Clueful words from Pan Macmillan exec on her house’s DRM-shedding efforts

By David Rothman

Book by book, the U.K.-based Pan Macmillan is waging the good fight against Digital Rights Management.

One publisher lacks the leverage of, say, Amazon. But Pan Mac is encouraging individual writers to let their books appear without DRM—check out Pan Mac’s promo of eight nonDRMed SF books from such stars as John Scalzi. You can buy three books for the price of two. Choose the Adobe Digital Editions version to get nonDRMed ePub, my favorite option.

Meanwhile here’s the word directly from Sara Lloyd, head of Pan Mac’s digital publishing operation, who kindly respond to my query about her house’s current DRM policy.

Thanks for writing. We follow the TeleRead blog with interest, and I’ve been delighted with your positive response to our approach on DRM. My personal view is that DRM stinks and that one day it will be a non-issue; it actively discourages honest consumers from downloading the e-book and has little or no impact on whether a book gets pirated or not. Any serious hacker can break DRM anyway—and most pirated copies are made from scanned copies of printed books. So why haven’t we started shrink-wrapping every print book we ship to the retailers or padlocking them until purchased? Because that would not lead to more sales of books, that’s why…. The music industry spent all that time locking MP3s down—and for what? So now publishers are going to all go and make the same mistake? Well, not me, if I have my way. At Pan Macmillan we have been actively seeking authors who are happy to have their e-book published DRM-free, and the result is that a small but growing number of authors have agreed. We hope that more will agree, which will also, by the way, give us more impetus to get books onto the iPhone—another subject I know is dear to your heart!

Exactly, Sara! And Pan Mac’s embrace of the ePub standard just adds to the fun. Anyone on the U.S. side of The Pond care to follow up with Sara’s policy? Hello, Random House? You’ve made great progress with nonDRMed audiobooks. Why not follow Pan Mac’s lead and do things e-book by e-book, author by author, getting permissions? My favorite scenario would be no DRM, with this being a signing requirement for everyone doing business with Pan Mac. But considering the current realities, Pan Mac is off to a great start.

Of course, I don’t see the dropping of DRM and the retreat from eBabel as the only steps needed to turn e-books into a mass phenomenon. Better displays and longer battery life, for example, will also help—as will the proper use of E in schools and libraries. And we also need lower prices for both the technology and, within reason, the e-books themselves. But back to DRM. Any book, at any price, is a harder sell if people can’t genuinely own it. With DRM, they could be out of luck if a company goes out of business or changes its priorities. Just ask owners of the old Gemstars and Rocket eBooks.

Idea: Global registry of authors who don’t insist on DRM

My own hope is that someone will start a global registry of authors like John Scalzi who are willing to let their works appear without DRM. Are there any foundations, universities or others interested in funding or even administering such an initiative? Or maybe even a consortium of progressive publishers? I’d also like to see a logo appear on writers’ Web sites, so that readers, publishers and agents can effortlessly know where the authors stand on the "protection" issue. The logos might link to the anti-DRM registry, which, of course, could have sophisticated search features. And of Google and others can add DRM-related metadata for book-related sites and book searches—to help guide people to hassle-free options—then so much the better. Let everyone send Amazon and Apple and others a message that, no, you can’t use DRM to dominate the book business.

Ideally literary agents will in fact catch on in time. They’re the gatekeepers for big publishers these days, the usual ones to go through to reach houses like Pan Mac, and ideally they’ll encourage clients to show enlightenment and flexibility, just as Scalzi has.

Reward authors smart about DRM

With all factors equal—literary merit first!—agents and publishers should favor authors willing to see their works released without DRM. This technology is a sales toxin, so there are sound commercial reasons for such an approach even though E is still just a speck of p-sales. With easier-to-use DRMfree books, publishers will discover new markets, especially global ones.

Moreover, whether the format involved is ePub or anything else, DRM adds to complexity and makes it harder to get files running reliability on customers’ machines. Not to mention the need to port proprietary software to new e-book platforms like the iPhone, just as Sara has mentioned! Worst of all, DRM turns a genuine standard, like properly formatted ePub, into a proprietary one.

And speaking of Sara Lloyd: Read her reflections on the Waterstones/Sony Reader launch. "I must say it did make my heart leap just a little bit to see huge POS displays promoting the Sony Reader and the associated ebook catalogue from Waterstones in the Tottenham Court Road and Picadilly branches, and it was fun to go in and do some underground detective work to discover that the Waterstones staff seemed quite clued up about it all."

Related: Pan Macmillan’s retreat from hated DRM: Igorsk downloads three non-infested titles—and enjoys the good news first-hand and Pan Macmillan starting to sell ePub books routinely without DRM? Apparently—and that’s GREAT news! and ‘Cultural Amnesia’: DRM-free book from Pan Macmillan writer Clive James. You can read other Pan Mac-related posts via this link.