without tolerating a DRMed version of my novel at Amazon.com in addition to the nonDRMed file. Trouble is, the DRMed edition remained at Amazon.com even when we withdrew from the Mobi store. Is that really openness?

Dave “Evil Genius” Slusher is a good guy, but I’d very respectfully disagree with his recent thoughts on the Kindle’s so-called openness. And the same for you, Paul.

Related: Mitch Ratcliffe’s comments.

Image credit: Creative Commons photo from Quinn Anya Domrowski.

Hi,

I think TeleRead missed this announcement at the Frankfurt Book Fair:

The German text is about the planned improvements of the German eBook portal libreka!, which is the official eBook shop of the Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels (federation of German publishers and book stores). The interesting part for non-Germans is the announcement of the release of a libreka! iPhone app in the beginning of November. With this app it will be possible to buy and read the eBooks sold at libreka!—which are EPUB with Adobe DRM. So this will be the first official iPhone eBook reader for EPUB with Adobe DRM.

Best regards,
Tobias Steinke