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Amazon-Mobi DRM vs. a first novelist: DRM delays Diesel eBooks’ promo of ‘The Solomon Scandals’
March 1, 2009 | 8:48 am
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By David Rothman
As a reader who wants to own e-books for real, I’ve had reason aplenty to loathe DRM.
Now, as a first novelist, I have even more justification.
The e-bookers at Amazon insist that books in its Mobipocket format be distributed with DRM even when publishers object. And that’s hitting Twilight Times Books and me in the pocketbook.
Publisher Lida Quillen was hoping to upload a nonDRMed Mobipocket copy of The Solomon Scandals for Mobipocket to 
distribute to Diesel eBooks. Diesel’s hardworking owner, Scott Redford, plans to promote Scandals on his home page, just as Books on Board, another independent e-bookstore, has been on its own site. But guess what. Mobi’s distribution arm apparently won’t do business with Twilight unless Scandals and other books appear with DRM. And guess who offers software for creating Mobi-DRMed e-books and potentially could perpetrate major gouges in the future? Talk about the risks of Standard Oil-style monopolies in the making. It’s Jeff Bezos, wittingly or not, vs. the small guys.
Twilight is now hoping to get Scandals into DRMed Mobi, simply because both the publisher and I need the extra distribution (even many of the fiercest DRM-haters tolerate such an infestation when there’s no choice, especially in this horrid economy). But meanwhile Twilight lacks a DRMed version of the Mobi file and must create one. Lida’s tech help almost surely would rather not mess with DRM-complicated eBabel. Meanwhile Twilight and I are losing valuable time and money. Alas, first novels do better while they’re within the life span of yogurt, or at least not too many weeks beyond.
Not the only DRM victim
I can imagine scads of other first novelists at small presses suffering as a result of Jeff’s DRM fixation for e-books—a malady absent in the case of his DRMless music store, where the business model isn’t pegged to an Amazon-owned format. Jeff has claimed on The Daily Show, and to Kirk Biglione, that his company is DRM agnostic in the case of the Kindle. But the rest of the world isn’t so sure, and meanwhile it is fact, fact, fact that Mobi requires DRM if you’re to enjoy full distribution in that format. Mobi, as I understand it, flatly says that "PRC files must have been published with Content Encryption with DRM."
Later today I’ll send Larry Lessig and Cory Doctorow a copy of this post, and I’ll also hope that witnesses at the FTC’s forthcoming DRM hearing can cite the Scandals situation and similar ones to show how DRM is a would-be monopolist’s dream.
I hereby challenge Amazon to change its ways. If anti-trust laws don’t cover situations like this at present, then they’d damn well better in the future. No mistake about it: Amazon wants to lord it over the publishing industry. Amazon has many good points, and I would love to see the company on its own eliminate DRM or at least stop burdening Twilight-style small publishers and others with a technology they intensely dislike.
For now, let me point out a pesky little inconsistency. Amazon is making text to speech just an option for publishers distributed on the Kindle. Might the same voluntary actions be possible with DRM for the Kindle and Mobi? Not that the analogy is perfect. Allowing publishers to turn off text to speech will harm the doctrine of fair use, just as DRM does. But you get the idea. A little consistency, please, Jeff. Some not-so-gentle prodding in that regard from the FTC and perhaps Congress wouldn’t be such a bad idea if you won’t Do The Right Thing on your own rather than inflicting DRM on Twilight Times and others.
Now a little irony.The Solomon Scandals is in part about the hassles of getting a corruption story out in the heyday of monopoly and near-monopoly newspapers like the fictitious Washington Telegram (a major local real estate advertiser has built a rickety high-rise—about to collapse, jeopardizing many hundreds of IRS workers). Do we really want to trust the book industry so extensively to the MBAs at Amazon, who are even getting into newspaper and magazine distribution via the Kindle? What happens if, like the Telegram, they’re under pressure to ignore or play down troublesome content? Will editorial values really prevail over business ones?
Please note: I’m speaking only for myself, not in the least for Twilight Times Books or Diesel eBooks, both of which didn’t know about this post beforehand. Like them, I hope that everyone involved, Amazon-Mobi included, can prosper mightily. But no Standard Oil tactics, please. Amazon-enforced DRM is anti-competitive. Even Amazon will do better with a bigger e-book pie for all than with growth-constricting DRM. What’s more important? Market share of the moment or long-term earnings?
Up close and personal: Jeff, didn’t your wife, MacKenzie, publish her first novel not that long ago? A little understanding, please. DRM is especially bad for first novelists who publish through independent small presses like Twilight Times. Your wife went with the Fourth Estate imprint of HarperCollins, a large conglomerate; but some of the best fiction starts out at little houses more willing to take chances. Twilight Times-type houses are R&D labs, in effect, for HarperCollins, Random House and even Hollywood.
And an interesting note on Toni Morrison’s Kindle endorsement: Toni Morrison may love the Kindle based on its merits, of which there are many, especially the wireless feature; but perhaps it didn’t hurt that she was MacKenzie Bezos’s writing teacher. The Morrison endorement, in turn, just may have helped pave the way for the all-important promo from Oprah Winfrey, a big admirer of Morrison and her writings.
