Comments on: Kindle books without DRM?

By: Dan Brookes

Dan Brookes — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 16:15:20 +0000

I purchased a Kindle book published by Amazon’s own BookSurge, and to my surprise it is DRM-free. I know this because it opened right up in Mobipocket’s desktop reader for Windows.

By: Alan Wallcraft

Alan Wallcraft — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 04:26:09 +0000

I bought two Extra Large Print Kindle ebooks, “Pride and Prejudice” and “A Canticle For Leibowitz”, and both are DRM-free. The only simple way to tell is to rename then from .azw to .mobi and open them using a MOBI Reader.

I would be interested in learning how the Foundation managed to get DRM-free ebooks on the Kindle, because it seems to be very difficult to do.

By: Joshua Tallent of eBookArchitects.com

Joshua Tallent of eBookArchitects.com — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 03:40:34 +0000

@ Alan — What leads you to believe that the books from the Virginia Woolf Foundation are DRM free? I actually create those books for them, and I had not heard that that was the case.

@ Chris — Doctorow was talking specifically about Audible’s policies, but the general feeling at TOC was that Amazon is bad because they DRM their books, too.

@ Mur — That’s the main reason I wrote this post. I think a large number of the users of the DTP would love to release their books with no DRM. There is no information from Amazon yet about how to do that.

By: Court

Court — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 02:49:34 +0000

You can get books in non-Kindle format on your Kindle, but you have to send them to Amazon to be re-formatted. Thereby rendering your formerly un-DRMed books DRMed, as I understand it. Seriously annoying; but I have to hope that Amazon will see the light in due time.

By: coffee

coffee — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 02:26:52 +0000

I’ve dropped my Kindle a few times already (not on purpose of course) and it seems to be working without a hitch; so they’re durable at least

By: Mur Lafferty

Mur Lafferty — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 00:58:36 +0000

I published my book via Kindle and am unaware of any ability to keep it DRM-free. That was not in the instructions of how to make a Kindle book. I’d love to learn more- are there any how-tos?

By: Chris Meadows

Chris Meadows — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 00:51:19 +0000

Certainly Cory Doctorow lambasted Amazon up one side and down the other at the O’Reilly TOC conference a couple of weeks ago for insisting that books have DRM on them. However, he may have been talking mainly about Amazon’s Audible.com audiobook subsidiary.

By: pond

pond — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 23:55:55 +0000

That paragraph in the Terms and Conditions is a mind-blower, all right. But it’s the sort of thing we have to expect when dealing with a monopoly, or a company that has monopoly on its mind.

‘We don’t care. We’re Amazon. We don’t have to.”

By: Alan Wallcraft

Alan Wallcraft — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 21:20:06 +0000

The “extra large print” ebooks from the Virginia M. Woolf Foundation are DRM-free on the Kindle. These are the only ones I have come across, but since there is no indication on Amazon’s web site the only way to tell is to try to open them.

Another road-block to DRM-free Kindle ebooks is that many come from mobipocket.com, which is an Amazon company that always includes DRM in its ebooks.

It definitely isn’t up to the publishers. For example, O’Reilly sells its ebooks DRM-free but the Kindle store versions have DRM.