The Sword and Laser discussion

aldenoneil wrote: "Boing Boing says Tor is going DRM-free.

And so the cycle continues. Anyone have Hollywood's phone number?"

try 1-800-stuckinthepastandhangingonwithliesanddeciet. That may be a bit long.

John Scalzi had some good commentary on this (http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/04/24...)

As a reader and a librarian, this is nothing but good. It's nice to see Tor being in the forefront of reason on this.

Even though I'm an Irish resident and this won't effect me at all I am delighted to see this finally start happening.

And I think Charles Stross's take is awesome http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-...

I'm a little surprised it wasn't Baen, what with their history of releasing ebooks for free, but yay Tor!

This is a very good sign. Charles Stross's blog post (and the previous one he links to) does a great job of explaining the situation.

I'm excited to see where it evolves from here.

I was very happy to see this.

Angry Robot Books already sells eBooks DRM free, but Tor is a much bigger fish in the US SF/F market. I imagine that if even one more of the larger SF/F publishers in the US goes DRM free, most everyone else will follow suit.

aldenoneil wrote: "That's much too involved. I'm sure they'll see the light of day soon. Eventually. Someday. Maybe.

EDIT: And I think you're toying with me. They'd never pay for a toll-free number."

you are correct sir. I was mistaken that number should have been 1-999-bilkourcustomerswhowethinkarestupidforalltheyareworth

I am sorry for the mix up. And this call just cost you $14.50

Tor UK has announced it's going DRM free as well.

Now I'm happy. http://torbooks.co.uk/category/blog/t...

I did like that Tor said that their authors were the ones pushing for DRM free books. Hooray for Tor authors and publishers getting it!

Michael wrote: "I was very happy to see this.

Angry Robot Books already sells eBooks DRM free, but Tor is a much bigger fish in the US SF/F market. I imagine that if even one more of the larger SF/F publishers ..."

The dealbreaker is that Tor is under Macmillan, one of the Big Six publishers.

Angry Robot Books is one of the smaller/independent presses (they used to be under HarperCollins) so it's not a surprise or big news that they're DRM-free. Actually, a lot of independent genre presses are DRM-free: two of my favorite DRM-free genre stories are http://weightlessbooks.com/ and http://www.wizardstowerbooks.com/ (they don't stock the Big Six titles though, due to DRM)

Charles wrote: The dealbreaker is that Tor is under Macmillan, one of the Big Six publishers.

Exactly. Ace/Roc, Spectra, Orbit, and the other Big Six-run/owned SF/F houses are much more likely to consider DRM-free if they see that Tor, usually the market leader (in awards if not always sales -- I don't have those numbers), is making the switch, that's a much bigger deal than Angry Robot, Baen, and the other smaller SF/F houses.

Agreed - Tor's influence is greater than Angry Robot, Baen and the others. I'm published through Orbit and would LOVE for them to go DRM free. They do tend to be a more "out of the box" publisher than many - so I'm hopeful - but Hachette Book Group is their parent company an they are a HUGE big-six and may exert pressure to stop such.

My bigger issue with Orbit is to make their titles AVAILABLE outside of the US/UK.

Gord, someone else has already said it, but it's worth repeating: https://www.facebook.com/notes/baen-b...

Can anyone tell me WHEN TOR's new ebookshop will go online? I've seen references to everything going DRM free by 'Summer 2012', and that propogating outwards before the end of 'July 2012', but I can't seem to find an actual date anywhere?

I'd love to know this too.

I am excited for this. I may have to rebuy all the ebook versions of my favourite TOR authors (:)Brian Lumley!) that I've had sitting on my bookshelf for decades... just to have them with me all the time

@debf and Michael - The announcement was, IIRC, 'this summer' for the DRM free versions of the books. I don't recall a date for the Tor store itself.

one of the reasons I like this is that it opens up the possibility of third party stores 'buying' inventory that they can resell on their site.

And... here they go! http://www.tor.com/blogs/2012/07/torf...

Yay! Now we just need a few more to head down the same path. :)