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Comments:
David,
My experience with Mobipocket is the same–if you want to distribute through them, you use DRM. There is no option (that I’ve ever found, at any rate) which allows non-DRMed content.
That said, the Mobipocket Creator does allow the user to create a non-DRMed Mobipocket version. If your publisher wished, and if Diesel’s supply chain allowed, your publisher could submit directly to Diesel. Of course, if you’re in Multiformat with Fictionwise, you’re available in non-DRMed Mobipocket as well as other formats.
My pragmatic answer is, I think, the same as yours–don’t use DRM where it isn’t required, and use it when there’s no good option. You’re absolutely right, a huge percentage of sales occur in the month or so after release. Missing this window is not good news.
Rob Preece
Publisher, http://www.BooksForABuck.com
The FTC comment from the RIAA, MPAA, AAP etc ( http://www.ftc.gov/os/comments/drmtechnologies/539814-00711.pdf ) says in part
“E-book downloads and purchases have also increased significantly during the last three years.46 This increase is due in part to the release of exciting new portable reading devices, such as the Kindle and the iPhone. The success of these new readers has led to dramatic increases in the number of available titles, and projections indicate that these increases will continue”
and implies that DRM is the cause because it is
“allowing copyright owners (and their licensees) to tailor their offerings to the specific distribution rights they possess, to offer more granular options to consumers, to experiment with different price points, different roles for advertising, and different time limits for use -in short, to better meet the diverse needs of diverse audiences.”
It sounds to me like you are actively being forbidden from tailoring your offering the way you want thanks to DRM.
I will admit to a certain amount of puzzlement as to what exactly mobipocket has to do with an agreement between you/your publisher and the distributor (Diesel). Why would they be involved in the chain?
Henry Melton, whose novel Emperor Dad I reviewed here, reported the same problem when I asked him about the possibility of distributing in DRM-free formats. Apparently Fictionwise/eReader is the only distributor with enough heft to publish MobiPocket books in unencrypted “multiformat”—but they seem to have a lower size limit on the type of small-press publisher they’ll deal with.
(Though he’d sell his titles without it if he could, Melton’s own stance on DRM is a bit more complicated, though. He discusses it in this blog entry.)
I hate DRM as much as the next person, but telling some big fib about how hard it makes supposedly makes things as a publisher/distributor isn’t useful.
First of all, going the MobiPocket route at this point is dumb. Mobi is going away in favor of Kindle; or, rather, will probably be updated with the Kindle DRM capability. So, submit your book to Amazon in Kindle format (it’s easy) and they’ll take care of the DRM and you’ll get your book out to people who actually buy ebooks, and lots of them, via Kindle.
If you’re determined to go the dumb MobiPocket anyways, the silly Windows-only MobiPocket Creator software make it painless to add MobPocket DRM to PRC files – you just get the keys from MobiPocket and then stick them in MobiPocket Creator, tick the DRM box and re-generate the PRC. Boom! Instant DRM.
I hate DRM, it’s dumb, and it’s a shame the hidebound publishers won’t learn from the iTunes experience, and that MobiPocket/Amazon are intent on shoving DRM down everyone’s throats at the behest of said hidebound publishers. That being said, grossly exaggerating the nonexistent technical difficulties of dealing with the DRM (in the case of Kindle, do nothing; in the case of MobiPocket, re-create the PRC file with the DRM option ticked) doesn’t help the anti-DRM cause.
What makes it even more interesting is Bezos’ quote from his interview on The Daily Show: “It is up to the publishers to specify if they want DRM or not.” (In other words, “It’s not our fault.” )
The Solomon Scandals is about “a major local real estate advertiser has built a rickety high-rise about to collapse, jeopardizing many hundreds of IRS workers”… it is an unusual choice to make a major local real estate advertiser the protagonist.
Sorry, I couldn’t help myself.
Hi, Clint. The sentence reads: “The Solomon Scandals is in part about the hassles of getting a corruption story out in the heyday of monopoly and near-monopoly newspaper like the fictitious Washington Telegram (a major local real estate advertiser has built a rickety high-rise—about to collapse, jeopardizing many hundreds of IRS workers).”
Other than the dash I’ve just added, that’s exactly how the sentence read. I didn’t say the book was about the local real estate advertiser. Rather I said it was about the hassles of getting the story out.
But in a sense you’re still a bit correct. Seymour Solomon, the real estate advertiser, is important enough to have made the cover of the book—shown in ad in the upper right of this page.
Thanks,
David
Roland, many thanks for your views, but the Mobi DRM is not just a little detail. It’s one more format to have to mess with. Lida was already offering nonencrypted Mobipocket; what’s more, just now, she had to take time out to read the documentation. There will also be user-support issues that stores and distributors are to handle, but that may wind up at her end anyway. Simply put, even an “easy” Windows program is just the tip of the iceberg here. As to why she used secured Mobi, she wanted to plug into Mobipockets distribution to reach the maximum number of readers, just as I wanted her to. Because Scott manages a big e-store by himself or at least with only a small staff (I’m not sure which), he prefers that books reach him through distributors. I certainly can understand that.
