Comments on: E-book publishers should learn about cross-platform availability from Valve

By: Nate the great

Nate the great — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 23:04:46 +0000

Chris, Valve is still charging for the games. They just added the option of playing on OSX, and gave it away to everyone who already bought a game.

This has already happened in ebooks. I can’t think of one major reader app that isn’t free and cross platform.

By: AnemicOak

AnemicOak — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 14:15:17 +0000

As GJN says, some pubs do this. Samhain does it through their store (My Bookstore and More) and of course Baen (and other pubs) do it through Webscriptions. Those pubs of course don’t use DRM anyway so their titles could be converted if need be without breaking DRM or anything. It would be nice if the big pubs would do this, but it would likely only happen if they actually setup their own stores (not the stores they have now which are mostly run through third party distros).

By: GJN

GJN — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 11:12:23 +0000

Some publishers already do that. When you buy an e-book from Pragmatic Bookshelf (www.pragprog.com), a small publisher of computer books, you can download it in pdf, mobi, or epub formats or in all three. I generally do the latter so I can be covered for future reader purchases. Not only that, the publisher uses only social DRM by incorporating your name unobtrusively into the book and its metadata. I really hope this practice spreads.

By: Chris Meadows

Chris Meadows — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 02:58:05 +0000

I didn’t say the timeline was the part to be emulated.

Most game companies still charge for their five-year-old games when they port them to a new platform.

By: Nate the great

Nate the great — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 01:31:21 +0000

Are you serious?!?

Half-Life 2 came out 5 years ago, and only now is there a version for OSX. Do you really want ebook publishers to emulate that kind of time line?