ENTRIES TAGGED "drm-free"
Direct sales of ebooks in multiple languages
Your direct channel needs to extend well beyond the English language
O’Reilly has long been a leader in fostering community and building a direct sales channel. This week we took the next step in enhancing the customer’s direct buying experience by offering German editions for many of our ebook titles. Take a close look at the bottom of this screen shot:
Identifying DRM-free ebooks
Customers deserve to know the restrictions they're buying into
One of my colleagues, Edd Dumbill, asked me a simple question over the holidays that I thought I’d share with the TOC community:
Is there any way to quickly tell whether an ebook on a retailer’s site is DRM-free?
Wiley & O’Reilly Media sign ebook distribution deal
3,000+ technology ebooks added to the oreilly.com catalog
I’ve mentioned before that O’Reilly’s direct ebook channel is an extremely important sales outlet for us. We want our content to be in all stores but the direct channel is pretty much the only one where we can establish an ongoing relationship with readers.
Neutralizing Amazon
Open platforms and services will lead to ebook marketplace disruption
What would you think of a start-up who offers the following?:
- Selling ebooks in a model where one simple transaction gives you access to all formats (e.g., PDF, mobi and EPUB).
- All those ebooks are available in a completely DRM-free manner. There’s no social DRM applied either.
- Every ebook can be quickly and easily side-loaded to the device of your choice. Got a Kindle? No problem. All purchases will be sent right to it. Same goes for Nooks, Kobos, etc. No more awkward installations with USB cables.
- No restrictions on reselling your content or loaning it to someone else. Are you finished with that ebook and have no plans to ever open it again? Why not resell it or pass it along to a friend like you’d do with a print book?
- Enabling and, more importantly, encouraging publishers to have a direct relationship with their customers through this retailing platform.
Sounds too good to be true? I don’t think so. Here’s why…
One of the benefits of working at O’Reilly and being chair of our TOC conference is that I cross paths with countless industry start-ups throughout the year. I’m seeing evidence that many of today’s publishing industry challenges, particularly the closed, proprietary systems that are forming all around us will soon be met with some very cool and disruptive open alternatives.
What would that mean for a platform like the Kindle? Nobody’s knocking Amazon off the mountaintop anytime soon but these open-minded start-ups are going to make things very interesting. I wouldn’t be surprised if all the elements of the start-up outlined above are in place before the end of 2013. Then it’s just a question of tying them all together.
P.S. — If you’re attending TOC Frankfurt on October 9 you’ll get a first-hand look at some of this. I can’t share the details just yet but in a few short weeks you’ll see what I’m talking about. If you haven’t registered yet do so now with this code and you’ll save 20%: TOCPartner20TSpeaker
"Lightweight" DRM isn't the answer
O'Reilly responds to the IDPF's request for comments on a new form of DRM.
In this open letter to the IDPF's Executive Director, Bill McCoy, O'Reilly GM & Publisher Joe Wikert explains why a DRM-free approach is far better than any "lightweight" DRM option.
For many publishers, direct sales is an untapped opportunity
John Oakes on OR Books' alternative business model.
In this TOC podcast, OR Books co-founder John Oakes talks about the importance of a direct to consumer channel and why OR Books has made it a priority.
Microsoft/O'Reilly Alliance Means DRM-free Ebooks Coming from MS Press
Full details are in Tim's post on the Radar blog (and in the Press Release and in the statement from Microsoft ), but thought one part of this deal worth calling out specifically here: I'm particularly excited that as part of this agreement, Microsoft has committed to make its ebooks DRM-free and device-independent. One of our goals at O'Reilly has…
Ebook Piracy is Up Because Ebook Demand is Up
My email, twitter, and "real-world" information stream is abuzz today with references to a New York Times story about the increase in piracy of ebooks: “It’s exponentially up,” said David Young, chief executive of Hachette Book Group, whose Little, Brown division publishes the “Twilight” series by Stephenie Meyer, a favorite among digital pirates. “Our legal department is spending an ever-increasing…
Over 160 O'Reilly Books Now in Kindle Store (without DRM), More on the Way
I’m happy to announce that more than 160 O’Reilly books are now available on Kindle, and are being sold without any DRM (Digital Rights Management). Though we do offer more than 400 ebooks direct from our website, the number for sale on Kindle will be limited until Amazon updates Kindle 1 to support table rendering (“maybe this summer” is the most specific they would get). We expect to add another 100 or so titles in the coming weeks; those have needed a more detailed analysis of the table content to identify good candidates. There were two main reasons we held our books back from sale on Kindle: poor rendering of complex content and compulsory DRM.
Pirates Convince Game Developer to Drop DRM
"Why do people pirate my games?" Game developer Cliff Harris recently posed this question on his blog and the onslaught of responses caught him (and his blog host) by surprise. Harris offers some interesting conclusions, but most notable is this passage on digital rights management (DRM): People don't like DRM, we knew that, but the extent to which DRM is…