Thanks,
David
It absoutely is *not* ‘another format to mess with’ – it’s the same format, with a tick-box checked in the MobiPocket Creator software, which is used anyways to create the ebook from whatever source files comprise the electronic manuscript.
To reach the maximum number of readers, go Kindle. You’ll get more sales on Kindle than you will on MobiPocket. But if you really want to go MobiPocket, as well, it’s just as easy as I described it.
As for reading the documentation, be still my beating heart (why someone needs to read documentation in order to tick a check-box which is clearly visible on the screen is another question)! With regards to end-users having DRM-related problems, a simple form email directing any and all queries regarding these issues to the right links/organizations will suffice.
You, your publisher, and your distributor are making a mountain out of a mole-hill. It sounds to me as if all of you need a bit of RTFMing in order to understand the medium and the relevant technologies/processes.
If you’re so technology-averse and aren’t willing to understand how this stuff works, why are you publishing ebooks and committing uninformed punditry on the subject in the first place?
Heck, Roland, you’re forgetting that:
(1) There is a BIG difference between DRMed and nonDRMed Mobi, especially in terms of the quality of the user experience. While the format under the DRM layer is the technically the same, we’re really talking about a second eBabeler to deal with. Proprietary DRM in effect turns everything it touches into a different format.
(2) The typical small publisher is NOT tech-inclined—rather, far more language-inclined. That’s the way it should be. I’m very fortunate that my publisher was more tech-inclined than most of her counterparts—and thus could shorten the DRM-caused delay. Don’t confuse publishers and pundits.
Yes, when I messed with a Mobi creation tool in the past year or two, I may have run across box to check if you wanted DRM. Or perhaps I read of that. But the checkbox or whatever is just the tip of the iceberg, long term, as I’ve noted. As a consumer I’ve found that Mobi DRM is absolute hell when, for example, you’re up against the device limit (just four at a local library, last I knew). As noted, some of these problems with “sold” books may come back to haunt publishers, not just stores and distributors. That’s why, yes, Lida was wise to take time out to RTFM.
Of course, the real issue in the end is whether Amazon/Mobi makes DRM mandatory. Based on Lida’s experience, it certainly does! Why is Jeff giving the opposite impression on TV?
Thanks,
David
Hi David,
I did get the whole of the quote and chose, for comedic purposes, to deliberately mistake the man who is endangering a bunch of tax collectors as the hero of the story.
As the saying goes, if you have to explain the joke it was never funny.
No prob, Clint, except that it’s good to have the full context. Best. David (who, were he to do it over again, would probably have made the sentence shorter)
Note that Baen Books makes its digital output available in DRM-free Mobipocket — and quite a few other DRM-free formats. And they’ve been doing so for the past nine years.
Xenophon
Exactly, Xenophon. In regard to mandatory DRM, we’re talking about Mobi-DISTRIBUTED books, not Mobi-format books. Baen is one of the most successful publishers of e-books and does it without DRM. Let’s hope that Mobi will relax its DRM-related distribution requirements. Thanks. David
No, there’s not. DRMed Mobi reads just fine, as does DRMed Kindle.
The library issue is a policy issue, not a DRM issue, per se. Sort of like how if libraries want 5 copies of dead-tree books to lend out, they have to buy 5 actual books, instead of just buying one and then copying said book 4 times.
Look, I dislike DRM and will be glad when the publishing market (and the video market, for that matter) finally catches up with the online music market in terms of ditching DRM. But your complaints with regards to the supposedly Sisyphean task of getting your books into Mobi DRM (again, you need to be on Kindle, whether or not you’re on Mobi; once you’re signed up via Mobi, you can simply set Amazon Kindle as one of your retailers, and the DRMed PRC will be translated into Kindle AZW and put up for sale on Amazon via the Kindle Store) are both bogus and laughably Luddite in nature, especially for someone who’s a) writing and publishing ebooks and b) thinks he has sufficient understanding of the general topic of ebook publishing to opine on the topic.
Again, Roland, keep in mind that not everyone is a network engineer. For small press folks, the task is more Sisyphean than you might imagine—and DRM-related unknowns can interfere with schedules and cause post-pub complications. As for DRMed Mobi vs. nonDRMed Mobi, remember we’re talking about machines beyond just Kindles, and about significant restrictions on legally used books. Libraries? The four-device limit per user was not a library policy as best I know. Nor was it the library’s policy for Mobi DRM to be a horror to use on my Cybook. Perhaps I could get things working just fine, but like the small press publishers, I’m spread thin. I love technology, but not when it intrudes on the rest of life—as DRM so often can (in terms of readers’ times, or the issue of being able to own books for real). Thanks. David (who probably will make this his last response—having grown bored answering endlessly repeated statements)